Because of Our Child

by Margot Early

  There was more in his words.

  Skin.

  Salma’s skin.

  Jackson’s skin.

  She lifted her eyes and saw that he wasn’t smiling. Not sad, either. But serious.

  “You may,” she said. “You must have been saving your overtime for years.”

  “That’s about it. Most important piece of smoke jumper equipment. That overtime book.” He placed a hand on the middle of her back, guiding her ahead of him in the line.

  Jen ordered a latte, and Max had black coffee. He sat with her at a round table for two on the patio, with a view over traffic, of the ocean and the oil rigs.

  “Missing Colorado at all?” he asked, looking preoccupied.

  “Are you kidding?” She shook her head. “I want to dive into that water. I’d like to swim with dolphins again.” Maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration, but she’d lost count of the times during her life in California that she looked up in the surf to see the dorsal fins of passing dolphins or a whale’s tail waving on the horizon. “What about you?”

  He shook his head. Still with that preoccupied look, he said—almost to the sea rather than her— “It seems as if we were meant to be back here together.” Then, he met her eyes. “Don’t you think?”

  She couldn’t think. She could only feel. Her blood raced, and she remembered kissing Max the night before—and also Elena’s pointed suggestion. I am still attracted to him. More than attracted. And I want him to be more than attracted to me.

  “Maybe,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.

  Max grinned, that wolfish grin.

  Jen decided to change the subject. “How will your father take it?” she asked at last.

  That sobered him. He shook his head ruefully. “He has very high standards for the behavior of his children. Initially, he’ll be disappointed in me. Unlikely he’ll take it out on you or Elena.”

  Jen considered this. “What did he think of Salma? Did he know she was pregnant?”

  “Negative—no, that is. He thought I was too young to get married. On one occasion, he referred to her as ‘a bit of fluff.’”

  “Should I look forward to a similar reception?”

  Max shook his head. “Granted, he probably won’t be keen on the fact that we met, let alone conceived a child, while we were hotshots together.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “It’s where I went wrong, according to him. Left the career track.”

  “As I recall, your course of study wasn’t exactly ‘career track,’ though I’m not sure what that means.”

  “Being on a career track, in his mind, means not fighting wildland fire for a living. If I could find it in myself to become a fire chief, he would find that easier to live with, I think.”

  Jen gave that some thought. “He’s a physician?”

  “An orthopedic surgeon.”

  “A holy calling,” she murmured and realized that it maybe sounded a bit sarcastic. Becoming a physician took an enormous amount of study and dedication. But Jen heard the frustration in Max’s voice, because his father would not accept him as he was. I hope I’m never that way with Elena, wishing her to be different than she is.

  “He wanted me to go to medical school, too. In fact, he wanted that from all of us.”

  “Did any of you oblige?”

  He shook his head. “I think we all resisted doing the thing that would instantly have meant, all by itself, instant respect. From him. It’s strange, because we all admire the hell out of him. Maybe we thought that no matter what we did we’d never be good enough.” He drained his coffee. “Can you keep busy for an hour and a half?”

  “Sure. I might walk around town a bit, but I’ll be back here at ten-thirty.”

  “Good, our appointment with Richard is at eleven.”

  “Is he expecting both of us?”

  “No. Don’t worry. Your presence will make him feel better. In fact, I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you.”

  “Why are you so sure of that?”

  “Look, he’ll be glad to see anyone who isn’t me.”

  “Did you have words after the fire?” Jen squinted, trying to remember what she knew.

  “Oh, yes. I’ll tell you about that later.”

  AS MAX HEADED FOR the oceanfront house where he’d grown up, Richard Grass was the last thing on his mind. All he could think about was what words he would use to tell his father about Elena. All he could do was try to second-guess his father’s reaction so that he could have the best possible response ready.

  The house was a white stucco Mission-style, with wrought-iron appointments and a tile roof. From the road, Max could see the top of the railing on the stairs leading down to the beach. Every morning in his teens, he’d gone down to the water with his surfboard and his sister Marina, a stack of toast in his free hand. His father had never been slow to remind them that his hard work and their mother’s careful financial management had provided this environment for them. Max stifled a sigh as he parked his bike behind a blue-gray Toyota hybrid. That would be his father’s car.

  We have a good relationship, Max reminded himself.

  But that relationship would always be limited by his father’s unmet expectations of his only son.

  And having fathered a child out of wedlock was not going to improve Max’s stock with Norman Rickman.

  The front door opened, and his father stood there. Rangy and broad-shouldered like Max, his father now had a wild mane of white hair, its tousled character at odds with the person Max knew him to be. He wore tennis whites and waved to Max, coming down the front step and across the wide lawn, walking on the flagstone path.

  Max removed his helmet and set it on the handlebars where it rested securely. He climbed off the bike. “Hi, Dad.”

  They embraced, and his father said, “You look fit. How are those knees holding up?”

  “Not too well,” Max admitted. “I’m looking for something on the ground next season.”

  “I thought you smoke jumpers would rather go out in wheelchairs than voluntarily give it up.”

  “Not this smoke jumper.”

