Carmen rolled her eyes. “You know what a great singer I am.”
“Doesn’t matter. He can’t hear, remember? It’s the vibrations he picks up on.”
“Yeah, but I’ll drive you out of the room.”
“Talk to him, then.” He pulled the bean bag chair next to the rocker and sat down, gently stroking Carmen’s arm through the sleeve of her blouse.
“Dusty,” Carmen said, wincing as he bashed his head into her chin. She held his head against her with the flat of her hand. “Your mama loves you, Dusty, even though she’s had a pretty pathetic way of showing it. She’s thought of you every day, though. Every single day.”
Dustin began to settle down as she spoke, and Chris said a silent prayer of thanks to his son. Dustin rested against Carmen, his head on her breasts, his shoulders still heaving every few seconds in the aftermath of his tears. A small sliver of jealousy worked its way into Chris’s chest. It seemed he wasn’t the only one who could calm his child after all.
They sat that way for a quarter of an hour, with Carmen speaking softly to Dustin. She seemed lost in her son, barely aware of Chris’s existence as he listened and watched. But after a while she looked up at him.
“He’s going to be like this forever, isn’t he?” she asked.
Chris swallowed hard, but didn’t take his eyes from hers. “Yes.”
She pressed her lips to Dustin’s brow, and Chris knew the scent she was breathing in—the sweet, clean scent of the shampoo they used here. “Forever,” she whispered into Dustin’s hair. “I’ll love you forever.”
Tina knocked on the door and peered into the room. She smiled when she saw Dustin peacefully resting in Carmen’s arms. “Just came to see how you three are making out,” she said. “But I can see you’re doing fine.”
“He was crying before, though,” Carmen said. “Nearly unstoppable. How often does he do that?”
Tina came into the room and let the door close behind her. “Kids like him cry a lot, I’m afraid.” She shrugged. “It’s just the way they are.”
Carmen nodded down at her son. “But you can see that he calms down when he’s cuddled.”
“Not all the time,” Chris said. He didn’t want Carmen to think it was always this easy.
Carmen lifted her head, her eyes darting from Chris to Tina. “But couldn’t it at least be tried? Is there enough staff to do that? If he starts crying could someone just spend a little time with him, cuddling him?”
Tina shook her head. “If we took the time to cuddle every crying child in this place, that’s all we’d be doing.”
“You need to talk to him at the same time,” Carmen said. “He really responds to that.”
Tina sighed. “Excuse me for being blunt, Ms. Perez, but I think I know more about what Dustin needs than you do. I’ve been here taking care of him every day for the past four years.” And in all that time, you haven’t been in to see him even once.
The unspoken words hung in the air between the two women, and Chris held his breath, stifling his desire to come to Carmen’s rescue.
Carmen looked up at Tina, remarkably poised and unruffled. “Well,” she said. “I’m here now.”
Chris walked over to the window with its colorful curtains and view of Mission Valley. He didn’t want Tina to see his smile, and he knew Carmen could hold her own with the nurse. Carmen didn’t need his caretaking any more. If she needed him at all, now or in the future, it would be for something else. Something different. Something better.
45
THE SUBURBAN BALTIMORE NEIGHBORHOOD was quiet, the streets overhung with branches of summer green oaks and maples. Solid-looking colonial homes were tucked away behind manicured lawns and meticulous landscaping.
Carmen drove slowly down the street in her rented car. She had found Jeff’s address through a perusal of business licenses issued in Maryland during the past few years. He had started his own consulting business in Baltimore, maintaining an office in his home. She had even found him listed in last year’s phone book at the library. Robert and Leslie Blackwell, 780 Meridian Drive, with a phone number that was now disconnected.
She had no idea what she would find at his old address. She doubted very much that Leslie Blackwell still lived there, but perhaps the current owners would know where she was. Carmen knew that her real motivation at this point was simply to see where Jeff had lived, what type of home he’d owned. She needed to satisfy her ever-mounting curiosity about the details of his life.
