CHRIS TURNED OFF HIS cottage lights before carrying his guitar onto the porch. He liked the darkness, liked being able to feel the canyon more than see it. The air was thick with the smell of soot and eucalyptus. He turned his chair so that the lights from Mia’s cottage and the adobe were blocked from his view. Stretching out in front of him, the black canyon hummed softly with the sound of crickets, and as he began to sing, his voice seemed to travel for miles before losing itself in the abyss.
He sang ballads, too tired for anything more energetic. He’d spent the evening in the adobe, removing the wallpaper from the room they had used as the nursery. Years ago, he had emptied that room of its furniture, but he doubted Carmen had set foot in there since the day Dustin left the house. Chris had worked quickly tonight, blocking from his mind the memory of the few joyous days they’d had with their seemingly healthy son, as well as the memory of that long, frightening night, when it was apparent that Dusty was desperately ill. Chris pulled and scraped and tore at the wallpaper, as if trying to destroy all the pain embedded in its yellow-and-blue flowered print.
He’d had another reason to be angry as he worked on the room. A new fire had cropped up today. It had been small and fairly easily controlled, but he considered it particularly abhorrent. This one had been set intentionally by someone who wanted to drive the undocumented workers from the canyon. The fire had started early that morning, and by noon all that was left of that particular camp on the north side were the charred sheets of corrugated metal that had served as roofs for their plywood and cardboard shelters. No one had been hurt; no one had even been seen. The workers had simply disappeared, no doubt slipping deeper into the canyon to start over. If anyone running for mayor came up with a plan to provide the undocumented workers with decent housing, they would get his vote. He stopped singing “The Water Is Wide” in the middle of a verse and began singing “De Colores,” on the whimsical chance that the workers had moved to a section of the canyon from which they could hear him.
Sam Braga had run a piece on the mayoral election in yesterday’s Gazette. It seemed that the two contenders, Joyce DeLuis and John Burrows, were in agreement on absolutely nothing, except that Chris Garrett’s hiring of the “alleged rainmaker” had been irresponsible at best. “On that,” Braga wrote, “the two candidates are in complete accord.”
Chris heard a sound from behind him and stilled his hands on the guitar as the beam of a flashlight played over the porch.
“Don’t stop.” Jeff turned off his light and sat down on the step.
Chris started to play again, but he was thinking that it was nearly eleven, and Jeff was only now getting home. Jeff had worked similar hours every day since arriving in Valle Rosa. He had to be exhausted.
“Bravo,” Jeff said quietly when Chris had finished the song.
Chris couldn’t easily see Jeff’s face in the darkness, but he heard the smile in his voice. “Thanks,” he said.
Jeff sighed, stretching his legs out on the porch. “Once I was at this coffee house in Philadelphia with a group of people,” he said, “and you showed up.”
“The Rising Sun,” Chris said, surprised not so much that Jeff had seen him at a club, but that he was talking about it, offering a morsel of information about himself. He wanted to ask Jeff if he’d lived in Philadelphia, but thought better of it.
“You sang that song,” Jeff said. “Your trademark song.”
“’Center Field.’”
“Right. I remember thinking how strange it was. The crowd was very hot on the Phillies and very down on the Padres, but the second you walked in, they turned non-partisan.”
Chris strummed the guitar, softly. “Well, that type of place was pretty safe to go,” he said. “People were there for the music. The receptions I got were usually good.”
“You still sound good. I could hear you all the way from the driveway. Do you perform anywhere these days?”
“Hell, no.” Chris laughed, but he felt an involuntary shudder at the thdught of climbing onto a stage in front of an audience. “That’d take guts I don’t have anymore. Once you’ve been pulverized by the fans that supposedly loved you, it’s hard to risk going back for more.” He could still remember the agony of being booed at his last game for the Padres. Other players had been regular recipients of the crowd’s disdain, but not Chris. It had stung him badly, and he’d been glad of the isolation of the mound, glad no one was near enough to him to read the pain in his face. “Getting everyone’s wrath as mayor is enough for now. I’m not the most popular guy in town, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“It’s hard to miss.” Jeff stretched his arms above his head, yawning.
