Chapter Three
THE
SEATTLE TIMES
SPELLED HIS NAME WRONG.
It was a tiny item anyway, a paltry paper headstone. Brian “Theale,” 34, a first-year smoke jumper based in Ketchum, had died Saturday while parachuting to the Boot Creek fire in the Frank Church Wilderness of central Idaho. Details as yet unknown. No other firefighters injured. The fire was now contained. End of story.
Wildland fires are usually named for the nearest landmark, however big or small; I’d never heard of Boot Creek. Tomorrow’s paper might bring more details, perhaps a map with a little flame symbol to mark the accident site. Or a blurred snapshot of my cousin’s face with a quote from someone or other about how he had died doing what he loved. More likely, the story would be crowded off the page by some new tragedy somewhere else.
I gazed down from my window seat to where the huge snowy island of Mount Rainier shouldered up from a dark green sea of foothills. Plenty of sunshine up here, in the high, wide afternoon. Plenty of time to think.
So I thought about my feelings for Brian Thiel, and found them wanting. I was sorry he had died, of course, but in a distant, abstract way. What I was really feeling, more than any sense of grief or loss over Brian, was curiosity about B.J. Why was she so upset about this? She’d hung up the phone as soon as I agreed to come, saying she’d explain it all in person.
Well, I’d have the answers soon enough. I read the rest of the paper, just to pass the hour-long flight. The plane droned along above endless wooded slopes, and I didn’t glance up again until I heard another passenger’s voice.
“Look!”
We all looked. The limpid summer sky was empty of even the smallest cloud. But up ahead of us, huge and alarmingly solid-looking, towered an immense column of smoke. The crown was shaped like a giant cauliflower, the edges of its blinding white billows etched sharply against the sapphire blue. But down below, the column darkened to yellow-gray and smudgy brown.
Forest fire.
As we flew closer, I craned my head to peer down at the base of the column. It formed a dirty gray curtain that followed the rise and fall of the folded land, thinning to a mere veil in some spots, thick and opaque in others, hiding the trees as it consumed them. A ragged line of orange flame crept along one ridge, and helicopters drifted in and out of the smoke like fat black dragonflies.
From my window seat the silent spectacle was fascinating, even beautiful. But down there, in the searing heat and thunderous roar and stinging fumes, crews of people would be working harder than I’d ever worked in my life to try and tame the inferno. This wasn’t Brian’s fire, but his death made me look at it with new eyes.
And the sight of the fire certainly gave me a different perspective on Brian himself. So what if I remembered him as a childhood bully, or a swaggering adolescent? My cousin had been doing something brave and fine with his life, and now that life was over. Who was I to criticize him?
But moments of insight, however high-minded, are only moments. As the plane slanted toward Boise, the fir-covered mountains gave way to parched brown hills and irrigated river valleys, the smoke tower passed out of sight behind us, and I gazed eagerly down at my hometown.
Boise, Idaho, was once the reverse of Manhattan: a great place to live, but you wouldn’t especially want to visit there. These days, though, the city boasted better restaurants and bigger concerts and fancier lifts at the Bogus Basin ski area, only fifteen miles away. Best of all, at least to me, June in Boise looked exactly like June should, as burstingly green and blazingly bright as all the summers of my childhood.
There were changes each time I came home, a new building here, a rerouted street there. But the hills of the Boise Front still defended the north edge of town, tawny hills like the flanks of lions. And closer in, along the bike lanes of the Boise River Greenbelt and the quiet neighborhood streets, the fine old silver maples and prospector elms and broad-limbed sycamores would still be casting their pools of deep, warm, murmuring shade. I love Seattle, but it’s always nice to go home.
Not that I’d be in Boise all that long. Mom had offered to meet me at the airport, just to say hello, and we’d visit some more in Ketchum during the wedding weekend. I thought I might stay over in Boise for a few days afterward, too. Eddie didn’t need me to rush back, and the way Aaron was acting lately, it might be time to deprive him of my delightful company for a while. Maybe absence would make the guy grow fonder.
We landed with a bump and a whine in the bare, empty stretch of land south of Boise. Seattle doesn’t have a bare empty inch. As the seat-belt sign blinked off, I checked my watch: four-thirty. Plenty of time to drive to Ketchum, pick B.J. up at work, and take her out for dinner and drinks. Dinner optional.
