Just Breathe

A woman came in, breathless, and headed straight for the water cooler. Her athletic body was encased in gleaming black-and-yellow spandex. The chest-hugging top was covered with sponsors’ logos. The stripe up the side of her skintight shorts read Trek. She wore an aerodynamic helmet and wraparound shades. In cup-heeled cycling shoes, her walk was stiff-legged, the toes pointing up.

She drank six cone-shaped cups at the water cooler and finally turned to Sarah. “Sorry about that. I used up my hydration pack.”

“Oh.” Sarah was at a loss. “I hate when that happens.”

“Birdie Shafter,” the woman said, taking off the helmet and shades. A riot of black hair and a supermodel face were revealed. “You’re Sarah Moon.”

Sarah covered her surprise. Somehow, she’d expected Birdie to have changed more from high school. “That’s right.”

“I’m training for a triathlon, so my schedule is pretty crazy these days.” She held open a door marked with the nameplate Bernadette Bonner Shafter, Attorney at Law.

Sarah stepped into the office.

“Give me two minutes,” Birdie said.

“Take five,” Sarah offered.

“You’re a peach.” She ducked through a side door. Sarah heard the sound of running water.

Despite Birdie’s unconventional appearance, the law office was all business. The array of framed diplomas and certificates did its job of instilling confidence in the client. Birdie had earned her bachelor’s at USC and her law degree from San Diego State. She had numerous credentials displayed, and gold embossed stickers designated her a summa graduate from both schools. The State of California Bar Association empowered her as a member in good standing.

Dark wooden built-in shelves provided a wall of fame. Either Birdie was star-struck or she ran in exalted circles. She had pictures of herself with the Governator and Diane Feinstein, Lance Armstrong and Brandi Chastain. There was a shot of her with Francis Ford Coppola in front of his winery and another with Robin Williams with the Coast highway in the background.

The photographs propped on the big tiger oak desk were more personal. There were shots of the Bonner Flower Farm, which Sarah recalled had been founded by Birdie’s counterculture parents. Another photo showed Birdie and her husband, Ellison Shafter, whom Sarah’s father said was a pilot for United.

There was also a picture of Birdie’s brother, Will. Either it was an old photo, or he hadn’t changed a bit. In Sarah’s head, Shirl’s voice asked, Why should you change if you’re already perfect?

Of all the people Sarah remembered from high school, she remembered Will Bonner best. This was ironic, since he had probably never known her name. The framed photo triggered a flood of memories she didn’t know she had. Standing there in the unfamiliar office, the antique pine plank floor creaking beneath her feet, she was surprised to discover old resentments festering in secret beneath the surface. Her life with Jack had formed a gloss over the past. Maybe that was why she’d married him. He took her away from people like this.

Now that he was out of the picture, there was nothing standing between her and old memories, and she fell into the past like Alice down the rabbit hole, grasping at stray roots on her way to the bottom.

She scowled in hostility at the picture of Will Bonner. He grinned right back at her. He had been in the same grade as Sarah, but unlike her, he was the epitome of high school perfection—a top-ranked athlete, blessed by all-American good looks. He had jet-black hair and the same twinkling eyes that used to make her knees melt when he looked at her. Not that he ever actually looked at her. Embarrassed by her futile and utterly predictable crush, Sarah had fought back the only way she knew how. In the underground comic book she self-published in high school on an old mimeograph machine in the basement, she’d depicted Will Bonner as a vain, bull-witted, steroid-abusing poster boy. He probably hadn’t noticed her biting satire, either, but it had made her feel…not better…but vindicated. More in control.

No doubt he wasn’t aware that she had sat in front of him in Honors English all four years, or that she made sketch after sketch of him, telling herself she needed the studies for her underground comics. Bonner had treated her as if she were a piece of furniture.

The years since high school had brought about at least one huge change, Sarah observed. In the picture, he was holding a dark-haired child whose face was buried against his burly shoulder. Some guys looked awkward with kids, like contestants on Fear Factor. Others, like Will Bonner, looked at ease and natural, approachable.

Under different circumstances, Sarah might be filled with questions about her high school obsession. Not now, though. Now, she had to explain her situation to Birdie and figure out what to do next.