His home, however, wasn’t there. She checked the address on her notepad again. Seven-eighty. The lot flanked by numbers 778 and 782 was crowded with construction workers in the throes of raising a new house on the property.
Carmen got out of the car and watched the workers from the sidewalk for a few minutes. The shell of the house looked halfway completed, although it was still roofless. Several men, their arms glowing with perspiration, guided a crane operator as he lowered a roof truss into place in the rear of the structure. A few other men were beginning to set earth-colored brick along the front wall.
She thought of approaching them, of asking them whose house it was they were building, and she was about to start across the yard when she noticed a woman kneeling in the garden of the house next door.
The woman didn’t look up from her work as Carmen started walking toward her. Her dark blond hair was cropped short, and she was dressed in tan, many-pocketed gardening pants and a blue short-sleeved shirt. She dug vigorously in the earth around one of her many azalea bushes.
“Excuse me,” Carmen said.
The woman raised her head. Her hair was streaked with gold and her skin was well-tanned, but despite her youthful appearance and energetic digging, Carmen guessed she was close to sixty.
“Could you tell me where the Blackwells have moved to?” Carmen asked.
The woman set down her shovel. “Were you a friend of theirs?” The distrust in the woman’s face was impossible to miss, and Carmen knew she wouldn’t be able to tell this woman the truth behind her interest in Jeff.
“I knew them in New Jersey.” The lie didn’t come easily to her lips, and she wondered if the woman sensed her discomfort. “This was the last address I had for them.”
The woman sat back on her heels. She shaded her eyes, and Carmen was close enough to see sympathy in them. “You don’t know what happened?” she asked.
The ominous sound of her words accelerated Carmen’s heartbeat. She shook her head.
The woman didn’t speak again right away, as though she was deciding whether or not to tell Carmen what she knew. “Come inside,” she said finally, standing up and dusting off the knees of her pants. She reached toward Carmen, who allowed herself to be guided up the slate walkway to the front door of the house.
“I’m Delores Harvey,” the woman said as they walked. “The Blackwells lived next door to me for a couple of years and I knew them quite well. They were the best sort of neighbors.”
Carmen followed the older woman into a cool marble-tiled foyer, then into a spacious family room.
“Have a seat here.” Delores indicated a beige love seat in front of an antique armoire. She looked hesitantly at Carmen. “I’d offer you something cool to drink,” she said, “but I think perhaps you should see this before you do anything else.”
“See what?” Carmen sat down on the edge of the love seat. She was beginning to pick up Delores Harvey’s anxiety.
Delores simply shook her head. She opened the doors of the armoire to reveal a television. Carmen watched as she rifled through a drawer of videotapes. There was a delicate pattern of perspiration on the back of the woman’s shirt, a small triangular grass stain on the seat of her pants.
Jeff’s former neighbor selected a tape and inserted it into the VCR below the TV. Then she sat down on the arm of the sofa, the remote control in her hand.
“I made this tape myself,” she said, her eyes on the static-filled screen. “One of the TV stations bought it from me and used parts
of it on their news, but I still don’t know what possessed me to make it in the first place. I wish I hadn’t, except that it’s helped in a way.” She pursed her lips. “It’s helped make it real. I don’t think I would ever have believed it really happened without the tape.”
Carmen pressed her damp palms together in her lap. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Harvey,” she said. “I’m not following you.”
“Of course you’re not.” Delores nodded toward the TV, tapping the corner of the remote control against her chin. “It’ll come on in a moment.”
Suddenly, the television screen burst into orange light. A house was on fire. Tongues of flame licked out of the windows into the dark night. Carmen was immediately reminded of the houses in Valle Rosa that had burned before the rain, only this house was larger and made of brick. The fire glowed inside it like a candle in a jack-o’-lantern.
