CARMEN PRUNED THE LEGGY rosebushes, then rested on her heels and looked at her watch. In another hour she would have to leave, and she dreaded what lay ahead of her. Craig Morrow had called before she’d even gotten out of bed that morning to tell her about the accident. A school bus—one of the small ones that carried handicapped kids to their summer program—had skidded off the road above the reservoir and tumbled into the canyon, killing the driver and three children. Craig wanted her to meet him at the scene of the accident at ten o’clock, when a crane was scheduled to lift the bus out of the canyon. Then she was to talk with some of the families and put together the human interest side of the tragedy.
It felt like a test, one she wasn’t certain she could pass. For the first time since returning to work, she thought she had reached her limit. She couldn’t do this, couldn’t look at the scorched earth where the children had died, couldn’t talk to three families whose grief was still fresh and alive. But she’d agreed to meet Craig, forcing the words calmly out of her mouth in the hope that, once the initial terror wore off, she would be able to carry through on her promise. She’d thought the roses might calm her, but every movement she made was greeted by a new wave of nausea.
The sun seemed hotter than usual. It stung her cheeks as she clipped the branches. She raised one hand to tilt her wide-brimmed hat lower on her forehead and as she did so noticed Jeff walking toward her. He was crossing the barren stretch of Sugarbush between his cottage and the garden, his stride long but unhurried. She self-consciously rolled down her sleeves and was buttoning them at the wrists when he reached her.
He sat down on one of the boulders and seemed to be assessing the garden.
“You’ve done a good job with the roses,” he said. “It’s almost impossible to grow them under the conditions you’ve had here.”
She studied him skeptically. In the distance behind him, the sky was red from a new fire burning on Mount Palomar, and with that as his background, Jeff looked as if he’d been plucked from some surrealistic painting.
“Thank you,” she said.
He picked up the pruning shears and leaned forward to snip a branch she had missed. Then he sat back again, squinting against the sun as he looked at her.
“I met Dustin yesterday,” he said.
Involuntarily, her hand flew to her throat. “You… what do you mean?”
“I had to go into San Diego for something, and Chris invited me to ride along with him. We stopped at the Children’s Home and spent some time with your son.”
Her cheeks burned. She lowered her head. No one ever referred to Dustin as her son. No one other than Chris ever mentioned him to her at all.
“I see.” She smoothed her gloved hand across the dusty earth around one of the rose bushes. “Did Chris tell you why he’s the way he is?”
“Yes.”
She let out her breath, feeling betrayed by Chris’s sudden candor. “The man has no shame.”
Jeff shaded his eyes. “He’s full of shame,” he said.
She shot Jeff a look from under the brim of her hat. “He shouldn’t have told you anything. My life is absolutely none of your business.”
“And mine is public property, right?”
She sighed, feeling the barest hint of a smile cross her lips. “Touche.”
He leaned toward her. “You know, they may have told you Dustin would die, but he didn’t. And frankly, he doesn’t look like he will anytime soon.”
She held up her hands to ward him off. “Look, Jeff, I cannot deal with this right now. In less than an hour, I’m supposed to exploit a few devastated families, and I can’t think about anything else, so please pick some other time to deliver your lecture on motherhood.”
Jeff stared at her, a look of disbelief forming in his eyes. “Are you talking about the bus accident?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You’re going to badger those parents who lost their kids just a few hours ago?” His voice rose.
“I don’t have any goddamned choice!” She sucked in a quick breath, stunned by how close she was to snapping, to simply losing it. Steadying herself, she spoke more calmly. “It’s the last thing I feel like doing, I can assure you of that. I feel sick when I think about it.” She felt the crack in her voice and hoped he hadn’t noticed.
But he had.
“Then don’t do it,” he said softly.
She pulled off her gloves. “They’ll can me.” She looked him in the eye, leveling with him. “’She’s gone soft,’ they’ll say. I’ll lose everything again.”
“Make up an excuse. Tell them you’re sick.”
“I’d have to be on my deathbed before that would work,” she scoffed. “This is the hot story right now.”
She smoothed the gloves, one on top of the other, as a few seconds of silence stretched between them. Jeff looked out toward the canyon. Behind his head, the fiery red of the sky had softened.
Finally, he spoke again. “You’re not a bitch, you know it?” he said. “You’re still human, but you’ve beaten down your ability to feel compassion for another person until it’s practically nonexistent.”
Carmen shook her head. “No one—least of all a woman—gets very far in this business by being compassionate. I’ve only done what I had to do to get the job done.”
“Mmm.” Jeff ran his hand over the sunlit boulder. “But at what cost?”
Carmen’s throat tightened. She couldn’t handle this now. “Please leave me alone,” she said.
He pursed his lips, nodding. “Right.” Getting to his feet, he looked down at her. “Try putting yourself in those parents’ shoes when you conduct your interviews,” he said.
He started to turn away, but Carmen found she couldn’t let him go. “Do you hate me?” she asked.
Jeff put his hands on his hips. “Hate’s the wrong word, Carmen. I’m afraid of you, of what you can do to me. You hold all the cards. Are you planning to give me some warning before you show your hand?”
“How can I answer that?” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know how things will unfold.”
He gave her one of his half smiles, this one tinged with the bitter disdain she was accustomed to receiving from him. “Just doing your job, right?” He started striding toward his cottage, but suddenly turned on his heel and walked back to her.
She put the last of the clippings in a plastic bag and stood up as he neared the garden again.
“Rick and I are going to be moving some of the equipment onto the roof of the warehouse this morning,” he said. “It’s the next step in preparing to drench Valle Rosa. I think you should be there, don’t you?”
It took her a moment to catch on. She couldn’t cover both the bus crash and the events at the warehouse; she would have to pick between the stories.
“Yes,” she said, and she couldn’t stop her smile. “I think I’d better.”
She went into the house after finishing up in the garden. For some reason, she walked upstairs and opened the door to the old nursery. She hadn’t been inside that room in years, and she wouldn’t have recognized it. There was no furniture, of course; the crib and dresser had long ago been put in storage. And although Chris had told her he’d taken down the wallpaper, she was still unprepared for the echoing emptiness in the room and for the bland expanse of the flat white walls.
Stepping inside, she circled the room, her tennis shoes squeaking on the wooden floor. She stopped at the double windows, from which she had a sweeping view of Sugarbush. The rose garden was a distant patch of reddish-orange against the pale earth.
The children on the bus had been killed instantly, she thought. They were far too young to die, yes, but at least those parents would be able to take some comfort in knowing that it had been quick. Their children hadn’t suffered. Not like her child. Not like Dustin.
Carmen rested her forehead against the warm pane of glass in the window. Dustin should have died. That night in his room, when he cried and stiffened and stopped breathing in her trembling arms—that night should have been his last. If only she had never learned CPR. If only she hadn’t had the presence of mind to breathe for her baby. If only the ambulance hadn’t arrived so quickly.
Oh, Dusty.
He cries a lot, Chris had said.
Carmen pressed her fist to her mouth and backed away from the window and out of the room. Once in the hallway, she took in a deep breath, straightened her spine, and swept her hair back from her face with her hands.
She glanced at her watch as she walked toward the bedroom. She would have to call Craig to tell him she wouldn’t be covering the accident. Then she would head out to the warehouse.
She had a job to do.