Fire and Rain (47 page)

“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.

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.

Where had he been these past few months? Wandering, he’d said on the phone. Had he stayed in one place long enough to develop any friendships—any ties with other people, other women? She hoped he hadn’t been alone, but she stopped short of hoping that he’d loved anyone as deeply as she knew he loved her. Or that some other woman was packing to be with him right now—packing and planning to bring him comfort and strength.

She studied the pictures on her bulletin board, then began plucking some of them from the cork to take with her. First, the fountain, which stood now in the park—newly named Cabrio Park—next to Chris’s office. Chris had installed the plumbing system necessary to turn her design into a functioning fountain, and the dedication ceremony last week had drawn a spectacularly huge, spectacularly happy crowd.

She slipped a few recent pictures of Blackwell into the suitcase, but she didn’t pack the pictures she’d taken of the federal agents as they snooped around the warehouse, as they studied the rain machine. They hadn’t dared to touch the equipment, however, as if they knew that despite its solid look and flawless operation, an inexperienced, incautious touch could destroy it all too easily.

Jeff had been no different from the rest of them, she thought, as she closed the flap on the suitcase. No different from Chris or Carmen or herself. She had come to think of herself as something of a freak, much the same way that Chris had seen I himself as useless without a ball and glove, and Carmen had perceived the softness in herself as a failing. All of their self-images had been based on a twisted reality conjured up out of hurt and insecurity, out of the damage they’d suffered. And Jeff had been no different. But he knew better now, as they all did. His phone call had told her that. Whatever lessons they’d learned from him, he’d taught himself as well.

She imagined seeing him, holding him, sleeping with him. She should not allow her optimism such free reign. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to help him at all.

We’ll do our best
, Chris had said as she’d left the adobe.
We’ll pay him back in whatever way we can.

She was ready to zip the suitcase closed when she remembered one last thing she needed to pack. Opening her top dresser drawer, she dug to the bottom of the stack of underwear and nightshirts and pulled out the green satin chemise. Folding it carefully, she rested it on the other clothes in the suitcase, hoping she would have the chance to show Jeff that she was, indeed, very much alive.

I grew up on the east coast of the United States—which is where I still live—but for a twelve year period, I was a Californian through and through. I lived in San Diego, where I received my bachelor’s and master’s degrees, worked as a clinical social worker, and started my writing career. I adored California, but the east coast was always calling me home. The wonderful thing about writing is that you can live in one place and
almost
live in another by setting a book there. The setting for
Fire and Rain
was borne of a bout of California homesickness.

You can’t live in the southern part of California for long without experiencing drought and fire. I recall waking up some mornings with my house surrounded by red air and ash falling from the sky like snow. Remembering those mornings, I decided that drought and fire would form the backdrop for my story. Research for
Fire and Rain
began with a trip to San Diego County, of course! I stayed with my best friend, Cher, and we walked her property while I took notes about the flora she described and drank in the dry heat I’d nearly forgotten about during my years In Virginia, where I was living at the time.

I decided to focus the story on a man who had the ability to save the town, but who also had secrets to protect. To heighten the conflict, I brought in Carmen, a woman who was losing a career that could only be saved if she uncovered those secrets. Mia and Chris, with the difficult turns their lives had taken, added complications of their own.

Every writer finds herself visiting the same themes over and over again, whether she means to or not. I’m no exception. My stories tend to deal with forgiveness and sacrifice, often among people I’ve thrown together in tight quarters.
Fire and Rain
certainly covers all those bases. By creating Carmen’s house and her three small rental cottages, I forced four people, all of whom had their own reasons for wanting to be alone, to interact with one another. They hid their secrets, nursed their wounds, and fell in love. They forgave and they sacrificed. Carmen, for example, learned to forgive Chris and ultimately sacrificed her own career goals for the sake of Jeff’s welfare. There are other examples where these themes played out in the story, but I won’t go into them here. Instead, I’ll tell you more about the research that went into the story.