Summer of Fire by Linda Jacobs Page B

the nearest pay phone and dialed.
    If there was one thing she hated more than dealing with her ex, it was having his wife answer. “Elyssa,” she said flatly, twisting the phone cable. “Is Devon there?”
    “Can’t heah you . . .”
    “I said, is Devon there?” Clare raised her voice over the din in the lobby and felt like a fishwife. Elyssa knew who she was.
    Thinking of dusty boots left in her cabin, she imagined Jay’s wife in her flowered chintz drawing room, her feet shod in soft Italian kid--Texas music in her voice when she wanted something like making the visitation more convenient for her.
    “Ah imagine Devon’s heah somewhere.”
    Yes, Clare knew how palatial the house Jay had built Elyssa was and how loosely she monitored the girl who was not her daughter.
    Clare waited, imagining annoyance twisting Elyssa’s penciled lips like she’d bitten an unripe persimmon. By the long metal hands of the fireplace clock, it took four minutes of long distance until Devon came on. Muted background sounds were probably the twenty-four inch color television Jay had given her for her designer bedroom. Clare couldn’t afford a luxury like that for a teenager.
    “Where are you, Mom?”
    “I’m in the lobby at Old Faithful. Lots of folks coming in for the night.”
    Through the open doors, she could see the loading zone with buses discharging passengers and pungent diesel smells. After what had happened at Grant Village, she wondered if they should think about an evacuation here.
    Almost everyone who came through the red, wrought-iron-trimmed double doors stopped and looked up. The soaring atrium lobby, crafted entirely of local wood, had been conceived by architect Robert Reamer in 1902, long before Hyatt considered the concept. On the underside of the dark, shingled roof, Clare noted a network of pipes and sprinkler heads. She didn’t plan on telling her daughter that if the wind did not shift or lie down, she, along with a thousand other firefighters, was going to defend Old Faithful.
    A pregnant woman entered, bending to hold the hand of a chubby toddler. Devon had been like that once. The child looked with wide eyes at the soaring balconies trimmed in knotty pine.
    “Are you staying at the hotel?” Her daughter’s voice was bright and Clare’s heart gave a little mother’s lift. Maybe Devon actually missed her.
    “I’ve got a cabin.” A smacking sound came through the line. “Are you eating?”
    “Pizza. Jay and Elyssa are going out.”
    Clare considered how poorly Devon received her balanced diet lecture, and really, it was Elyssa’s fault for letting her eat like that. She tried another tack. “Did you work at the pool today?”
    “Yeah.” Devon sighed and Clare imagined her flipping back her blond hair with a desultory hand. The turned up nose would be down and the china doll eyes vacant.
    “If work is so boring why don’t you reconsider applying to A & M?” It was a long shot with Devon’s grades, but both Jay’s dad and Elyssa’s influential father were alumni.
    “Don’t start. I’m not going to school anymore.”
    Clare’s face warmed. “Try and find a real job with your high school diploma.” It was no use, but she couldn’t stop. “Flipping burgers for minimum wage is all that’s out there.”
    “I’ll look for something in the fall since I’ll need a place of my own.”
    Clare closed her eyes. “This is the first I’ve heard of you wanting to move.” She’d married Jay when she was too young, to get out from under her mother, and was dead set against Devon making the same mistake.
    “I know you’re selling the house.” Devon laid down her winning hand. “That Realtor left a message on our answering machine.”
    “Oh, dear.”
    “Is that all you can say? You’re selling our house and didn’t bother to tell me.”
    The tight feeling that she’d seldom been without since Frank died intensified. “Darling, I thought it would upset you.”
    “You thought I