48
CHRIS WAS TURNING ON the television when Mia appeared in the doorway of his cottage. Even through tne screen door, he could see that her eyes were red.
“Can I watch Carmen with you?” she asked.
He opened the door, and she stepped into the hug he offered. He could feel her crying more than hear her.
Sometime that afternoon, he’d noticed the open door to Jeff’s cottage. He’d walked inside to find all belongings cleared out, and the sadness he’d felt was so overpowering that he’d sunk onto Jeff’s sofa and simply stared out the window for nearly an hour. He would have liked, at least, to have had the opportunity to say good-bye. And to thank him. There was so much to thank him for, though, that he wouldn’t have known where to start.
He hugged Mia tightly, pressing his cheek to her hair. “What time did he leave?” he asked.
She let go of him, wiping her cheeks with her fingers. “Sometime during the night.” She glanced at the television, then at her watch. “Do you know what she’s going to say?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea. Whatever it is had her upset most of the night. I don’t think she slept at all.”
Mia dropped onto his couch. “I couldn’t watch it alone, you know?” she said. “I mean, I don’t know what I’m going to see or hear or how I’m going to feel.”
He turned up the volume on the TV and sat at the other end of the sofa. The anchors were beginning to roll with their news. Chris couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying. Apparently Mia couldn’t either.
“I’m so glad he’s gone,” she said. “I’m so glad he doesn’t have to be here to listen to this.” She bit her lip and gave Chris a worried look. “They’ll go after him, though, won’t they? Whoever it is he’s running from? I should have let him take my car. He could have hidden his, and then they’d be looking for his car, but he’d actually be in—”
“He’d never do that, Mia, and you know it. He didn’t want us involved any more than we were. It wasn’t your place or my place to—”
“Shh!” She sat forward as Carmen appeared on the screen.
Chris was stunned by Carmen’s pallor. “She looks sick,” he said. “And she missed her cue.” There was a second or two of dead air before Carmen began speaking.
“Rainmaker Jeff Cabrio left Valle Rosa today,” she said. “The rain will continue on schedule, according to Mr. Cabrio’s assistant, engineer Rick Smythe.”
Carmen looked down at her notes, another second of silence filling the air. Chris felt a film of sweat break out across the back of his neck as she raised her eyes once again to the camera.
“Jeff Cabrio was a very private person,” she said. “We’ve learned some things about him, some things perhaps he’d rather we had never learned. In many ways he remains a mystery to us still. All we in Valle Rosa really care to know is that we are richer for having known him, and we wish him Godspeed. Back to you, Bill.”
The camera was once again on Bill Jackson with his patent leather hair. His look of stunned surprise said it all—no one at the station had expected Carmen’s report to be so brief and so thoroughly devoid of news.
“That’s it?” Mia asked, the expression on her own face a reflection of Bill Jackson’s confusion. “Jeff said she knew.”
Chris smiled. He wished he was at the station so he could wrap his arms around Carmen. “She knew, all right.”
“But she didn’t tell.” Mia broke into a grin, and an instant later, actually leapt up to stand on the couch, arms above her head. “Thank you, Carmen!” she yelled.
Chris laughed.
She looked down at him, her expression sobering. “They won’t give her San Diego Sunrise back, now, will they?”
Chris folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the back of the couch, smiling up at Mia. “I guess she decided there are some things more important to her.”
Mia flopped down again, and for a few minutes, neither of them spoke.
“Which way do you think he’ll go?” she asked finally.
“I don’t know.” He had purposely not thought about this. He didn’t want to know. “Let’s just hope he goes far and fast.”
She fell quiet again, one finger idly tracing a pattern on the sofa cushion. “Someone else will figure it out, won’t they, someday?” she asked. “I mean, it’s going to catch up with him sooner or later.”
“Maybe not,” Chris said. “Maybe he’ll be lucky.”
