“Oh.” Not enough long enough, Rowan thought, and felt a pang of sympathy. “That’s great for your family, Matt. Really. It’s got to be awfully rough on Mrs. Brakeman.”
“Yeah, and I’m sorry for her. She’s a good woman. I guess she proved it by doing this, thinking of Shiloh first. They’re going to spend a couple days, you know, give everybody a chance to adjust and all that. I figured I could help out. Shiloh knows me, so that should make it easier. It’s like I’m standing in for Jim.”
“I guess it is. It’s a lot, for everybody.”
“The way Brakeman ran?” The light in his face died into something dark. “He’s a coward. He doesn’t deserve to even see that baby again, if you ask me. Mrs. Brakeman’s probably going to lose her house because of him.”
“It doesn’t seem right,” Rowan agreed, “for one person to lose so much.”
“She could move to Nebraska if she wanted, and be closer to Shiloh. She ought to, and I hope she does. I don’t see how there’s anything here for her now anyway. She oughta go on and move to Nebraska so the baby has both her grans. Anyway, I’ve got to go call my folks, let them know I got the time off.”
One family’s tragedy, another family’s celebration, Rowan supposed as Matt rushed off. The world could be a harsh place. She gave L.B.’s door a tap, poked her head in.
“Got another minute for somebody looking for time off?”
“Jesus, maybe we should just blow and piss on the next fire.”
“An interesting new strategy, but I’m only looking for a few hours.”
“When?”
“Pretty much now. I wanted to hook up with my father.”
“Suddenly everybody wants family reunions.” Then he shrugged. “A night off’s okay. We’ve got smoke over in Payette, and up in Alaska. The Denali area’s getting hammered with dry lightning. Yellowstone’s on first attack on another. You should count on jumping tomorrow.”
“I’ll be ready.” She started to back out before he changed his mind, then hesitated. “I guess Matt told you why he wanted the time.”
“Yeah.” L.B. rubbed his eyes. “It’s hard to know what to think. I guess it’s the best thing when it comes down to it, but it sure feels like kicking a woman in the teeth when she’s already taken a couple hard shots in the gut.”
“Still no word on Leo?”
“Nothing, as far as I know. Fucker. It makes me sick he could do all this. I went hunting with the bastard, even went on a big trip up to Canada with him and some other guys once.”
“Did you tell the cops all the places you knew he liked to go?”
“Every one, and I didn’t feel a single pang of guilt. Fucker,” he repeated, with relish. “Irene’s a decent woman. She doesn’t deserve this. You’d better go while the going’s good. If we get a call from Alaska, we’ll be rolling tonight.”
“I’m already gone.” As she left, Rowan pulled out her phone and opted to text, hoping that would make her plans a fait accompli.
Got a couple hours. Meet you at the house. I’m cooking! Really want to talk to you.
Now she had to hope he had something in the house she could actually cook. She stopped by the barracks, grabbed her keys, then stepped into the open doorway of Gull’s quarters.
“I cleared a few hours so I can go over and see my father.”
Gull shifted his laptop aside. “Okay.”
“There are some things I want to air out with him. One-on-one.” She jingled her car keys. “We’ve got potential situations out in Yellowstone, down in Wyoming, up in Alaska. We could be up before morning. I won’t be gone very long.”
“Are you waiting to see if I’m going to complain because you’re going off base without me?”
“Maybe I was wondering if you would.”
“I’m not built that way. Just FYI, I wouldn’t mind maybe having dinner with you and your father sometime, maybe when things slow down.”
“So noted. See you when I get back.” She jingled her keys again. “Hey, I just remembered, my car’s low on gas. Maybe I can borrow yours?”
“You know where the base pumps are.”
“Had to try.”
She’d talk him into letting her drive it before the end of the season, she promised herself as she headed out to her much less sexy Dodge. She just had to outline the right attack plan.
The minute she drove off the base, something shifted inside her. As much as she loved what she did, she felt just a bit lighter driving down the open road. Alone, away from the pressure, the intensity, the dramas, even the interaction.
Maybe, for the moment, she realized, especially the interaction. A little time to reconnect with Rowan, she thought, then in turn for Rowan to reconnect with her father.
She could admit to the contrary aspect of the feeling. If L.B. had insisted she take time off, had pulled her off the jump list, she’d have fought him tooth and nail. Asking for the little crack in the window was more a little gift to herself, and one where she chose the wrapping and the contents.
Maybe, too, it hit just close enough to the camping trips her father had always carved out during the season—this one evening together, her making dinner in the house they shared half the year. Just the two of them, sitting at the table with some decent grub and some good conversation.
Too much had happened, too many things that kept running around inside her head. So much of the summer boomeranged on her, making her think of her mother, and all those hard feelings. She’d shaken off most of them, but there remained a thin and sticky layer she’d never been able to peel away.
She liked to think that layer helped make her tougher, stronger—and she believed it—but she’d started to wonder if it had hardened into a shield as well.
Did she use it as an excuse, an escape? If she did, was that smart, or just stupid?
Something to think about in this short time alone, and again in the company of the single person in the world who knew her through and through, and loved her anyway.
When she pulled up in front of the house, the simple white two-story with the wide covered porch—the porch she’d helped her father build when she was fourteen—she just sat and stared.
The slope of lawn showed the brittleness of the dry summer, even in the patches of shade from the big, old maple on the east corner.
But skirting that porch, on either side of the short steps, an area of flowers sprang out of a deep brown blanket of mulch. Baskets hung from decorative brackets off the flanking posts and spilled out a tangle of red and white flowers and green trailing vines.
“I’m looking at it,” she said aloud as she got out of the car, “but I still can’t quite believe it.”
She remembered summers during her youth when her grandmother had done pots and planters, and even dug in a little vegetable garden in the back. How she’d cursed the deer and rabbits for mowing them down, every single season.
She remembered, too, her father’s rep for killing even the hardiest of houseplants. Now he’d planted—she didn’t know what half of them were, but the beds hit hot, rich notes with a lot of deep reds and purples, with some white accents.
And she had to admit they added a nice touch, just as she had to admit the creativity of the layout hadn’t come from the nongardening brain of Iron Man Tripp.
She mulled it over as she let herself into the house.
Here, too, the difference struck.
Flowers? Since when did her father have flowers sitting around the house? And candles—fat white columns that smelled, when she sniffed them, faintly of vanilla. Plus, he’d gotten a new rug in the living room, a pattern of bold-colored blocks that spread over a floor that had certainly been polished. And looked pretty good, she had to admit, but still...
Hands on hips, she did a turn around the living room until her jaw nearly landed on her toes. Glossy
