Take a Chance on Me (23 page)

Grace. He wasn’t exactly sure what that looked like. As for wholeness . . . he would settle for peace. The kind that allowed him to sleep through the night and look at himself in the mirror in the morning.

“I don’t think there’s any grace for me.” He took a breath. Might as well tell her the truth. “I’m so angry all the time, Claire. And not just at Darek or Deep Haven, but myself. I can’t figure out how to live with what happened. And I feel worse with every hour of service I put in. Like that will bring Felicity back. It’s such a farce. Then I start arguing with myself that it wasn’t my fault, and then . . . then the anger sets in. It’s a cycle I can’t break.”

She stared into the darkness. “You start to see the things you
should have done. The ways you should have been more careful. Locked the door. Screamed.”

“Not checked the radio, or maybe gone slower around that turn.”

“Keep reliving the moment when you turned around, and they were right there.”

“When you heard her scream, the sickening thud.”

“When the world started to move in slow motion.”

“And stopped.”

She closed her eyes. “And stopped.”

God isn’t kind.
He heard her words, a soft echo inside. Felt them, like a dagger in his soul. No wonder he was angry all the time.

At the touch of Claire’s hand on his, he opened his palm. Folded her fingers into his.

I love you, Claire.

The thought stilled him, froze his breath in his chest.

But with her standing there, the wind stirring up the dark hair around her face, the past seemed so close, so . . . redeemable.

“Thank you for being my friend today.” Oh, how lame. But what else was he supposed to say?
I’ve been in love with you since you moved to Deep Haven but I was too scared to tell you? Instead, I dated—even fell in love with—your best friend?

What a fool he’d been, and he’d known it even then. But being in love with Claire was a little like being in love with a saint. Just a little unseemly. Because then she’d see him, know him . . . and of course there was Felicity. It was easier, somehow, to flirt with her, tease her back. Mostly because Felicity’s rejection wouldn’t have torn him apart.

Because he hadn’t really loved her. Not the way he loved Claire. And in fact, he had a terrible suspicion that he’d always been a tool for Felicity to get who she really wanted—Darek.

All the same, his words to Claire felt a little like he’d taken a piece of his heart and pinned it to the outside of his body.
Thank you. For being my friend.

She shivered as a sudden gust of wind shook the trees.

And because she hadn’t rejected him, because she hadn’t looked at him like he didn’t deserve a moment of her presence, he couldn’t stop himself from pulling her to his chest. Wrapping his arms around her. Like a miracle, she tucked herself against him, her arms around his waist.

So maybe they could forget the past, just like she said.

Maybe he wouldn’t have to leave Deep Haven to start over. “Claire . . .”

She looked up at him. And in the light of the rising moon, the smell of summer lingering in the air—in the way her mouth tilted slightly—he felt young again, taking pretty Claire Gibson to her senior prom and wishing she was his girl.

His gaze roamed her face just for a moment. Without waiting to think, to hear the warnings in his head, he bent down and kissed her.

He expected something of hesitation. Even feared that he’d gone too far, that she’d push him away, the old sense of guilt rising up to paralyze him.

But she kissed him back. Lifted her face to his, curled her arms around his shoulders, and molded herself to him. He had his arms around her back and pulled her close, deepening his kiss, tasting the lemonade on her tongue, feeling the whisper touch of her hair against his cheek.

She was delicate and perfect, and why hadn’t he done this years ago?

In truth,
she
was the reason he’d returned every summer.
Claire.

She made the softest sound of enjoyment, as if no, he hadn’t just blown it with her. Not at all. So he lifted his head, found her eyes. “I might have a lot to apologize for, but I’m not going to apologize for that. I’ve been wanting to kiss you for years.”

Her eyes widened. “Really?”

He nodded and then, fueled by the smile that lit her face, lowered his mouth again to hers.

Yes, he was kissing Claire Gibson. On his deck, with the beauty of the forest around him, the call of the loons as serenade, the wind rushing through the trees as if in cosmic approval.