Carmen leaned forward, elbows on her knees. There was a great deal of noise accompanying the picture, and at first it was hard to separate one sound from another. Sirens. People—mostly men, it seemed—shouting. The too-familiar crackling, whistling sound of the flames. She knew how it would have smelled there. She could almost feel the searing, acrid scent burning her nostrils and surrounding her here in this peaceful, air-conditioned home. Behind all the other sounds, someone was screaming. A woman? A child? Carmen straightened abruptly on the love seat, locking her hands around her elbows.
A man suddenly appeared on the tape, running toward the house. “That’s Frank, my husband,” Delores said, as the man reached the front door and tugged at the handle. One of the fire fighters jumped between him and the door and literally shoved him away, both of his big, gloved hands on Frank Harvey’s shoulders. A woman’s voice, sounding very close to the camera, called “Frank! Frank!,” and Carmen realized it was Delores, yelling at her husband while she taped the scene. Frank argued with the fire fighter for a few seconds before throwing up his arms and backing away from the house.
“Frank was beside himself that they wouldn’t let him help,” Delores said. “He wanted to get to Holly.” The tape jerked to one of the glassless upstairs windows. At first, Carmen saw only the flame, but then there was movement, a dim blur. The camera zoomed in on the window, and Carmen gasped as she saw a child standing there, a dark silhouette against the fire burning in the room behind her. Suddenly all was chaos. The little girl’s hands were on the window sill. She raised one of her legs, trying to climb out. Her mouth was open in a scream that didn’t stop. The fire fighters on the ground waved their arms at her, telling her to stay inside, that it was too far to jump, yelling something about a ladder.
“Holly! Stay there!” Delores’s voice, close to the video recorder’s microphone, boomed above the others.
Carmen covered her mouth with her hand as Holly got one bare leg over the window sill and sat straddling it. She could see the child’s features now, could see the sharp terror in the little girl’s face. Holly glanced one more time at the flames in the room. She called clearly, heart-wrenchingly, “Mama!” before swinging her other leg over the sill. She balanced herself there as the fire fighters lifted a ladder toward the window.
Then abruptly, unexpectedly, she fell, her small scream drowned out by the shouts of the fire fighters and the long, keening wail of Delores Harvey as she held the camera.
“Oh, God… oh, no.” Carmen cringed, literally recoiling from the horror on the screen. She wanted to ask Delores to stop the tape, but she was too numb to speak again, riveted by the real-life tragedy unfolding before her. It was hard to remember that it was over. Past. It seemed as if it was happening at that very instant.
The fire fighters and Frank Harvey raced to Holly’s side, and the tape filled with anguished cries of despair that Carmen hadn’t known men were capable of producing. They huddled over the little girl, big men in their bulky uniforms, shaking their heads at one another. One of them wiped a gloved hand across his eyes.
“She’d broken her neck.” Delores pressed the remote control to her chin again. “They say she died instantly, which I suppose is some sort of blessing. But I keep thinking of how she suffered first, how terrified she must have been up in her room. She was so dear.”
The picture suddenly jerked again, and the next thing Carmen saw was a news van out on the street. A camera crew leapt out of the doors of the van, while a woman with shiny black hair barked directions at them. Then the video camera was back on the house again, back on the hulking, defeated-looking fire fighters as they returned their attention to the task in front of them.
Carmen turned to look at Delores, whose face was scarlet. Tears flowed freely down the older woman’s cheeks.
“What about Leslie?” Carmen asked.
“I’m sorry.” Delores shook her head. “This probably was a poor idea, letting you find out this way. I just—”
“Leslie?”
Delores winced. “They lost her too,” she said. “They said that when the explosion occurred—”
“Explosion?”
“Yes. It was in the basement, where Rob did his work. Right beneath the master bedroom. It killed Leslie and the baby instantly. Katie died of smoke inhalation, and Holly… well, you saw.”
Carmen wanted to question her further, but her attention was drawn back to the television by the sudden slamming of a car door and the sound of a familiar voice, off camera. Jeff.
“I can’t watch this part,” Delores said quickly. “They must have shown it fifty thousand times on the news.” She stood up and walked into the next room.