Pulling her gaze away from the array of photos, she forced herself to wait quietly. The shock of leaving Jack had still not completely subsided, and that was probably a good thing, because it kept her numb. She was like a soldier with a limb blown off, staring uncomprehendingly at empty space. Later, she supposed, the pain would come. And it would be like nothing she’d ever felt before.

There was a fee schedule posted on the wall, like the specials menu of a restaurant, or a list of services at a beauty parlor, only it covered legal matters rather than hairstyles—family law, immigration, wills and probate, elder law. Sarah tamped back a feeling of apprehension. Could she even afford a lawyer? She suspected that none of her transactions would be simple. Or cheap.

She couldn’t let money—or a lack thereof—stand in her way, though. She had to reinvent her life. Starting now.

“Thanks for waiting.” Birdie stepped into the office. She had shed the cycling getup and donned a more familiar look—unbleached cotton, Dansko clogs, no makeup and an open, guileless expression of earnestness. On Birdie, the look didn’t seem contrived. She wore the natural style well, as though she had invented it.

Yet the sight of her, looking so sincere and inoffensive, gave Sarah second thoughts. What had become of the meanest girl in school? Had she gone soft, just when Sarah needed a hard-ass? She needed a lawyer who would protect her interests through this process—she couldn’t quite bring herself to use the D-word yet—not Mother Earth.

“No problem,” Sarah said. “Thanks for seeing me on short notice.”

“I’m glad I could work you in.”

A soft burble from the intercom box interrupted her. “Sorry to interrupt you, Ms. Shafter,” said the receptionist, “but there’s a deadline attached to this. It’s Wayne Booth of Coastal Timber.”

Sarah moved toward the door, but Birdie waved her back, covered the receiver mouthpiece and said, “I won’t be a minute.” Then her posture changed. She stood straighter, held her shoulders back. “Wayne, I’ve already given you my client’s answer. If that’s your best and final offer, then we’ll let a judge do better.” She paused, and an angry voice crackled at her. “I understand perfectly, but I’m not sure you do. We’re not playing a game here…”

Sarah watched as the earth mother turned into a corporate dominatrix, chewing out the legal counsel of a major timber company, getting her way and then gently setting down the phone. When she turned her attention back to Sarah, she looked serene and unflappable, as though the exchange had never happened. Sarah knew she’d found the right lawyer after all. The mean girl had figured out how to harness her powers.

They shook hands and took their seats, Sarah in a comfortable upholstered chair and Birdie at her desk. Sarah took a deep breath and plunged right in. “I just got here from Chicago. I’ve left my husband.”

Birdie nodded, her expression turning soft with sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

Sarah couldn’t speak. Birdie pushed a box of tissues closer to her but Sarah ignored them. She twisted her wedding set around and around her ring finger. She really should take it off, but it was from Harry Winston, three carats total weight, and she couldn’t think of a safe place to keep it.

“Is this a recent development?” Birdie asked.

Sarah nodded. “As of last Friday.” The clock in her car had read 5:13 when she had peeled away from Shamrock Downs and Jack and Mimi Lightfoot and everything she’d ever believed about her life. How many women knew the precise moment their marriage cracked apart?

“Are you safe?” Birdie asked her.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I need to know if you’re safe. Is he violent? Have you ever had an incident of domestic abuse?”

“Oh.” Sarah deflated against the back of the chair. “Oh, God, no. Nothing like that.” In truth, she felt as though a violent act had been committed against her, but it wasn’t the sort you could report to the police. “He was unfaithful.”

Birdie sent her a matter-of-fact look. “You should get tested, then.”

Sarah regarded her blankly, uncomprehendingly. Tested. Then it dawned on her. Tested for STDs. For HIV, even. Son of a bitch. “I, er, yes, of course. You’re right.” A cold ball of fear formed in her gut. The realization that he’d put her in physical danger added fresh horror to the betrayal. “Sorry. That didn’t occur to me until now. I still can’t believe Jack did this.”

“Jack.” Birdie opened the laptop on her desk. “I’m going to make some notes here, if that’s all right.”

“Sure. This is all new to me.”