The covered jetway was air-conditioned, but just stepping onto it from the door of the plane, I could feel the hot high-desert air stealing in from outside, with that peculiar and enlivening quality that tells you you’re not at sea level anymore. It felt odd yet familiar, and I knew that after being here, my first breath of Seattle air would taste damp and heavy.
At the security gate, I scanned the waiting crowd for a familiar face.
“Carrie, over here!”
“Mom?”
I set down my tote bag to embrace her, then leaned back to stare. Tall and trim, she wore a leaf-green linen dress I’d never seen before, as well as mascara and a touch of perfume. All three were unusual for my mother, but the real shocker was her hair. Short and chic, it framed her long, strong, suntanned face in curving silver feathers.
“What have you done with my mother?”
She smiled demurely and gave me both profiles. “Do you like it, really? I got so tired of all the perming and the coloring and the fussing, I thought, what the hell!”
I laughed aloud. Coming from Louise Kincaid, this was daring language indeed.
“It looks terrific, Mom. You’re right, what the hell!”
“Don’t you dare tell Timmy, though. I want to surprise him.” My younger brother had been called Timmy as a child. Now, married and with a child of his own, he was still Timmy to me.
“My lips are utterly sealed.”
Then we both stopped laughing, struck by the guilty realization that our first words should have been about Brian. We spoke at once.
“I was so sorry to hear—”
“It’s terrible, such a nice—”
We fell silent and hugged again, holding on to our own bond at the news of our relatives’ loss.
“Do you know how it happened?” I asked, but Mom shook her head.
“Only that it was an accident. I called his parents in Chicago, of course, but they didn’t have the details yet and I hated to pester them.” She sighed. “The funeral will be out there, but I didn’t offer to attend. Is that awful of me? Last-minute plane fares are so expensive, and I haven’t seen anyone on that side of the family in so long, I’d feel like a bit of a hypocrite.”
“I’m sure they understand, Mom.”
“I hope so. Well, shall we have coffee here before you go? I need to perk up for my tennis tournament, and I don’t want you getting drowsy on your drive. You look so tired, dear. Are you getting enough sleep?”
“I’m fine, Mom.” As we walked, I took in the wide hallways and the artful tile work of the new terminal. Boise was coming up in the world. “I’m just fine.”
“What a shame Aaron couldn’t come and share the driving with you. He’s never seen your hometown.”
“It’s only a two-hour drive, Mom. And Aaron isn’t self-employed like I am. He couldn’t take the time off.”
“Mmm.”
I knew that
Mmm.
“Look, I’m fine, and Aaron will come another time. Could we drop it?”
“Irritability is a sign of sleep deprivation, you know. Let’s get you your coffee. We’d better fetch your bag first, though, you can never tell who’s lurking around. Not that we have anything like the crime rate of Seattle. I saw on the news just last night—”
“Mom, I’ve been meaning to ask,” I countered, fending off our umpteenth conversation about why I should move back to Idaho. “Should you be playing tennis with your arthritis?”
“Don’t be silly, dear! Everyone says that exercise is the best thing you can do. Is that yours? You didn’t pack very light, did you?”
“Sure I did. Sort of.” I yanked my suitcase off the conveyor belt. At the last minute I’d thrown in all my cosmetics and this heavenly little turquoise dress I’d bought in Miami Beach. You never know. “So what’s this tournament?”
“Just a little seniors competition. Imagine me being a senior! But it’s sixty and over, so I qualify.” As we rode the escalator to the airport’s coffee shop, she put a hand on my arm. “Give B.J. my best, won’t you? Cissy told me that she was a friend of Brian’s.”
“I will. And you’ll probably see her yourself at the wedding.”
At the café we took a booth and ordered, coffee for Mom, coffee and pastry for me. Then I clenched my teeth and swore not to comment on what was bound to happen next. Sure enough, my darling mother, normal enough in most respects, dived into her oversized purse and pulled out a big fat plastic jar of Folger’s Crystals.
Our server, a young Hispanic woman, set down two steaming cups and stared. “I thought you wanted coffee. Is there something wrong?”
“Not at all, dear,” said Mom, blithely unscrewing the jar. “No one ever makes it strong enough, that’s all. Would you care for some, Carrie? No, you never do...”