He knew Mia was right, though; Jeff couldn’t run forever. But he wanted to hold onto the fantasy a while longer. It was fitting. With Jeff, the impossible had seemed possible. He’d nurtured the dreams of everyone he met. And when their lives had seemed irretrievably bleak and barren, he had given them hope. It would be his lasting gift to each of them. His lasting gift to Valle Rosa.
49
October
MIA HADN’T REALIZED how big a task it would be to clean out her desk. She shouldn’t have left it until her last day at work. Between the phone interruptions and educating Chris’s new office manager, Donna Caro, on the idiosyncracies of the fax machine, she would never get it done.
It was nearly noon when she started sorting through her file drawer. Donna and Chris were at lunch, and Mia was alone in the office when the phone rang for the twentieth time that morning. She groaned and picked it up.
“Mayor’s office,” she said.
For a moment, there was silence on the line. Then, a male voice asked, “Is the wood sprite out of her jar today?”
She caught her breath, then burst into tears. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m okay. I’m fine. Better than I have been in a long time.”
She wasn’t certain how to tell him that the phone might be tapped. She couldn’t bear the thought of him hanging up on her, abruptly, in fear. But she had to say something. “They might try to trace this call,” she said.
“Doesn’t matter,” he answered. “We’ll make it short. I can’t say too much, anyway. I’ve made a decision about what I have to do, and I feel good about it, but first I wanted to thank you for all you did for me.”
“All I did for you?” He had it completely reversed.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “You gave me back something I’d lost, Mia. Valle Rosa gave me something back. I felt worthwhile again. I helped a few people out of a mess.”
“You helped a lot of people who were on the brink of disaster,” she corrected him.
“Mmm,” he said, and she could hear his smile. “It’s still raining there, right?”
Mia glanced out the window at the chaparral flourishing on a distant hillside. “One day a week,” she said. “It’s perfect.”
He hesitated a moment, then said, “I’m not a total screw-up after all, I guess. I’m not totally inept.”
“Jeff…” She frowned. “Of course you’re not.”
“And I’m capable of loving someone. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do that again.”
She suddenly understood why he felt grateful to her. To Valle Rosa. She knew his past now. The time for hiding the truth—any and all truths—was over.
“Carmen had a videotape of the fire,” she said. “She showed it to Chris and me before she destroyed it. She destroyed all her tapes and notes about you.” All three of them had cried, watching the tape, Carmen most of all. That very evening, despite her refusal to share the rest of Jeff’s story with her audience, she had been asked to host Sunrise again. Not only did she turn down the offer, but she quit News Nine altogether. Having no idea what lay ahead, she’d been frightened that night. But new offers came pouring in the instant word was out that she was a free agent. She now had her own morning show—a very different sort of show—on a competing station.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Jeff said.
“I’m sorry, Jeff. I’m so sorry. Your children. I can’t imagine how—”
“Shh,” he said. “Don’t try.”
She chewed on her lower lip, wonderi
ng how much she should say over the phone. “At first I was hoping you’d come back,” she said, “that somehow you’d learn Carmen hadn’t revealed anything more about you on the news. Did you know that?”
“Yes. And I realize what a sacrifice she made for me.”
“Well, I was hoping you’d think it was safe. I wanted you to come back so badly, but I’m glad you didn’t. The FBI was here.”
“I’m not surprised. I knew they couldn’t be too far behind me.” He sighed. “Did they hound you?”
“I was glad I didn’t know where you were.” They had questioned her for two full days, and she’d been grateful to Jeff for telling her so little. She understood then why he hadn’t wanted Rick to know exactly what made the rain machine work. The agents were quick to realize that Rick genuinely had no idea what he was doing, and they left him alone.
“Today’s my last day as Chris’s office manager,” she said. “I sold a few pieces of my work after the Lesser Gallery show, and I can afford to sculpt full-time for a while.”
“Fantastic, Mia! Just don’t become more of a hermit than you already are,” he said. “And how’s the cat?”
“Fine. I named him Blackwell.”
He laughed. “That’s a pretty weird name for a cat.”