  His father seemed to approve of this response. “Misty is going to come over later today. She’s looking forward to seeing you.”

  “I’m looking forward to seeing her, too, but I can only stay for about an hour right now. I have an appointment in connection with the film.”

  “I’m glad you’re making that film,” his father said. “Maybe it will get that fire out of your system once and for all.”

  He’d been unfair to his father. He’d forgotten that his dad knew what a huge event the Makal Canyon tragedy had been in Max’s life. He’d forgotten that his father had always understood more about his children than most other people did.

  I’m dreading his reaction. That’s why I was unfair.

  “Want some water or tea? Orange juice? Coffee?”

  “Thanks, I’m fine.”

  “Thought we’d sit out on the patio.”

  “Sounds great.”

  There, the smell of beach tar brought the past even closer—and not just the distant past. There was last night. And there was this morning, too, with Jen clinging to him as they rode on his motorcycle.

  He sat across from his father, wondering how to say the impossible. Finally, he said, “Well, I’ve had a shock recently.”

  He felt his father’s sudden alertness and tension and he realized at once that a parent’s immediate concern would be for his child’s health.

  It was this, his father’s fear, the fear of a man who’d lost his wife to cancer, that made Max hurry on. “I’ve just learned that I have a twelve-year-old daughter.”

  He was glad for his father’s healthy blood pressure, like Max’s own. He told himself there was no danger of a coronary.

  “Are you sure it’s yours?”

  Max heard those words echo with the pull of the waves, synchronous. “It?” he said in disbelief.

&n
bsp; “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

  “She,” Max said with subtle emphasis, “looks like Misty. Her name is Elena. And yes, I’m sure. Her mother is Jen Delazzeri.”

  “Twelve. When did this… Not that it’s any of my business.”

  Right.

  “Who is… What did you say her mother’s name is?”

  Max repeated it. “She was a Santa Inez Hotshot.”

  “Well, that’s certainly followed you like wake follows a boat.”

  His father’s reaction seemed slightly better than Max had anticipated. It was a relief, he found, to talk to him about this.

  “Why are you only finding out now?” Norman Rickman suddenly demanded.

  Max was unsure how to respond. He no more wanted Jen to be the object of his father’s scrutiny than he wanted to feel the man’s censure himself. How best to protect Jen?

  The truth. After all, weren’t her doubts the results of your behavior?

  On the other hand, some of it was too personal to share with his father.

  “Salma’s death,” he improvised. “It’s not that simple. She was uncertain how I would react.”

  “Every woman is uncertain how a man’s going to react to her pregnancy,” his father exclaimed.

  Max had forgotten this side of his parent. That Norman Rickman could be defensive if he believed someone had wronged one of his children. He would defend them, no matter who was to blame. Sometimes.

  And Jen did wrong you, Max.

  To have been given the chance to see Elena born, to see her nurse or take her first steps… What part would he have played, in reality? I would have been there. At first, I might have had doubts. But I would have taken part. And I would have loved Elena from the moment I saw her.

  Just as he had upon meeting her when she was twelve. She was his blood.

  But he wasn’t going to hold that against her mother, now. What was the point? Done was done, and now he could only make up for lost time. And he wanted that time with both of them. Jen fascinated him. He wasn’t sure why, what it was about her, but he knew what it meant. He could get in over his head.

  He didn’t care. He was a smoke jumper and he dropped through the air for a living. He could handle whatever came along with being close to Jen Delazzeri. And he believed those things would be good, in any case.

  “So what are your plans,” his father asked, “regarding this child?”

  The rhythm of the ocean played against the light breeze that lifted Max’s hair.

  Strange. He’d been worried that he wouldn’t be able to live up to his father’s expectations about what a parent should be or do. But now that didn’t concern him at all. The fear was gone because being a good father to Elena seemed the most natural course he could follow. There was no way he couldn’t do this, no way he wouldn’t. “To be the best father I can be,” Max said.

  “That’s my boy.”

  Max could hardly understand why his father’s praise still touched him so deeply. He was a grown man himself. Yet when Norman Rickman said that, he felt a foot taller.

  “What about her mother?” his father asked.

  “Working on it.” Max smiled.

  Norman nodded his approval. “Can’t imagine a woman keeping that business to herself. Don’t know what she was thinking.”

  Max did not agree. He knew. He had caused Jen’s fear by saying that the love they’d shared had happened only because of the fire, only because of Salma’s death. He’d hurt her. It would be chivalrous to drop a hint of this to his father, but right now he couldn’t tell the whole truth. He said, “Dad, please don’t be too hard on her. She saw how I was taking Salma’s death.”

  “But why didn’t she realize that a baby would have been the very thing to help you recover from your loss?”

  Salma’s baby… Yes, she had been autopsied, but the pregnancy had been kept confidential. His father didn’t know.

  “I’d acted in a way that hurt her. That’s all I can say. It was my fault.” Not quite the entire story, but it might make his father more accepting of nineteen-year-old Jen’s decision-making. Fault? He’d hurt Jen, but that didn’t excuse her from not telling him about their child. “Also, remember that we were both very young—and that it’s history now. We can only pick up from where we are.”