“You must be wiped out,” Chris said. “Please take some time off when you need it.”
“The sooner I get this done, the sooner I can leave.” Jeff shifted his position on the porch step to face Chris more directly. “You know, it’s been two weeks and you haven’t asked me a thing about how my work’s going.”
Chris laughed. “Well, I figure when you hire someone to perform a miracle it’s a little banal to ask him how it’s coming along.”
“It’s going all right,” Jeff volunteered, “but it’s difficult, since I don’t have any of my data with me. I’m starting from scratch with everything.”
“Where is the data? Can you send for it?”
“It doesn’t exist any more, except in here.” He touched his fingertips to his temple.
Chris could see only Jeff’s eyes, and they were wide and riveted on his own.
“But it’s coming back to me pretty easily,” Jeff continued. “I’ve crammed what took me five years to figure out into the past two weeks. Two or three more and we’ll be ready for a small- scale experiment. Then I’ll know if I’m headed in the right direction. I need a few more things, though.” He sounded apologetic.
“You name it.”
“First of all, some kind of warning signs. ‘Danger—Keep Out.’ Something like that.”
“To keep people from hounding you?”
“No. We’ll be moving into a phase soon where there really may be some danger. The risk is extremely small, but I don’t want to take the chance of anyone getting hurt.”
For the first time, Chris felt a wave of uncertainty over hiring this stranger to help Valle Rosa. “What are we talking about here?” he asked. “There’s nothing radioactive or—”
Jeff chuckled. “Nothing like that. I’ve discussed it with Rick to be sure he understands the risks, and he’s okay with it.” He hesitated when Chris didn’t respond. “Do you need to know more?”
“No.” Chris made a quick decision to continue operating on trust. “What else do you need?”
“A couple more vats. Very specialized. Little plastic pockets on the inside. Two hundred gallons. Air-tight. I know where I can get them, but I’d like to do some research to find another source. Not too many people need exactly what I’m looking for, and I’d rather they didn’t put two and two together and figure out who’s doing the ordering.”
“Okay.”
“They’re expensive. Sorry.”
Chris shrugged and smiled. “What else?”
“That’s it for now.”
A breeze slipped across the porch, dropping a few powdery ashes on the guitar. Chris blew them off and stood up. “How about a beer?” he asked.
This time he could see Jeff’s smile. “Love one,” he said.
Inside the house, Chris switched on the living room light and went into the kitchen for the beer. When he returned to the living room, Jeff was sitting on the couch, pulling a sooty baseball bat out of one of the boxes Chris had brought from his house.
“This looks like an interesting collection.” Jeff peered into the box.
“Memorabilia,” Chris said, embarrassed. His ego was in that box.
Jeff balanced the bat across his hands, ignoring the soot it deposited on his palms. “What makes the bat special?” he asked.
Chris placed Jeff’s beer on the coffee table and sat down in the chair nearest the sofa. “Well,”—he twisted the cap off his beer—”when you’re known for your pitching, nobody takes you too seriously as a hitter. But in this one game—against the Phillies, as a matter of fact—they had me batting ninth, and as usual, told me to bunt. Something got into me, though, and I told myself to ignore them and just let it rip.” He took a swallow of beer and smiled at the memory. “Got a home run. I wasn’t about to part with the bat.”
Jeff pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the soot from the bat and his hands. “I remember reading about that in Throwing Smoke,” he said.
“You read Throwing Smoke?” He hadn’t taken Jeff Cabrio for a baseball fan.
“Yeah. I enjoyed it.”
Chris shook his head. “That book embarrasses the hell out of me now.”
“How come?”
“A biography about someone who’s only thirty-five years old seems ridiculous. Pretentious.”
