Just Breathe

“I hope like hell this barn is used for storage, not livestock,” he called to Rick.

“I hear you.” Rick, a young volunteer just out of training, squinted a little fearfully at the building.

“I’m going to have to do a search of the premises,” Will said, reminding himself that not so long ago, he’d been as green as Rick McClure. By the time the engine arrived, Will had donned his SCBA, though he didn’t hook up the mask. He hoped he wouldn’t need to put himself on air.

He went around the perimeter, radioing a report to his battalion chief. One good sign—he couldn’t hear any sounds of trapped livestock. That kind of thing—it tended to etch itself on a firefighter’s soul. With no rescue involved, saving the building wasn’t the goal here; it was going up like tinder. But they needed to kill the fire to keep it from spreading to the surrounding wildlands.

The plan was to vent the blaze through a large panel door on sideways rollers. Will radioed task assignments to the engine crew. While the helmeted firefighters were pulling hose, he signaled for Rick to open the door and stand ready with the portable extinguisher. The goal was to vent in order to delay flashover—the transition from the fire’s growth stage to the explosive eruption of the entire structure—until the hose line was in place. Then the fire would be pushed out through the front of the building. The blast of heat was always expected, yet always a surprise. When he was a rookie, it used to scare the crap out of him, that pressure pulsing against his face, an invisible force like the hammers of sound at a loud rock concert.

The fire was at the rollover stage, with lightning flashes of flame through the smoke. He heard a hiss and figured his air bottle was blistering in the heat. Cathedral-like, the tall Nordic-style barn was bathed in unholy light, the stacked bales of hay burning like a giant funeral pyre. I’m okay, he said, as he always did in these situations. I’m okay. In his mind, he made a clear picture of Aurora, his best reason to survive.

Birdie went to the window and lowered it to keep out the noise of a distant siren. Then she sat back down and leaned her forearms on the desk. “Sarah, I don’t understand. Why do you say your decision to delay starting a family almost killed your husband?”

“If I’d agreed to try to get pregnant right away, like Jack wanted, we would have realized sooner there was a problem.” Sarah cleared her throat. “How much detail do you need here?”

Birdie seemed to understand. “Don’t worry about detail for now. Unless you think it’s information I need in order to help you.”

At some point, Sarah knew she would be forced to reveal the most intimate details of her marriage, opening them up like an unhealed wound to expose the raw nerves. She knew enough about divorce to realize this was part of the process. Knowing this didn’t make it easier, though. Exposing her private pain behind the guise of her comic strip was one thing, but discussing it openly was quite another.

“Eventually, I wanted kids as bad as he did. Both of us seemed to be in fine health. So when we didn’t get pregnant for a whole year, we checked things out. For some reason, we expected to find something wrong with me, not him.” Determined to leave the wedding set alone, she picked up a pen and rolled it between the palms of her hands.

“I think it’s a fairly common assumption,” Birdie said. “No idea why, but it is.”

Once it was determined that there were no problems with Sarah’s fertility, Jack agreed to be checked out by his uncle, a urologist. Sarah braced herself for a report of low sperm count or poor motility or impaired delivery. In fact, the tests had revealed something far worse.

“Testicular cancer,” she told Birdie. “It had metastasized to the lymph nodes in the abdomen, and to his lungs.”

The oncologist’s can-do attitude was reassuring. “Statistics and projections aren’t going to turn this around. Fighting with everything we’ve got—that’s what’ll turn it around,” the doctor had said. Jack was also lucky to have supportive friends and family. His parents and siblings had rallied around him the moment the diagnosis was made. People who had known him since nursery school came to see him, to hang out and add their good wishes to the seemingly bottomless pool of support.

“You have to understand,” Sarah told Birdie, “when something like this happens, the whole world stops. You drop everything. It’s like joining the military, and the disease is your drill sergeant. We started treatment right away, aggressive treatment. Thanks to his age and general good health, they went at it hard.”

“Interesting that you say we started treatment. Not Jack started treatment.”

“We were a team,” Sarah explained. “The disease invaded every moment of our lives, waking or sleeping.” She flicked the pen tip in and out, in and out. “Actually, I’m not sure if this is important now or not—we took care of one small detail before we started treatment.”