Maybe, indeed, this was the definition of grace.

Us.
Darek let that word hover in his mind, over the growl of the chain saw in his hand.

He and Felicity had never been an
us
. A
them
, perhaps, but . . .

Yeah, that had been his fault too. How many times had she said she wanted a real marriage, the kind in which they actually meant their vows?

Us.

He stepped back from the tree, nearly six inches in diameter, and gave it a push. It went crashing down into the forest, taking out poplar branches and the furry arms of evergreens. He revved the chain saw, then began to dice the trunk into stackable pieces. Wood shavings splattered into the air, the smell rich with freshly hewn sawdust, mingling with a tinge of the far-off wildfire.

Too far to be a worry, but it never hurt to clean up the property.

He turned off the chain saw, removed his goggles, and reached for the logs, tossing them toward the wheelbarrow.

“Casper! Bring me the stump grinder!”

Casper, dressed similarly in a pair of leather logging chaps and gloves, an orange hard hat and goggles, hiked over with the tree stump grinder. “Next time you decide to fireproof the grounds, please send me an e-mail, and I’ll remember not to come home.”

“Go take out those saplings I marked.”

Casper lifted the chain saw. “Yes, chief. Anything else, Your Fire Highness?”

The finest prickles of sawdust layered Casper’s chin, feathered into his dark hair. He smelled like a swamp and wore a fireman’s tan.

“Hard work is good for you. All that archaeology is going to make you soft. Digging in the soil with a toothbrush. Whatever.”

Casper pulled down his goggles as he fired up the saw. “The Swan Lake fire is still twenty miles away. You heard Jed—they’ll put it out long before it gets to Deep Haven.”

Darek ignored him, began to grind down the stump, listening to the replay of his conversation this morning with Jed.

He’d come into the lodge just after dawn and found Jed and Conner Young, the new Jude County communications guru, huddled over a map. His father stood at the head of the table, cradling a cup of coffee, his face knotted in concern as Jed pointed out the fire’s growth over the last week.

Indeed, this morning, smoke seemed to saturate the air, as if overnight the wind had whipped it into a new frenzy.

Jed had drawn a red wax line on the fire map, only a small portion of it in blue, where the hotshots had hiked in yesterday and contained the edge. Most of them still camped out on the line. “Last night’s winds caused the fire to surge. Flyovers this morning show the fire hopping across Ball Club Lake, from island
to island.” He pointed out the places. “And it’s made land here, twenty miles north of Deep Haven.”

Casper had walked in then, wearing a pair of shorts, his shirt open, his hair on end. He stood beside his father, arms folded over his chest. Darek’s mother was listening in the kitchen, wearing oven mitts, as if waiting for something to finish baking. The house smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg.

“We have a few natural fire breaks between the head of the fire and any residential areas.” Jed pointed to a couple logging roads, a smaller lake, and the larger Two Island Lake to the south that spanned miles. A roadblock to the residential areas of the county. “We’ll get an air tanker in today and see if we can slow the head down, but the forecast calls for wind gusts, and with all the deadfall, the fuel load is thick in this area. We need to be ready for some torching and spotting.” He circled a section of uninhabited forest where he predicted the fire would run.

Beyond the blue line, just down the road, the wilderness became dotted with cabins.

Darek leaned over the map. “I think this part of the line can be controlled by a hand crew. Our best line of attack is to get the crews in here—” he drew his finger along a logging road about two miles south of the flames—“early this morning, while the wind is still at five miles per hour. You may even be able to get a dozer in there. But I’d start a backfire, see if you can’t drive the fire toward Hand Lake.”

Jed seemed to consider it.

“The crew hiked in and posted video at the two fire stations, here—” Conner Young pointed to a mark on the map—“and north, up here. We should have fresh footage this morning that’ll give us a glimpse of how it’s moving.”

