A Time to Mend (27 page)

They reached an outer circle of firefighters. What Max could see beyond them were more, in full gear, talking on radios.

“Press is over there.” One of the men turned to them and gestured toward their left.

Max looked and saw a gaggle of people calling out questions to a spokesperson. Cameras flashed.

Erik said, “I’m with the press, but that’s not what I want. We have to get to the Hacienda Hideaway.”

“Sorry. No can do.”

“Our mom’s there. Our—”

“Sorry. Now I have to ask you to leave this area. Either join the press or head back down the hill.”

Max shoved his way between Danny and Erik. “Look. My wife is up there. My daughter. My parents. I am not going anywhere except up that hill. The Hideaway is southeast of Santa Reina.”

“We know that, sir.”

“Then let me—”

“They probably have gotten out by now. Go home where they can find you.”

“Probably?” Max heard his voice rise. “Probably? That is not an acceptable answer. We’re going through.”

“Sir, there’s no way to get through.”

“You’re nuts!” he yelled. “Traffic’s pouring out of town!”

“I’m not talking about the town. Please, sir, just step aside.”

Another fireman approached, older, an obvious superior. “Is there a problem here?”

“His family was at the Hacienda Hideaway.”

The older man said to Max, “When?”

“Tonight! What do you mean, ‘when’?”

“What time exactly?”

“I don’t know!”

“Dad,” Danny said, “you talked to Mom around eight thirty.”

Max wheeled back toward the new spokesman. “What does the time matter? I don’t know where she is! I have to find her!”

“You can’t.”

“You can’t keep me from—”

“I mean you can’t. It’s not possible to—”

“I will go there!” He was in the man’s face now. “It’s my parents’ house! It’s our property.”

“Okay.” The fireman glanced at the younger one. “Show him.” He walked away.

“Show me what?” he yelled after him.

The kid touched Max’s shoulder. “Sir?”

Even in his frazzled state, Max noted the pained expression on his face.

“Follow me.”

He followed, Danny and Erik with him. They took a circuitous route between trucks and ambulances and firefighting personnel. At last they emerged in a clearing.

It was the lookout point that drew in camera-toting travelers . . . the place where Claire and the kids had grinned for a Christmas card photo that didn’t include him . . . the place he and his high school buddies had downed their six-packs while he cursed the hacienda that lay somewhere out there in the distant hills. He cursed it because it symbolized all that was not his: his brother’s charmed life and his parents’ acceptance.

And now as he gazed out on that scene, the horror of his curses descended upon him with a vengeance, and he roared with the agony.

The entire central portion of those distant hills and the mountains beyond them—the exact area that enclosed the hacienda—was ablaze with fire. All of it.
All of it!

Max flung himself around and began running. He had to get to his car. He had to get to Claire, to his family. Now!

It took Danny and Erik and the fireman to hold him back.

Sixty-two

C
laire shivered mere inches from Eddie. She wanted to curl up in the shelter of his arms again. But the terror had faded, and he was, after all, a stranger.

They all sat in a shadowy chamber of the mine. Hewn out of rock, it was clammy. But at least it wasn’t as tight as the first tunnel. Its ceiling was higher than the first opening they’d stopped in, that place where she had screamed.

The image floated through her mind again, the one that had set off the uncontrollable shrieking.

She was a little girl. She crouched on a dirt floor in a root cellar, a small room for storing vegetables in the basement. A bulb hung on a stringy cord from the low ceiling, but a three-year-old couldn’t reach it.

Until now. Somehow the screams had split open the long-buried memory. Somehow Indio’s prayers loosened the grief she had never vented.

“You okay?” Eddie asked.

She nodded. “A little shaky.” Her smile failed.

He smiled for her.

They sat on his turnout coat, a barrier between them and the dank rock and dirt floor. To reach this spot, they’d traversed a steep descent, her hand on his arm.

This irregular-shaped area was the end of the line, so to speak. A pile of rock from floor to ceiling covered much of it. Ben guessed it was the collapsed wall that had killed his great-great-grandfather. Claire wondered if the crushed bones had turned to dust yet.