“And the one small detail?”

“It was the doctors’ suggestion. Jack and I were too panicked and scattered to think of it. Jack was advised to preserve some sperm samples. The treatment carried a risk of infertility so this was a precaution.” She smiled a little. “Jack was always a bit of an overachiever. He preserved enough sperm to populate a small town. And up until last week, this story had a happy ending.” More or less, she thought. Jack’s performance at the sperm bank had been far more productive than his performance had been with her.

“Sorry, I need to clarify. You were his chief support during the treatment?”

“Financially, no. Fortunately, Jack and his family are extremely well-off. I barely had a career.”

“The comic strip you mentioned earlier?”

Agitated, she continued clicking the pen up and down, up and down. “Yes. It’s called Just Breathe.”

Birdie leaned back in her chair. “It sounds terrific, Sarah. Really.”

“It’d be better if I was actually making a living wage. For the time being, I’m self-syndicated, which means a lot more work for me but ultimately, more independence and a bigger share of the earnings. When Jack was sick, I put aside the syndication work and did advertising art and greeting cards. I never stopped drawing my strip, though. In fact, during the worst days of the treatment, I did some of my best work. But I can’t honestly say I contributed financially in any major way.”

“How about moral and emotional support? And in the area of his care?”

“I did things I never thought myself capable of.” She stopped, surprised to feel a wave of emotion as she was swept back to the endless, anguished postchemo nights, when even love and prayers were not enough to comfort him, when she held him while he shook with chills, when she cleaned up his puke and changed his bed as he moaned in agony. “I’ll spare you the details of that. Suffice it to say I was steadfast, and anyone who tries to deny that I supported him is a liar.”

“And the happy ending?”

“Before all this happened, I would’ve told you our happy ending was the day he was found to be cancer free and his treatments were stopped. I guess there’s no such thing as a happy ending. Life is too damned messy for that. Things don’t ever end. They just change.” She looked down to see that she had completely disassembled the pen in her hands.

Birdie folded her arms on the desk and pretended not to notice. “So was there any point when you suspected your marriage was in trouble?”

Shamefaced, Sarah lined up the broken pieces of the pen on the desk—the cartridge, the tiny spring, the tube, the pocket clip. “It was the last thing on my mind. The last thing I was looking for. I was so full of gratitude and sheer elation over Jack’s recovery that I couldn’t see straight. I swore then, to myself and to Jack, that I was ready for a family. More than ready. It’s stupid to postpone something you know you want. Life’s too short. At the time, I had no idea that trying to get pregnant was a sign of desperation. I thought if I could make us look like a happy family by having a baby, then we would magically be a happy family.” She carefully threaded the cartridge through the coil. “We tried both ways.”

“Both ways?”

“Naturally and by artificial insemination. After treatment, Jack had a good chance of regaining fertility, so we both had high hopes. But…we didn’t have much intimacy during or after his illness. He, um, couldn’t perform and eventually quit trying.” Sarah screwed the two parts of the pen tube together. “He still claimed to want a family. In fact, it was his idea to keep up the fertility treatments and the artificial insemination. Our lack of success turned out to be a blessing in disguise, I suppose. Bringing a child into our mess would be a disaster.” The pen’s clicker didn’t work. She would have to take it apart and try again.

Sarah had come to realize that the rift had existed long before it was discovered. It had progressed and spread out of control by the time Mimi Lightfoot came along.

“After the illness,” she said, “I kept reminding myself I was in a posttrauma state. We both were. So while I was going to the fertility clinic every time I ovulated, Jack was dealing with the trauma in his own way. I don’t know when he hooked up with Mimi Lightfoot, but I bet it was a while back.” The name tasted bitter in her mouth.

“This is the woman he was unfaithful with,” Birdie prompted.

“Yes. He started a huge building project about eight months ago—luxury homes in a neighborhood designed for equestrians, and he was incredibly busy all the time.” Sarah couldn’t believe what a dupe she’d been. It had all the sorry hallmarks that had become clichés—late, vaguely described meetings, canceling engagements with her. Begging off sex with her. “I thought he needed more time to come to terms with what happened to him, but I had faith that he’d get over it. And he did, I guess. Just not with me.”