He hadn’t thought so at the time, though. He’d felt worthy of having an entire book written about him, and he’d thought that the author had captured him well. The tone of the biography had been flattering, with Augie seen as his best friend and driving force. Chris’s early excesses and escapades were described in entertaining, almost comical terms, and his marriage to the country’s least typical baseball wife was seen as a testimony to the unpredictability of love. The book sold very well, but Chris quickly realized that it had been written prematurely.
“Here it is, only five years later,” he said to Jeff, “and if I read that book again, I wouldn’t even recognize myself.”
Jeff nodded. “Well, I doubt the Chris Garrett in Throwing Smoke would ever say he was afraid to perform in front of a crowd.”
Chris’s mouth twisted in a sad half-smile at the memory of his former, crowd-loving self.
Jeff raised his beer to his lips and took a long drink before setting the bottle on the table again. “I remember something about you turning down offers to coach in the majors after you hurt your arm,” he said. “Why didn’t you stay in baseball?”
Chris sighed. “It would have meant leaving Valle Rosa. Carmen and I had separated by then, but I still didn’t want to desert her because she was… pretty sick at the time. And I didn’t want to be too far from my son.” Chris knew he wasn’t offering much—just cryptic pieces of information—but it was far more than he usually said. Still, he wasn’t sure if Jeff was following him.
Jeff nodded, though, as though he heard all that Chris wasn’t saying. He must know then, Chris thought, about Carmen’s depression, and about Dustin. He probably knew the story from Rick. Or at least, he knew the story as Rick understood it.
“Also, I wasn’t sure I could stomach being behind the lines in baseball. You know, being involved as a coach without being able to play.” It wasn’t a lie, but not the truth either. Quitting baseball and staying in Valle Rosa, had, in many ways, been the easy way out.
Jeff pulled the box closer to him. “Tell me about the stuff in here.”
Chris couldn’t resist the invitation. He moved to the floor and began pulling his treasures from the box, describing each of them to his rapt audience. There was a baseball in a sooty plastic holder from the first major league game he’d pitched in, and another from the game that marked his hundredth win. He showed Jeff a few of his trophies. At the bottom of the box, the Cy Young award was wrapped in a towel.
“Wow.” Jeff held the plaque with appropriate respect. “You must be relieved this didn’t get ruined in the fire. It’s got to be one of your most prized possessions.”
“Yes and no.” Chris studied the plaque himself. He always felt a strange combination of satisfaction and sorrow when he looked at it. “It was the greatest honor of my life,” he said, “but my father died right after I received it, and the two events are sort of tied forever in my head.”
“Oh, yeah.” Jeff nodded. “I know how that happens.”
Chris set the plaque on the coffee table. “Would you like to go to a Padres game sometime?” he asked, impulsively. The thought terrified him. “I haven’t been to a game myself since I retired, but maybe it’s about time.”
Jeff’s eyes lit up, but the rest of his face was reserved. “I’d be afraid that being with you would make me too visible,” he said.
“Well, the truth is, I don’t feel like being all that visible myself at the moment.” Chris laughed. “We can sit in the nosebleed seats. No one will give us a second look.”
“Let me think about it a while.” Jeff stood up and yawned. “Right now, though, I’d better get some sleep.”
He walked to the front door and turned to face Chris again. “I know you’re taking a lot of heat for hiring me,” he said. It was almost an apology.
Chris shrugged. “I can handle it.”
Jeff shook his head. “You still have guts, Chris,” he said. “Don’t let anyone tell you anything different.”
Jeff left the cottage, and Chris watched him walk across the yard. Jeff may have said he wasn’t interested in making friends in Valle Rosa, but his actions tonight contradicted his words.
Clearly, he wasn’t a man who enjoyed being alone. Then again, Chris thought, neither was he.
He slowly repacked his memorabilia, saving the Cy Young award for last, wrapping it carefully in the towel before setting it on top of the other items.