“Take your time. So your husband’s legal name…?”

“John James Daly,” Sarah supplied. “I kept my maiden name after we married.”

“And that was…”

“We’ve been married five years as of last June—2003. I met him when I was in college—University of Chicago—and married him right after graduation.”

Birdie nodded. “The Bay Beacon ran a beautiful picture and did a little piece about it.”

Sarah was surprised Birdie had noticed the picture and remembered it, but perhaps that had more to do with the uneventfulness of small-town life than to Sarah’s importance. The twice-weekly local paper had always kept readers abreast of small matters—weddings and births, tides and the weather, roadwork and school sports. When she was in high school, Sarah had submitted some editorial cartoons to the Bay Beacon, but the paper’s editor had declared them too edgy and controversial. Ironically, her drawings had poked fun at big-city developers vying for the chance to build shopping malls and condos right next to America’s most pristine national seashore.

“I never saw the piece,” Sarah said. “We live—I mean, I lived—in Chicago.” She twisted the wedding set some more. “I wish I’d come back to visit more often than I did, but Jack never liked coming here, and time just seemed to slip by. I should have pushed harder. God, I feel like such a loser.”

“Let’s get one thing straight.” Birdie folded her hands on top of the desk.

“What’s that?”

“You don’t ever need to justify yourself to me. I’m not here to judge you or to hold you accountable or anything like that. I’m not going to criticize any choice you’ve made, insult you or divulge details about your personal life to strangers.”

Sarah’s face burned with shame, because she knew exactly what Birdie was referring to. When Birdie was a senior in high school, she’d had a breast reduction. It was no secret; after all, she’d gone from having a triple D rack to wearing tank tops. Sarah had lampooned it in her underground comics. Why not poke fun at the meanest girl in the school? Now Sarah knotted her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry about that stupid high school comic book.”

“Don’t be. I thought it was funny.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, kind of. Back then, I tended to like anything that was about me. I was awful in high school, with or without the boobs. To be honest, I sort of liked the attention of being featured in the funny pages. It was a long time ago, Sarah. Let’s hope we’ve both moved on.”

“I’m still drawing,” Sarah admitted. “I have a syndicated comic strip, but I get my inspiration from my own life these days, not other people’s.”

“Good for you.” Birdie shook her head. “Some people spend their whole lives filled with regrets about stuff that went on in high school. I’ve always wondered why that is. It’s just four years. Four lousy years in a life that can span a century. Why do people get so fixated on those four little years?”

“Good question,” Sarah said quietly.

Birdie took a form from the printer on the credenza behind the desk. “This outlines the terms of our agreement. I want you to read it carefully and call me if you have any questions.”

The sheet was covered with dense legalese, and Sarah’s heart sank. The last thing she wanted to do was wade through this. But she was on her own now, and she had to look out for herself. She studied the first paragraph, and her eyes started to glaze over. “Do you have a Reader’s Digest version of this?”

“That’s as simple as it gets. Take all the time you need.” She waited while Sarah read over the document, seeing nothing questionable—other than the fact that this was going to cost a lot of money. She signed the agreement and dated it at the bottom. “Done,” she said.

“Done. So let’s get started. Mind if I record this interview?”

“I guess not. What are we going to talk about?”

“I need the whole story. Everything from the beginning.”

Sarah glanced at the old-fashioned clock on the wall. “Do you have other appointments this afternoon?”

“I have all the time you need.”

“He’s in Chicago,” she said. “Can I be here and, um, divorce him if he’s in Chicago?”

“Yes.”

Divorce him. It was the first time she’d actually said it aloud. The words came out of her yet she didn’t understand them. It sounded like a foreign phrase. She was mimicking random syllables in a strange tongue. Div Orsim. Divor Sim.

“Yes,” she repeated, “I do want a divorce.” Then she felt sick. “That’s like saying I want to disembowel myself. That’s how it feels right now.”

“I’m sorry,” Birdie said. “It’s never easy. But one thing I can tell you is that even though the loss hurts, it also creates new space in your life, new possibilities.”