  “And she wants you to have a relationship with this child?”

  “Only on our daughter’s behalf. I think if it was up to her…” Max realized he’d spoken too freely. He wished he’d been less candid.

  His father frowned. “Which one was she? Jennifer, did you say her name was?”

  “She lived next door. She has long, dark hair. She was studying drama, dance, communications. Now she’s a television newscaster.”

  “I remember her,” Norman said thoughtfully. “I always thought she had more to her than Salma.”

  Max could not believe his father had actually said that. Salma had died, leaving grieving family and loved ones behind. Then he looked at his watch. “Well, I have an appointment—I should keep moving. I’ll come by again.”

  “Surely you’re not still emotionally involved in that death.”

  “I’ll be emotionally involved in that death all my life,” Max answered. Time had lessened the pain, as it would have any loss. Obviously, he was over what had happened. But because of it, he’d slept with Jen, and now there was Elena.

  “Well, it seems to me you have other things to think about now,” his father said.

  “Actually, I’m thinking about them. This documentary. Better go.”

  His father walked him out to the front of the house.

  “Where is she, by the way?” he asked Max.

  “Who?”

  “My grandchild.”

  Max’s heart rushed, and he forgave the older man every negative word about Salma and her death. “Colorado. But she’ll be out to visit soon. She’s looking forward to meeting everyone.”

  UNEASILY, JEN FOLLOWED Max into the Santa Barbara offices of the Bureau of Land Management. She’d been pleased by Max’s brief report of the meeting with his father. But the meeting that lay ahead of them now came with its own set of pitfalls.

  She had liked Richard Grass. She’d admired him, been grateful for his encouragement when she was a rookie hotshot. Now, Max wanted to hang the blame for the Makal Canyon tragedy on him, and Jen wasn’t particularly keen to be part of that process. And yet she knew she would be.

  She’d spent her time at the coffee shop preparing questions for this meeting, but even as she did so she’d realized that a truly aggressive reporter would want to interview Richard for the first time in front of the camera, to give him no warning of the attack ahead.

  Even so, her instinct was to warn him. Her instinct was to play good cop to Max’s bad cop, and never to let Richard Grass be blamed in the film.

  And she didn’t understand her own feelings on the subject.

  “We have an appointment with Richard Grass,” Max told a ranger who was seated behind a counter, where glass display cases showed a mountain lion skull and a stuffed rattlesnake, as well as other natural artifacts.

  Then he appeared. Dressed in a BLM uniform, still trim, unaffected by his confinement behind a desk, which Jen realized probably wasn’t confinement after all. He was fighting fires in a leadership capacity. That was how she would approach the interview, she decided. It wasn’t the strategy she’d planned, but it was natural and it might serve as a good neutral area between her own aims and Max’s, which were not quite the same. He wanted Richard fired. Jen wanted only to know his part in the Makal Canyon fire—and in Salma’s death and her own sister’s consequent mental problems.

  “Jennifer! You look wonderful. Unchanged.”

  “Oh, I’m changed,” she said, laughing. “And I would say the same to you.”

  “Max,” Richard greeted the former squad boss, shaking hands. “I hear you’re smoke jumping.”

  “Possibly my last season.”

  “Let’s go
into my office.”

  It was a bachelor’s office, without photos of wife or children. Instead, there were photos of Richard in gi and black belt, of Richard with his dogs, a pair of Akitas, one black-and-white, one brown-and-white.

  Behind his wire-rimmed glasses, Jen thought his green eyes were wary. Did he know or guess Max’s agenda?

  Jen brought out her tape recorder. “May I use this?”

  “Of course, of course,” Richard answered uneasily. “But this is just a preliminary interview, right? And I want to offer my services for this documentary in any way I can. I’m happy to research old records or update you on changes in the way the BLM fights fires now.”

  He wanted to participate in the creation of the film. Jen had turned on the tape recorder. “Yes, it’s just preliminary,” she said. “And I’m sure—” she looked at Max, fairly certain that what she was about to say wasn’t true as far as he was concerned “—we can use your help. Of course, I’m just the narrator.”

  “More than that,” Max said, shifting his chair slightly closer to her, reminding her of their alliance. “Yes, we can use your help, Richard. Thank you. There are questions only you can answer.”

  “I’d like to say what I think. And that’s what the official fire investigation pointed out. The fire should have been suppressed much earlier.”

  “I’m interested especially,” Max said, “in your decision-making regarding the deployment of our crews—particularly the crew on the east flank. But you actually had two crews cutting fire line downhill.”

  “Max, there simply wasn’t another way to fight that fire. It’s questionable if it should have been fought in those circumstances. In retrospect, I should have said, no, I wouldn’t do it that way. I should have marched both groups down from those ridges. But we truly didn’t know another way to stop the fire before it hit the Canyon Wind Estates. There were, as you know, certain similarities to the South Canyon fire. If we’d been able to study the lessons of that first fire, not yet prepared in official reports, we would have done things differently in Makal Canyon.”

  Jen gauged Richard’s level of candor and found it surprisingly high. And yet he had become a bureaucrat. His official line, she saw, would be, We do things differently now. Safety first. Always.