The day he’d received the Cy Young award had also been Augie’s sixty-second birthday. Carmen had insisted on throwing a party to celebrate both events, despite the fact that she was five months pregnant. Chris had tried to talk her out of it, worried about the stress it might cause her. Stress, he was certain, had been the culprit when she lost their first baby nearly two years earlier, the day after her cousin’s wedding. Carmen had insisted on having the reception for the wedding at Sugarbush, hoping that with that gesture, she might be able to heal the long-standing rift between herself and her aunt and uncle. But that wasn’t to be. On the day of the reception, her relatives shunned her in her own home, taking advantage of her hospitality and talking about her when her back was turned—and, sometimes, when it wasn’t. All that night, Carmen cried with the pain of wanting a family that didn’t want her. When she miscarried the next day—a miscarriage followed by a dark, crippling depression—Chris had no doubt at all of the cause.
At the time he won the Cy Young award, though, Carmen felt very well, and very confident that she would carry this baby to term. So confident, in fact, that she planned to announce her pregnancy on Sunrise the following week.
Chris watched her during the party. There was an unmistakable glow about her. It radiated from her, touching everyone in the room, and he felt very proud that she was his wife. All was right with his world: he was surrounded by friends, by the woman he admired and loved, by his father who had coached and guided and nurtured him. And in a few months he was going to be a father himself.
In bed that night, though, he felt Carmen trembling in his arms and knew she was crying. She tried to deny it.
“Just chilly,” she said, but he touched her cheek and felt the tears.
“What is it?” he asked.
She was quiet a moment, and he could hear her breathing deeply, trying to gain some control over her emotions, something she could usually do quickly, easily. “I wish you didn’t have to go tomorrow,” she said.
He was leaving on a road trip, a long one.
“I know.” He pulled her closer. “I wish you could come with me, at least for part of the time.” Even though she didn’t fit in well with the other wives, Chris loved having her with him. There was nothing in the world he enjoyed more than the way she rubbed his arm after a game, the way she would pretend to swoon when her hands kneaded his sore muscles. Ordinarily, she would have joined him for a weekend or two during a trip of this length, but her doctor had advised against traveling.
There was little he could do to take away the source of her unhappiness, so he settled for holding her through that night, while she cried off and on and chastised herself fiercely for the tears.
When he got into his hotel room the following night, there were three messages for him to call her. That alarmed him. She rarely called when he was on the road; she hated to appear that needy.
She answered the phone quickly when he dialed the number for Sugarbush.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said. “And I think everything’s going to be okay, but I wanted to let you know Augie’s in the hospital.”
“Augie? Why?”
“He woke up this morning with chest pain, but it seems it was just a false alarm. He’s okay now. They’re keeping him overnight and if all’s well in the morning, they’ll release him.”
Chris’s own heart was pumping hard. “What caused it, though?” he asked.
“He said he had a little indigestion from my cooking last night.” She laughed, and Chris smiled. His father felt well enough to joke. That was a good sign.
“I should come home.”
“Absolutely not. He was adamant about that, Chris. It’s too late for you to call him now, or he could tell you that himself.”
“Well, did you get a chance to talk with his doctor?”
“Uh huh. All the tests on his heart were perfectly normal. He’s fine, Chris.”
“I just wish I could talk to him.”
“Tomorrow.”
“And how about you?” he asked. “You took it easy today, I hope?”
“Didn’t lift a finger. Lolled around all day with my feet up. The bebito on the other hand has been a little hellion. I don’t think he’s going to play baseball, Chris. It’s going to have to be hockey or soccer or something where he’ll be moving all the time. He’s got a ton of energy.”
He could picture her lying in their bed as she talked to him, stroking her swollen belly with her long, dark fingers.
“I’ll call Augie at the hospital in the morning,” he said.
“I love you, Chris. I wish you were here beside me.”
“Wish I was there, too, Car.”
He didn’t sleep well that night, and when he called his father’s room early the following morning, there was no answer. A clerk at the nurses’ station told him Augie was in the bathroom, and he left a teasing message for him, something about the length he’d go to for a little pampering and TLC, a message that would haunt him for years to come.
It was evening by the time he returned to his hotel, and he was stunned to find Carmen there. She’d been sitting on the edge of the bed, but she rose quickly to her feet when he let himself into the room.