Sarah fixed her gaze on a spot out the window, where the waters of Tomales Bay flowed past. “I never meant to stay in Chicago,” she said. “Never could get used to the god-awful weather there. After graduation, I planned to live in San Francisco or L.A., work for a paper while trying to get a comic strip into syndication.

“Then I met Jack.” She swallowed, took a deep breath. “His whole family is in the construction business. He got a contract from the university to build a new wing for the commercial-art studio, and I was on the student advisory committee, with the job of supplying input for the designers.”

She felt a smile turn her lips, but only briefly. “The students would feed them our pie-in-the-sky ideas and Jack would tell us why our plans wouldn’t work. I drew a series of satirical cartoons for the student paper about the situation. When Jack saw them, I thought he’d be furious. Instead, he asked me out.” She shut her eyes, wishing the memories were not so painful. But God, he’d been charming. Handsome and funny and kind. She had adored him from the start. Often, she’d wondered what he saw in her, but she didn’t dare ask. Maybe she should have asked. She opened her eyes and stared at her knotted-together fingers.

“The family welcomed me with open arms. They treated me like their newest daughter.” She still remembered her sense of wonder at the historic mansions in the shady neighborhood where Jack’s family had lived for generations. “You have to understand, this was huge for me. After losing my mother, my dad and brother and I unraveled. It just felt so good to be with a real family once again. Jack grew up in the same place and had friends he’d known from nursery school. So I just…stepped in to this ready-made world. It seemed effortless. I suppose I was in love with him from the beginning and was changing my plans for the future by the third date.”

From where she was now, she could look back and see that, for her, the process of falling in love had been an act of survival. She had lost her mother and was drifting out to sea. Jack—and all he stood for—was a solid object to cling to, something she could grasp with all her might and pull herself to safety.

Somewhere in the distance, a siren sounded, the throaty blast of a fire engine. Sarah’s mouth was dry. She got up and went to the water cooler and poured herself two cups of water. When she turned back to Birdie, she felt momentarily disoriented. She sat back down and sipped the water.

“It’s all right to cry,” Birdie said.

Sarah pictured herself floating out to sea alone again, like Alice in Wonderland drowning in her own uncontrollable tears. “I don’t want to cry.”

“You will.”

Sarah took a deep breath and another sip of water. She didn’t feel like crying, yet her sense of loss was intense. She was coming to realize that she had lost so much more than a husband. Her ready-made community of family and friends. Her house and all her things. Her own identity as Jack’s wife.

“We got married in Chicago,” she reported to Birdie. Their wedding had been lopsided, the friends of the groom outnumbering the friends of the bride by ten to one, but Sarah hadn’t minded. People adored Jack and she was proud of that. She had counted herself lucky to find a ready-made group of friends and a warmhearted family. “No assembly required,” she had told him with a grateful smile. “We went to Hawaii for our honeymoon. I never did like Hawaii, but Jack just assumed I did.”

She hadn’t seen the truth then. She barely caught a glimmer of it now, but she was starting to understand. From the moment she met Jack, she was a satellite to his sun, reflecting his light but possessing none of her own. Her wants and needs were eclipsed by his, and it all felt perfectly fine to her. They lived in his world, did the things he wanted and became a couple according to his vision, not hers.

Every once in a while, she would make a suggestion: What about Mackinac Island instead of Hawaii? Or the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City? He would pull her into his arms and say, “Yeah, right. It’s Hawaii, babe. Cow-abunga.” And so it went. She found herself listening to country-western music that made her cringe, and learned to stay awake during White Sox and Cubs games.

“And the thing was,” she told Birdie, “I was happy. I loved our life together. Which is probably crazy, because it was nothing like the life I would’ve chosen.”

“It was the life you had,” Birdie reminded her. “The fact that you liked it is a blessing. How many people endure a life they hate, every day?”

Sarah looked at her sharply. She suspected the rhetorical question was more about Birdie than about rhetoric.

“So here’s the big irony about what happened next,” Sarah said. “After our fairy-tale wedding and dream honeymoon, he wanted to start a family right away. For once, I asserted myself. I insisted on waiting a year or two, at least. I planned to focus on my career, so I lobbied hard to keep up the birth control a while longer.”