Lexi had grown quiet, as if her bravado dwindled through that second tunnel. She led them but talked less, except in quiet tones to Zak. Once they’d reached this spot, she didn’t move from his side. They sat close together on his coat with the cat. Claire imagined that her daughter felt like she did: safe next to the professional.

The third fireman, Chad, watched over Ben and Indio and wrestled playfully with Samson. Her in-laws huddled under a blanket, one of three they’d managed to bring along with the lanterns and knapsacks. Lexi and Claire were wrapped in the other two.

Claire felt a rush of gratitude for their rescuers. They kept putting her family first before their own needs. In spite of their outer garb, helmets, and air tanks, they’d toted the blankets and knapsacks stuffed with water bottles, crackers, apples, and chocolate.

“You’re cold,” Eddie said.

“A little.” The blanket, T-shirt, and flannel-lined denim jacket were not quite enough to keep her warm in this hole in the ground. “You must be freezing.”

He shook his head but rubbed his arms. His light blue shirt had short sleeves. “It was a hundred and five degrees this afternoon.”

“Take my blanket.”

“No. Thanks.”

“We could share it.”

“I’m fine.”

She couldn’t decipher the color of his eyes. They were light. Maybe blue? His face was narrow and youthful, but crow’s-feet and a distinct air of maturity suggested he was at least her age. His hair, matted down from the helmet, was brown.

“Eddie,” she said quietly, “are we going to make it?”

“Yes.”

“Can we stop with the official version? I promise not to lose it again.” It wasn’t the threat of death that had pushed her over the edge.

“I have no idea.” He studied her face for long seconds. “Doing okay?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Truth is, this is a first for me, hiding out in a gold mine with not all that much distance between me and a firestorm burning out of control with absolutely no hope of containment in the next few hours. If the fire or heat doesn’t drift toward the opening and catch the wood framework in the tunnel and beyond, yes, we’ll make it. If the smoke doesn’t settle in here, yes, we’ll make it.”

Her breath caught. “I really don’t want to die right now.”

“Me neither.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Yeah. You heard the noise when we entered the second tunnel?”

She stared at him. It had been a horrendous roar.

“The fire has reached the path we hiked in on. The temperature up there would melt— I mean, it’s unbelievably hot. We’ve got about five minutes of air left in our tanks. The lantern batteries won’t last forever.”

“Okay.” She blew out a breath. “Let’s go back to the official rah-rah version.”

He smiled. “Zak and Chad stacked the rocks over the opening, sealing it as much as possible. And we are alive.”

She nodded. “What I screamed about back there, it had nothing to do with the fire.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She glanced at the others. They were all conversing in low tones. Perhaps Indio and Lexi didn’t need to hear her story yet. Telling a stranger first might be easier.

She turned to Eddie. “The thought of unloading sounds good. You sure you don’t mind?”

“Why would I mind?”

“It’s ugly and personal, and you don’t know me.”

“It’s kind of hard to shock a paramedic-firefighter. I’ve more or less seen it all.”

“What do you do with ‘it all’?”

“I run several miles a day when I’m not on duty. Eventually ‘it all’ turns into a determination to help, to do more, to do better.” He shrugged. “Then I go back to work.”

Gratitude flowed through her again. “Thank you for taking care of me.”

“You’re very welcome.” There was a sparkle in his eyes. “You’re . . . pleasant to take care of. And now I’ve stepped over a line. Ooh-boy. I apologize. That wasn’t a come-on.”

She smiled. “I like the thought of being pleasant. I accept that as a compliment.”

“Okay.” He grinned. “So tell me what happened back there. Are you claustrophobic?”

“I didn’t think I was.” She thought back to their first flight from the house, driving her car behind Lexi, finding their way blocked. “When we met up with you, I was so scared I couldn’t think straight. My husband grew up here, at the Hacienda. I knew without a doubt there was no other way out. It’s so remote that Ben and Indio had to get special insurance through the state. No private company would cover them.”

“No wonder you were scared.”

She pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around them, clutching her elbows. “Later, when we were hiking to the mine, I felt like something was chasing me. I think it was more than the fire. I think it was a memory. I started crawling through that tunnel, and then it was like it caught me.”

“You started screaming.”