“Carmen.” He froze in front of the door. “What are you doing here?”
Her face was ashen. “I didn’t want to tell you over the phone,” she said.
“Augie?”
She pressed her hands together in front of her. “I’m sorry, Chris.”
He felt his heart slip away from his body, leaving him momentarily numb. “When?” he asked. “How?”
She took a step toward him. “It was this morning. He—”
“But you said he was fine.” He heard the childlike tone of his voice, the unfounded sense of betrayal. Suddenly furious, he pounded his fist into the door. “He can’t be dead. You said I didn’t need to come home.”
She moved close enough to put her arms around him, and he had a fleeting thought that she was brave to do that. She was unafraid of him when he was, at that moment, afraid of himself. He buried his head in her shoulder and clung to her.
“It wasn’t his heart,” she said. “His heart was fine, and they were going to release him today. It was an embolism, very sudden. No one suspected it.”
He couldn’t speak. Carmen tightened her arms around him and only then did he realize he was shaking with deep, gut-wrenching sobs.
“Oh, baby,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I feel terrible about telling you not to come home last night.”
“I know.” He spoke into her shoulder. “I only wish I could have talked to him one last time.”
She leaned away from him, looked him squarely in the eyes. “There was nothing you didn’t say to him, Chris. No secrets, no feelings held back between the two of you, ever. He always knew how much you loved him.”
He nodded slowly and pulled her back into his arms. “I should be mad at you for coming here,” he said, “but I’m so glad you did.”
They flew home that night, quiet with one another on the plane, but close, holding hands. He felt her strength, and he gave in to his need for it, letting her take care of him once they reached Sugarbush, letting her make the phone calls, run his bath, settle him in bed.
In the middle of the night, he woke up to find himself alone in the room. For a moment, he couldn’t remember where he was. Then he saw the moon through the skylight above him, and Augie’s death drifted back to him like the threads of a bad dream.
He sat up in the bed. “Carmen?”
He ran his hand over her side of the mattress and cringed at the cold wetness there, and he pulled back the blanket to reveal the dark stain.
God, no, not again.
He raced into the bathroom, where he found Carmen shivering, crying, bleeding. Later that night, as he sat next to her hospital bed, and felt the lifelessness in her hand and saw the opaque blackness of her eyes, he knew the depression that was settling over her would be even worse than the last time.
Her obstetrician was sympathetic but stern when Chris dragged Carmen to the follow-up appointment two weeks after the miscarriage. “I wasn’t speaking lightly when I said ‘no undue stress,’” she said.
Carmen looked out the window. She didn’t seem to care what her doctor was saying. She didn’t even seem to hear. Yet the tears were there. Chris saw one shimmer in the light as it slipped over her chin. The tears were constant, and terribly silent.
“My father died,” Chris said. “We could hardly control that.”
“But she didn’t have to throw a party. That’s what triggered her last miscarriage, having to entertain a house full of people.” The doctor sighed, leaning forward, her elbows on the desk. “Listen you two,” she said. “Carmen. Look at me, Carmen.”
Carmen turned her head slowly to face the woman on the other side of the desk. Chris was no longer sure if her sluggishness was from the antidepressant she was taking or from the depression itself.
“Any pregnancy you have is going to be extremely high-risk,” the doctor said. “We don’t know what causes you to spontaneously abort, but next time I’ll insist on complete bed rest. That will at least rule out excessive activity as a cause.”
“There won’t be a next time,” Chris said, impulsively.
Carmen jerked her head toward him, and although the suddenness of her response surprised him, he was pleased to see any reaction out of her at all.
“I don’t want you to go through this again,” he said to her.
She didn’t seem to have the strength to argue, although he knew what she wanted to say: She couldn’t imagine her life without a child in it. Children had always been part of their plan. He knew that if Carmen pulled out of this depression, and if she was still motivated and willing to follow her doctor’s orders to the letter, he would agree to try once more.
He never guessed how fervently he would one day regret that decision.