“This is the twenty-first century,” Birdie reminded her. “I don’t think you’re going to raise any eyebrows with that.”

“Not at the time. I think it was the one decision in our marriage I truly owned. The one choice that belonged to me and me alone.”

“Why do you say it’s ironic?”

“Because that one decision almost killed Jack.”

Chapter Five

Forty minutes before the end of Will Bonner’s duty shift, the quick-call went off—“Battalion! Fire and Ambulance StandBy!”—followed by two tones, signaling an alarm. Will acknowledged immediately, summoned Gloria on the loud-speaker, then yanked the ticket from the printer. After years of following routine, he had the exit down to a bare minimum number of moves. He donned gear as he strode from the office, snatching HTs up off the charger. Then he was off, out the door in less than a minute, shifting seamlessly from where he was a moment ago to the place he was headed. That was the life of a firefighter; one minute, watching reruns of Peyton Place on the SOAP channel, the next, checking the area map, putting on his bunker gear, jamming his feet into boots.

The town of Glenmuir boasted a Seagrave rescue pumper, circa 1992, and a crew of captain, engineer and a rotating stable of volunteers. While Gloria Martinez, the engineer, cranked up the engine and the volunteer crew went to their on-board stations, Will and Rick McClure, one of the on-call volunteers, jumped into separate patrol vehicles and sped ahead to find the fire. That was the trouble with nonspecific reports, like the one that had just come in. Someone would call, reporting that smoke was visible. In these parts, the term “yonder” was considered a cardinal direction.

Locals were skittish about fires in these parts. The legendary Mount Vision fire of ‘95 still haunted the landscape with skeletal black trees, ruined structures, meadows choked with the nonnative fireweed that took hold after the disaster.

As he headed up a nameless road labeled Branch 74, he scanned the horizon for some sign of the reported glow or header of smoke. Although he stayed focused on the search, his mind flashed on a thought of Aurora. This was going to make him late to dinner. Yesterday, he’d missed career day at her school.

“No big deal,” she’d told him. “It’ll be just like last year.”

“I missed last year.”

“Like I said. It’ll be just like that.”

At thirteen, his stepdaughter had a tongue as sharp as her appetite for teen fashion magazines, which, by Will’s judgment, she spent far too much time reading. When she was little and he had to leave her for a duty cycle, she used to throw a tantrum and beg him not to go. Now thirteen, she was either dismissive or brittle and sarcastic about his absences.

Will preferred the tantrums, if forced to make a choice. At least they were straightforward and over quickly. Being father and daughter used to be pretty effortless even though they were not related by blood. Will loved being her dad, and when Aurora’s mother took off, that didn’t change. If anything, it increased his devotion to her.

For a single parent, the job of fire captain was a mixed blessing. The schedule meant he got to be with her for long stretches of time, yet his absences were equally long. When he was on duty, she stayed with Will’s parents or, occasionally, her aunt Birdie and uncle Ellison. The arrangement had worked for years; it was one of the reasons he stayed in Glenmuir. Without the infrastructure of his family, raising Aurora would be next to impossible. His parents considered it a joy and a privilege to care for her—a sweet-natured, bright and beautiful child who had come into their lives like an early springtime. Now that she was thirteen and at odds with the world, he wondered if she was becoming too difficult for them to handle.

If he dared to suggest such a thing, his family would think he’d lost his mind. His parents, who ran an organic flower farm, believed sincerely in karmic balance and the idea that life never gave a person more than he could handle.

Will spotted the black billows of smoke rising over a familiar ridge just beyond the hamlet of San Julio, then radioed Gloria with the milepost marker and sped to the scene. He wasn’t sure whose property this was, a rolling spread of hay and alfalfa. No dwelling in sight, but a barn was on fire, the entire front a mask of flame. He slammed the truck into Park, leaving the keys in the ignition in case the vehicle was needed. Rick parked the other vehicle some distance away and ran to join Will, who was already surveying the area. A shadow flirted in his peripheral vision, and he turned in time to spy a stray dog.

He’d seen it around before, a collie mix with matted black-and-white brindled fur. The sight of Will and Rick in their helmet and bunker gear sent it racing away at top speed.