She took a deep breath and told Birdie the worst part—the events of that cold and rainy day, her last as a happily married woman. She told about her loneliness for her husband after going to the fertility clinic by herself. She told about stopping for pizza on the way to visit him at the work site, because he loved pizza and she wanted to surprise him. She even told about the moment she had walked in on every woman’s nightmare.

The eerie calm that had enshrouded her since that night was growing threadbare in places as flashes of emotion crept in—anger at Jack, shame and humiliation, a sickening sense that she had lost her dreams. She felt bombarded by thoughts of the babies that would never be, the perfect home that had only been an illusion.

Until now, dazed shock had insulated her from facing the hard questions about what might have been had she done something differently. Numbness dulled the embarrassment of having to air her dirty laundry to a virtual stranger, muffled the body blow of knowing the life she’d taken such satisfaction in was a sham.

Forced to describe her husband’s infidelity, she felt her womanly pride bleeding on the floor. She struggled through this, the hardest part of her narrative. “So there you go. The end of happily-ever-after.” Slumping back in the chair, she sensed fatigue sneaking up to conquer her. She had buzzed across the country on an adrenaline rush. Finally, exhaustion spread over her, pressing down.

“You know,” she concluded, “I do have one big regret.”

“What’s that?” asked Birdie.

“I wish I’d ordered black olives on the damn pizza.”

Chapter Six

Will Bonner walked around the smoldering barn, studying the ruined structure in silence. He took a bandanna from his back pocket and wiped his face. He should be home already, fixing supper with his kid. Unfortunately, people who started fires showed no regard for the captain’s duty schedule. He was counting his blessings, though. The barn had been vacant.

Vance Samuelson, one of the volunteers, and Gloria Martinez, the engineer, were putting the truck back in order.

“Well?” asked Gloria, loosening her suspenders, “what’s your assessment?”

“Deliberate,” Will said, motioning her to the middle of the floor. The roof lay in corrugated metal sheets around them. The surface was still hot beneath his feet. “That’s what the arson investigator will rule. But they can only figure out so much. To find out who’s doing this, we’ll need you and me. Hell, we’ll need the whole county.” He stuck the bandanna in his pocket and led the way out of the wreckage of the barn. “I’m pissed off, Gloria. This reminds me of that incident almost five months ago, the one I haven’t figured out yet.”

“It’s the arson investigators’ job to figure it out, not yours. You’ve got your own job to do.”

He nodded and peeled off his protective jacket, which now felt like a sauna.“ In theory. We know this community. We know who’s doing what, who’s feuding with his neighbors, who has money troubles, whose kids are out of control. We’ll be the ones to figure out who’s setting these fires.”

“Sooner rather than later, I hope.” She scuffed her boot in the black cinders around the foundation of the barn. “Same culprit with both fires?”

“Probably. I think he used different accelerants for number one and number two.”

“Just what we need. A smart arsonist.”

“He’s not supposed to be smart,” Will reminded her. “According to profile, he’s got below-average intelligence.”

“Maybe he’s addicted to crime shows. You don’t have to be smart to copy something they demonstrate step-by-step on TV.”

“Crime shows provide such a valuable public service,” he said, feeling weariness settle into his bones. “They make our job so much easier.” He rolled back one sleeve, checking his forearm for a burn. The skin was bright red, appearing slightly sunburned. The dragon tattoo, imprinted on a much younger, much stupider Will Bonner, was unscathed. He checked his watch, then put on his dark glasses. “I’m going to be late getting home. Again. You want to have dinner with us?” He often invited her, and not just because he liked and respected her. So did Aurora, and lately, his stepdaughter seemed to prefer discussing shoe shopping with Gloria to hanging out with Will.

Gloria sent him a weary smile. “Thanks, but I have plans.” She patted him on the sleeve. “See you around, partner.”

The Mini still had that new-car smell even though Sarah was its second owner. Following her meeting with Birdie Shafter, she got behind the wheel, feeling wrung out. She didn’t know what to do next and didn’t really have a road map.

She told herself there was no shame in being back in Glenmuir. Soon the whole town would know she had returned home in defeat—a woman betrayed—and that her perfect life in Chicago had been a sham. But so what? People started over all the time.