As she stirred spoon after spoon of brown powder into her coffee, I smiled tightly at the retreating waitress and bit into my scone. Ah, airport food. So bland and yet so stale.
Mom took a healthy swallow and sighed. “We should be talking about poor Brian, but I don’t know what to say. I’ve hardly set eyes on him since he was a child.” Another swallow. “He was a difficult child.”
“Difficult! Mom, when he was nine he sat on me and tried to set my hair on fire.”
“That’s right, he did.” She chuckled. “But after all, you did burn all his baseball cards. Goodness, you smelled awful!”
That’s the great thing about my mother, she’s always ready to laugh. I am, too, and so we did. That changed the mood, and she changed the subject.
“Carrie, I have a wonderful surprise for you. I’ve been talking to Cissy, and we’ve had the best idea.”
“Oh?” I said warily. Cissy Kane meant well, but ideas were not her strong suit. Shopping and dithering were her strong suit.
“Cissy’s been all in a tizzy—you know how she gets—because the wedding planner that Tracy hired can’t be there in person after all. Something about an emergency with some other bride, but I don’t think that’s fair, do you? They sent a substitute, a junior person from New York City, but Cissy and Tracy simply despised the woman right from the start for being so bossy. You’re not bossy with your clients, are you, dear?”
“Mom, what’s this about?”
“Well, Tracy is off visiting friends in Portland, trying to relax before the wedding, but when I told Cissy you were coming to Ketchum, we thought of the perfect solution!”
I set down the scone. “Please don’t tell me you volunteered my services.”
“You guessed!” She beamed at me and sipped some more of her mud. “Honestly, I don’t know why Tracy didn’t ask you in the first place—”
I was already shaking my head. “That was her choice, Mom, and I can’t possibly interfere with it. And anyway, I’m here to take care of B.J., not to work. No way. No.”
What part of “No” does my mother not understand? When she wants something, the whole part. She smiled blandly.
“You’re just like your father sometimes. So excitable! You won’t be working, you’ll be helping out a friend in need. Tracy will be so pleased when she hears about it. Cissy’s expecting a call from her this afternoon, so by the time you get there—”
“Mom, you set this up without even knowing what I’d say?”
She blinked. Her eyes, like mine, were an undecided hazel, somewhere between brown and green, and just now they looked puzzled and a little hurt.
“But what is there to say? You and Tracy were so close, and here she’s having a problem with her wedding and you’re an expert at weddings. And you’ll be there anyway. You wouldn’t stand by and refuse to help her, would you? Not even talk to her about it?”
“Well, of course I’ll talk to her, but I’m not going to muscle in on someone else’s contract and—”
Mom beamed and reached for her bag. “I’m sure you won’t need a contract, dear, not between friends...”
Famous last words,
I thought with a silent groan.
“...though Cissy might give you a little something in cash, just for old times’ sake. Isn’t that sweet of her? Now, I really have to rush. It takes forever to walk to the parking garage. The old airport was so nice and small....”
As I walked Mom to her car, I kept protesting and she kept beaming. Then, while she fumbled in her purse for the parking-garage receipt, she played her trump card.
“You know, Carrie, your father always said that you can judge a man by the way he stands by his friends, and of course he meant a woman, too. Isn’t Tracy your friend? Here’s that silly ticket, right at the bottom. I’m parked down this way....”
Trailing along behind her, thinking about Dad, I caved.
“All right, all right. I’ll talk to this New York person and offer my assistance. But tactfully! If she doesn’t want me around, I’m not going to push it, OK? And cash under the table from Cissy is completely out of the—what on
earth
?”
For as long as I could remember, my mother had favored medium-brown hair and medium-blue sedans. These were fixed points in my universe. But now this snazzy silvercoiffed woman led me up to a spanking new PT Cruiser in the most astonishing color, a sort of pale fluorescent orange. It was stubby and shiny and adorable, like a cartoon character. Ollie the Orange Automobile or Connie the Coral Car. All it needed was a theme song.
I circled the car with my mouth open. It was Mom’s, all right: a decal from North Junior High adorned the rear window, and the bumper bore a sticker that said “Teachers Rule!” Mrs. Kincaid was everyone’s favorite English teacher.