“Do you think it will get this far southeast? It’s coming at a pretty good clip,” Darek’s father said. He’d worked crews back in the days of national park fires, had stories of brave men fighting with just Pulaskis and shovels. Today’s equipment included saws, dozers, planes, and torches. But the hard work remained the same.

“It’s a remote possibility. It could hit Evergreen Lake, but we hope to stop it by then,” Jed said. “I’d make sure the place was fireproofed, just in case.” He turned to Darek. “Sure wish you were joining us.”

Him too. Although, after last night . . . “Sorry, Jed. I have to stick around, make sure our resort is ready.”

“Fair enough. By the way, we have a crew from Sacramento coming in today, along with a couple pilots and smoke jumpers out of the Jude County base in Ember. I told them they could stay here. We’re setting up a fire camp on Forest Road 153 for the ground pounders and command central. But I want my pilots and dozer operators fresh. I hope that’s okay.” Jed rolled up the map.

“We’ll make room,” Darek’s father said.

Jed swiped a piece of cinnamon bread that Darek’s mother offered him on a paper napkin. “Thanks, Mrs. C.”

“You boys be safe out there.”

“Videos?” Darek asked Conner. “Really?”

“Technology,” Conner said. “You might want to consider installing it up here.”

“We have indoor plumbing. What more do you want?” his father said, and Conner laughed.

Yeah, well, not a bad idea.

Although, for once, Darek had enjoyed watching the sunset with no Internet, no television, no cell phone to pull Ivy from his arms.

Now he shut off the stump grinder, brushed sawdust from his arms, and worked off his goggles. His stomach roared—he hoped his mother had a sandwich waiting. And Tiger should be returning soon.

Probably he owed Nan a thank-you. He hadn’t been at his best yesterday, and she’d sort of saved him. Although he’d never, in a thousand years, intentionally do anything to scare Tiger.

He looked up as his father emerged from the edge of the forest, gloved, wearing a long-sleeved flannel work shirt, hauling a dead log. He dumped it near the wheelbarrow, then turned to the lake, wiping his forehead with his shirtsleeve. “Sure makes me wish we’d taken the government up on that grant to install a sprinkler system.”

“We couldn’t afford the system, even with the grant,” Darek said. “It’s for . . .” He gestured across the lake toward Pine Acres. Then he walked up to his father. “They’ll stop it before it gets to Evergreen, Dad. Jed knows what he’s doing.”

“So do you.”

He did? Darek fought a strange swell of warmth.

“I wouldn’t trust this property to anyone but you, Darek. You know the forest; you know fires.” He turned to his son. “This property is over one hundred years old. It was the hottest place on the shore fifty years ago. We used to have dances right there, in that old pavilion.” He pointed to the broken shelter, the one Darek longed to tear down. He’d forbidden Tiger from playing under it, had roped it off, away from guests. A yellow flag fluttered in the breeze, connected to the rope.

“Your great-great-grandfather built the lodge with his own hands, and your mother and I got married right there, on the point.” His father looked up to the sky then, to where a dark,
smoky cloud rolled over the lake. A haze had settled over the forest, probably blown all the way to town, turning the air to ash. “Do whatever it takes to save Evergreen Resort, Darek. I’m trusting it into your hands.”

Casper was watching them, had his ear protection removed and hanging around his neck.

“Don’t worry, Dad; I got this.”

His father clapped him on the shoulder, squeezed. “Evergreen is in the good hands of my sons. By the way, I was thinking, with your men staying here, we might be able to scrape up enough for a down payment on Gibs’s place. He’s back from the hospital but staying at the care center for a while. I thought I’d stop by, see what he says—”

“Darek!”

Darek looked up and frowned at the sight of Diane Wolfe striding down the path.

“She’s got her game face on,” his father said.

Indeed, this seemed a business visit—he’d seen that expression before. Like the time the Holloways had sued for custody. And twice after that, when they’d accused him of neglect.