Her phone was ringing. She checked the screen, tamped down a jolt of panic and took the call. “How did you get this number?”

“We should talk,” Jack said, ignoring her question. “My folks think so, too. Everybody does.”

“I don’t. My lawyer doesn’t.” Actually, Birdie hadn’t said so specifically, but she had advised Sarah not to give him any more information than necessary at this point.

“You have a lawyer?” Jack demanded.

“And you don’t?” She suspected he had called Clive Krenski the moment—the very second—he had thrown on his clothes that day, still sticky with Mimi Lightfoot. His hesitation confirmed it.

“I already gave her Clive’s number,” Sarah said. From the brick-paved town parking lot, she had a view of the harbor and of Glenmuir’s picturesque square. It looked as quaint and pristine as the set of a nostalgic movie, with striped awnings over the shop fronts, bowls of water set out for any dog that might pass, lush flower baskets suspended from the light poles and businesses that respected the town’s resistance to change. There were no franchise stores or glaring signs, just an air of simpler times past.

“Don’t do this.” Jack sounded drained and stressed-out.

Her old habit of worrying about every breath he took threatened to kick in. She stiffened her spine against the seat back. “Her name is Bernadette Shafter—”

“Oh, perfect—”

“—and I’mnot going to discuss certain things with you.”

“Then how about you listen?”

She stared out at Tomales Bay. A flotilla of brown pelicans bobbed on the water under a late afternoon sky of layered blue and cotton candy clouds. Jack hadn’t liked Glenmuir. He considered it a backwater, a place where old hippies might go to die…or become oyster farmers. Though years had passed, she still remembered that jab at her father. It had bothered her then and it bothered her now. The difference was, now she was doing something about that and all the other little hurtful things he’d said and she’d swallowed while making excuses for his lack of consideration.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“You can’t just piss away five years of marriage—”

“No, you did that.” She watched some seagulls rise in a flock, creating a shadow on the water. “How long have you been with her?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t want to talk about her. I want you to come back.”

Sarah was stunned, not just by his words but by the fear in his voice. “You want me to come back. What for? Oh, here’s an idea. We can get tested together. Yes, Jack. As if being cheated on isn’t bad enough, I’m going to have to get tested for STDs. We both are.” She blinked back tears of humiliation.

“That’s not a factor. Mimi and I are exclusive.”

Are. Not were. “Really? And you know this…how?”

“I just know, okay?”

“No, it’s not okay, and you have no idea who she was with before you.”

“She was—” Jack fell silent for a moment. Then he said, “Sarah, can we not just throw this away? I’m sorry I said I wanted a divorce. That was stupid. I hadn’t thought anything through.”

Oh, my. Apparently Clive had explained the fiscal pitfalls of running off a perfectly good wife. “So are you saying you’ve changed your mind?”

“I’m saying I never meant it in the first place. I was scared, Sarah, and embarrassed and guilty. To hurt you that much…it’s the last thing I wanted. I was in panic mode, and I handled it badly.”

She actually felt torn, she noted with an unpleasant jolt. Although she was clearly the injured party, she was at war with herself. The part of her that was conditioned to love him, the part that had carried her through his cancer treatment and her fertilization attempts melted at the sound of his voice. At the same time, the part that had just endured the overwhelming humiliation of the attorney’s office was still choking on the devastating memory of seeing her husband screwing another woman.

“I have a headache, Jack. It doesn’t matter to me whether you handled it well or badly.”

“Forget what I said that morning. I didn’t mean it. We can get through our problems, Sarah,” he told her, “but not this way.”

The flock of birds disappeared, leaving the bay flat and empty, beautiful in the afternoon light.

“Well, guess what?” she asked. “I’m doing this my way for a change.”

He hesitated. “We need to talk about us,” he said. “About you and me.”

“You have no idea what I need.” Sarah wasn’t angry. She was so far past anger that she had entered a red zone of emotion she had never felt before, didn’t even know existed. It was a tight, ugly place with dark corners where rage festered and gave rise to images she never realized she could conjure. These were not pictures of her doing horrible things to Jack, but to herself. That was what frightened her most of all.