“Better than no name at all.” She ran her fingers over the files in her drawer. “Where are you, Jeff?” she asked. “I mean, where have you been? Can you say?”
“Wandering.” He sighed again. “Trying to savor my freedom, but freedom is not much fun by yourself.” A second or two of silence filled the line. “I miss you, Mia,” he said. “I love you. I wish—”
He suddenly fell quiet, and when he began speaking again, he sounded rushed. “I’ve got to get off now,” he said. “I’ll try to get in touch again, but I’m not sure what’s going to happen next.”
“Jeff, I—”
He was gone. She heard the click of the phone being hung up. After a few minutes of staring at the overcast sky out her window, she resumed sifting through her files, the emptiness building inside her once again.
50
November
CHRIS’S DESK WAS COVERED with papers. It was one week to the day since the mayoral election, and if life were predictable, he would be cleaning his office out for the arrival of Joyce DeLuis or John Burrows. Instead, he was working on legislation that would turn one of Valle Rosa’s old abandoned warehouses into a hiring hall for the workers who lived in the canyons. It was his top priority.
Sometime in October, he’d found himself waking up in the middle of the night with ideas—ideas that would solve some of Valle Rosa’s more pressing problems. Good ideas. He’d pull the notepad and pen from under his pillow and scribble his thoughts down in the dark. Always a light sleeper, Carmen would wake up, smiling from her side of the bed.
“What are you going to do with all these ideas, Chris?” she’d ask him. “No one’s going to pay much attention to your thoughts about how Valle Rosa should be run when you’re teaching high school again.”
He finally admitted to himself that he wasn’t ready to turn the reins of Valle Rosa over to someone else. By that time, however, it was too late for him to get on the ballot. It didn’t matter. Even as a write-in candidate, he won the election by a landslide.
Donna Caro, Chris’s new office manager, suddenly appeared at his door. “Turn on the radio!” she said. “Hurry!”
He hit the power switch on his desk radio, breaking in on the middle of a news report. “… and when Mr. Blackwell surrendered,” the newscaster was saying, “he stated that the first thing he wanted to do was get in touch with his stepfather, who is suffering from emphysema in a state prison in New Jersey.”
The newscaster moved on to another story, and Chris raised his eyes to Donna’s.
“He turned himself in?” he asked. But before she could answer, he was already reaching for the phone.
THERE WAS A FAX machine next to Carmen’s desk in her office. The machine was so ceaselessly productive that, in her month and a half at KBBA, she had learned to ignore it. It was clicking away as she slipped a script for tomorrow’s show into her briefcase, clicking away as she stood to put on her coat. She slipped the paper from the machine and was adding it to the mounting pile on her desk when her eyes were caught by the words at the top of the paragraph: JEFF CABRIO SURRENDERS.
Setting down her briefcase, she held the paper closer to the light. The words blurred on the page as she read them. She fumbled on the desk for her phone, but it was already ringing.
MIA’S TELEVISION WAS on. She knelt on her plastic-covered living room floor, about to tear a slab of clay from the mass in the bucket, when she heard his name. Leaning forward, she turned up the volume, not even bothering to wipe off her hands, and the black button glistened with the smear of clay from her fingertips. She sat back and listened, her hands slipping slowly over the slick, wet clay in the bucket, her eyes held in trance by Bill Jackson and his patent leather hair.
“Jeff Cabrio surrendered this morning to the Maryland police,” he said. “Cabrio—whose real name is Robert Blackwell—hadn’t been seen since leaving Valle Rosa in August, after having developed the rainmaking technology that saved that small town from a devastating drought.”
There was footage accompanying Bill Jackson’s report. Mia gasped when she saw Jeff, her hand flying to her throat. Two men led him to a car. His hands were cuffed. Her glimpse of his face was brief—just long enough to break her heart. He was gaunt. She glanced toward the bronze sculpture on her coffee table. Yes. He was much thinner now. Although Jeff wasn’t fighting, not resisting in any way, one of the men lowered his head rudely, roughly, to force him into the back seat of the car.