Jeff, his hair dark blond, ran toward the house, calling for Leslie. Frank Harvey tried to grab his arm but failed, and Delores’s calls for him to stay back went unheeded. One of the fire fighters caught up to him, catching him by the shoulder just as Jeff spotted the body of his daughter. He broke free of the fire fighter and ran to her, dropping to his knees and clutching her to his chest. Carmen could barely watch. How had he endured this? How did he endure it even now, months later? Surely he still carried this pain with him, every day. Where did he get the courage to go on? Where did he get the strength and the spirit and the faith he needed to help Valle Rosa, to give a town full of strangers back their lives?
The picture bounced a little, and Carmen could hear Delores Harvey’s gasping sobs as she tried to hold the camera steady. Two of the fire fighters struggled to pull Jeff away from Holly, saying things to him that Carmen couldn’t decipher. He fought them at first, then seemed to give in, to let them pull him away.
Suddenly the young, shiny-haired reporter was in the picture, her microphone held out in front of her, gold bracelets flashing on her wrist. She walked toward Jeff with a determined stride and a obvious sense of entitlement Carmen recognized all too well.
She’d had enough. Rising quickly, she turned off the TV, and the room was suddenly quiet again, the sirens and the screams and the orange light extinguished as if they had never existed. Standing in front of the armoire, Carmen covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
A few seconds later, Delores Harvey returned, blotting her own eyes. She pressed a tissue into Carmen’s hand.
“What caused the explosion?” Carmen asked, when she could speak.
Delores seemed reluctant to answer. With a sigh, she sat down on the sofa. “You know about Rob’s work?” she asked.
Carmen nodded, not quite certain what Delores was referring to.
“Well, they were getting ready to take a vacation, Rob and Leslie and the kids. They were going to the mountains to see the fall colors. They hadn’t gotten away since they moved here, and they were really looking forward to it. As usual, though”— Delores shook her head, a small smile on her lips—”Rob had some work he wanted to finish up first—some project he was working on down in the basement. So Leslie was going to take the kids up to the cabin they’d rented, and then Rob would join them in a few days. But the day Leslie was to leave, Rob told her his work was going faster than he expected, why didn’t she and the kids wait
one more day and then they could all go together? So that’s what they decided to do. Leslie came over here that afternoon with the baby.” Delores suddenly pressed her hand to her lips, turning her head away. “That beautiful baby.” She shook her head. “I’d sometimes sit for him. He had a smile that could light up the world.” Drawing in a tremulous breath, she looked at Carmen once again. “Anyhow, Leslie was helping me design invitations for my oldest daughter’s wedding—Leslie was an artist. Well, I’m sure you knew that.”
Carmen nodded blankly. She hadn’t known, of course, but what did it matter? What did anything matter any more?
“All her paintings were lost in the fire, too. Even the watercolor that won the award in New York. You know it?”
“I don’t recall. Go on, please. What happened?”
“Well, Leslie was so happy, so glad she was getting Rob away for a few days. I think he was a good husband, and I know he was a terrific father, but she said that he’d been absolutely driven lately by whatever it was he was working on. He hardly ever slept, she said. He was always in that basement. I asked her how she stood it, but she said it was a really exciting project and she didn’t blame him for being preoccupied with it. She couldn’t tell me what he was doing—I guess Rob had sworn her to secrecy—but she said it was spectacular, something that had never been done before, something no one even thought was possible. You know how proud she always was of Rob.” The woman dabbed at her eyes again.
Carmen’s stomach was in knots. She remembered the allusions others had made to Jeff’s recklessness. “The explosion,” she said. “What caused the explosion?”
“Well, I guess Rob was working that night, rushing to finish up so they could take off the next day. Holly was sick. She’d come down with a cold, and Rob must have gone to the store to get her cough syrup, because they found the bag with the syrup in it on the sidewalk. Anyhow, the explosion occurred while he was out of the house, and it was related in some way to the work he’d been doing in the basement.”