“Sarah, come home, and we’ll—”

“We’ll what?”

“Deal with this like people who care for each other instead of communicating through lawyers. We can’t just call it quits. We can fix this, go back to the way things were.”

Ah. Initially he’d spoken from an angry, impulsive, honest place. After the lawyer explained what this would cost him, he was filled with remorse.

She saw a chartreuse-colored pickup truck merge onto Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and troll slowly northward. The side door bore the seal of the city of Glenmuir, established 1858. There were red conical lights on the top, a big tank with some sort of pump in back. A sun-browned, tattooed arm, with the sleeve rolled back, was propped on the edge of the window. The driver turned a little and she caught a glimpse of a baseball cap and dark glasses.

“Why would I want that?” she asked Jack. She’d spent most of the cross-country drive thinking about the way things were. The hours and hours of driving alone had forced her to confront the harsh truth about her marriage. She’d been fooling herself for a long time about being happy. She’d been acting like a contented, fulfilled wife, but that wasn’t the same as being one. It was such a lousy thing to realize about yourself. She took a deep, steadying breath. “Jack, why would I want to go back to the way things were?”

“Because it’s our life,” he said. “Jesus—”

“Tell me about the bank accounts. All four of them.” A strange feeling came over her. Deep inside, she discovered a core of calmness that radiated outward like a general anesthetic. “How soon did you put a freeze on them? Did you remember to zip your pants first?” Actually, she knew the answer. He had made his move within hours of the pizza delivery. In Omaha, she had stopped at an ATM to make a withdrawal from their joint checking account, only to find that the card was declined. The same was true of the other three accounts. Fortunately for her sanity, she had a credit card she used for syndication business. And, though she had never seen it that way before, she had an ace in the hole. There was a large sum of money in an account she held in her own name. On the advice of their CPA and Clive—who, up until now, she had considered a friend—she had opened the account when Jack’s cancer had been discovered. If the worst happened, there might be some decisions she would have to make on her own.

The decision to divorce her husband had not occurred to her back then.

“I did that to protect both of us,” Jack said.

“Both of us? Oh, I see. You and your lawyer, you mean.”

“It’s clear you’re not thinking straight. I got a call from the bank about a transaction with State Line Auto Sales—”

“Ah, so that’s what’s got you worried,” she said, suddenly realizing the true reason for his call. “And here I thought you called about me.”

“Now you’re trying to avoid the subject.”

“Oh, sorry. I traded the GTO for a car I actually want.”

“I can’t believe you did that. Of all the childish, immature things…You had no right to trade in my car.”

“Sure I did, Jack. I bought the thing, remember? The title’s in my name.”

“It was a gift, dammit. You gave it to me.”

“Boy, you sure know how to scold a girl about a car,” she said. “I’d like to hear what you have to say about something really bad, like…oh…infidelity?”

He didn’t bother responding to that. How could he? “I wish I could take back what I did, but I can’t. We have to move on, Sarah—together. We can heal from this. I need a chance to make it up to you. Please come home, sugar-bean,” he said, using his pet name for her in a voice that used to beguile her.

Now it just made her queasy. With a curious feeling of detachment, she stared at the scene in front of her—a sleepy seaside town. Two women chatting on the sidewalk. A shy-looking mongrel flashed around a corner, furtively looking for scraps.

“I am home,” she said. Birdie had explained that there was an advantage to initiating the divorce from California, a community property state. She had warned Sarah that Jack’s lawyer would probably fight it tooth and nail.

“What about everything I gave you?” Jack reminded her. “A beautiful home, anything you wanted or needed. Sarah, there are women who would kill to have those things…”

Jack was still talking when she turned off the phone. He just didn’t get it and probably never would. “Those things were worthless.” Her hand shook a little as she fitted the key into the ignition. Nerves, she thought. Rage. She knew enough about divorce to realize she was in for the entire painful spectrum of emotions. She wondered how and when they would strike. Would she be smacked down as though hit by a truck, or would the pain creep up on her and lodge like a virus under her heart? Now, for the first time, she fully understood how Jack had felt before undergoing his first treatment. The absolute terror of what she was about to do was excruciating.