So this was what he had meant in his phone call, she thought, when he’d told her he’d made a decision.
Bill Jackson had long since finished discussing Jeff’s surrender by the time Mia turned off the television. For the first time, she wished she had a phone so she could call Chris or Carmen. It was nearly 5:30; Chris would be at his office for another hour or so. She could see him there. Putting on her jacket, she left the cottage.
Outside, the early dark of winter was already falling over Sugarbush. The cottage that had been Jeff’s stood empty on the rim of the canyon. Carmen seemed in no hurry to rent it, but lights burned in the third cottage, the one Chris had lived in before moving to the adobe. A Guatemalan couple and their baby lived there now, in exchange for working around Sugarbush. The rain had brought plenty of work with it. Wild mustard and other unwanted scrubby weeds had cropped up all over the property.
Mia reached the driveway and was opening her car door when Chris’s Oldsmobile pulled in, immediately followed by Carmen’s Volvo.
“Do you know about Jeff?” Chris asked as he got out of his car.
She nodded. “I was on my way to your office to tell you.”
“I’m glad we caught you, then,” Carmen said as she circled Mia’s car to stand next to her. “We were coming home to make sure you knew. You’ve got to get a phone, Mia.” Carmen suddenly frowned at her. Holding Mia by the shoulders, she turned her so that the patio light shone on her face. “Are you okay?” Carmen asked, and only then did Mia realize she was crying.
She nodded, wiping her hand across her wet cheek. Carmen wrapped her arms around her, easily, gently. It wasn’t the first time she’d hugged Mia—that had occurred after her appearance on Carmen’s morning show, when she and several other young women openly discussed their experiences with breast cancer. Carmen’s guests sometimes cried on this new show, but it was never because they’d been belittled or berated. Carmen’s bite had been tempered, her abrasiveness replaced by an empathy that seemed to come naturally to her. Her hug had comforted Mia then; it was even more of a comfort now.
“He looked so thin,” Mia said.
Carmen let go of her. “He’s going to be all right.”
“Come on, Mia, let’s go inside.” Chris walked toward the kitchen door.
“Carmen and I will tell you our plan.”
Inside the adobe, she and Carmen sat at the kitchen table while Chris brewed a pot of coffee.
“So, Mia.” He smiled as he got the mugs from the cupboard. “Are you up for a trip to Baltimore?”
She met his smile with a grin. “Yes!”
“Good. Because I took the liberty of booking the three of us on a flight tomorrow morning.”
“And…” Carmen leaned across the table toward Mia, “I spoke with Daniel Grace. He was the guy who was Jeff’s good friend when they were kids, remember?”
Mia nodded. “The attorney, right?”
“The criminal defense attorney,” Chris said, setting the full mugs on the table. He sat down next to Carmen.
“I told him the whole story,” Carmen continued. “He lives just outside of Baltimore, and he’s on his way to see Jeff tonight. He sounded very optimistic. And he’ll do what he can to get him out on bond.”
Mia pressed her fist to her mouth. She was going to get to see him, and not through a piece of glass in a cold prison visiting room. “He needs to see his father,” she said.
Chris nodded. “We’ll make sure he does.”
They sat for a while longer, talking, planning. Finally Chris looked at his watch. “We’d better start packing,” he said. “Flight’s at eight in the morning.”
MIA WISHED SHE COULD take the sculpture of Jeff with her. She had a photograph of it, but it didn’t capture the true-to-life expression present in the bronze sculpture itself. She hoped that pensive, hunted, resigned look was one he would never have to wear again.
Spreading her empty suitcase open on her bed, she began filling it, slowly, not certain how much to take, how long she would be gone. She packed two pairs of jeans, two sweaters, a dress. Two bras with their pockets for the prosthesis. Dr. Bella had told her she could have her reconstructive surgery any time she liked, but she no longer felt the rush. You’re alive now, Jeff had told her, and she knew he’d been right.
Fire and Rain Page 37