She nodded. “I saw myself— No, it was more than seeing. I
was
a little girl again, trapped in a basement. I know it was a real memory even though I can’t remember ever thinking about it before tonight. I must have been three. My mother locked me in a root cellar with no light on. My dad let me out after what seemed like hours and hours. My voice was gone, I’d screamed so much. I don’t remember being comforted. My dad yelled at my mom, and he hit her. She kept say-ing it was an accident. My brother was a baby. I think I just got in the way, and she didn’t know what else to do with me. She wasn’t a well person.”

“Claire, I’m sorry.”

“Did you hear Indio praying? She said Jesus was there with me when it happened. I know she believes God is always with us, past, present, future. She says He’s in every breath we breathe. I wish I had her faith. I wish I believed I wasn’t alone, then or now.”

“Hmm.”

She noticed his wide eyes. “I thought you said nothing could shock you.”

“I admit, this is throwing me for a loop. You’re supposed to be on a couch, reliving such stuff with a psychologist, not running from a fire and diving into a gold mine to save your life.”

“As my mother-in-law would say, God works in mysterious ways.”

“What do you think it all means?”

“I don’t know. An old pain has been dislodged. It’s like so much of my life recently. I’m tired of pretending things don’t hurt. I’m tired of acting like I’ve got it all together. Of giving the impression that I feel safe and secure. I guess it wasn’t just my marriage.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know exactly what to do with these hurts. I think it’s all a process. More painful than I could have imagined, but good has come from it already. I’ve started to ‘find myself,’ pathetic as that sounds for a fifty-three-year-old to say. Which is why I really don’t want to die right now.”

One of the lanterns went out, throwing a new shadow across the dusky room.

Claire jumped. The murmured conversations stopped. Eddie reached for her hand.

She clasped his and scooted nearer to the stranger who offered more safety than she’d ever known before in her life.

Sixty-three

M
ax shivered in the backseat of his car, under a blanket someone had draped around him. The engine was on, the heater blowing full blast. Danny and Erik sat up front. They wouldn’t let him near the key or gas pedal.

“I should have been there,” he murmured, half to himself.

The car was parked on the road’s shoulder. They weren’t going anywhere. Uphill was fire. Downhill was abandonment of the woman he’d abandoned every which way for the past thirty-three years. He would die before going downhill.

“I should have been there.”

In the distance, reporters still waited for news; emergency workers still commanded firefighting efforts and waited to go in and rescue people. Mercifully, the Kodak-moment view remained hidden from his sight.

But he knew it was there—the blazing hillside, the canyons, the mountaintops . . . with his child, his parents, and Claire somewhere in the middle of all those flames.

“I should have been there.” His voice choked.

“Dad.” Erik sighed. “Please stop saying that. We all should have been there. We all know Papa gets the heebie-jeebies if there’s a fire anywhere in four counties. We all know he and Nana need extra help around the place on a good day.”

Danny said, “Leave it to Mom and Lexi to jump in while we sat back and twiddled our thumbs. At least Jenna hadn’t gone up yet. Did you know she was going? Soon as school was out, but there was some special faculty meeting that kept her late. Then Mom told her not to come. If anyone could talk Papa into leaving the horses, it was Nana, and they didn’t need another car up there.”

Max said, “I didn’t know any of that.”

His sons exchanged a look.

“You’re right,” he declared loudly. “You are absolutely right.”

They turned to face him.

“That I don’t know jack. But I’ll tell you one thing I do know. I am not going to let your mother go. She’s the most important thing that ever happened to me, and I swear I will not let her go. Do you hear me?”

Danny reached over the back of the seat and grasped his knee. “We hear you. Just relax, Dad, okay? We can’t do anything right now except wait.”

There was a tapping on Erik’s window. He slid it down. “Hi.”

“Hi.” It was the fireman, the young one, checking on them again, as if they were his special assignment or something.

Max figured it for one of two reasons: either Erik’s semifamous television status . . . or the fact that their situation was hopeless. Or maybe it was both. When this was over, the world would know the Beaumonts had lost half their family along with the old homestead, and—just imagine—the good-looking talking head could describe how great these guys were.