Page 22 of Eruption
He said, incredulous, “Were you just going to leave without telling me?”
“I was going to call you at the office.”
“And then, what, send me a Hallmark card?”
“Please don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”
“Of course not,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to upsetyou.”
They were only a few feet apart, but the distance that she was about to put between them existed already.
“So you weren’t even going to let me say goodbye to the boys?”
“I didn’t want you to upsetthem.”
Somehow, he managed not to lose his temper. There was no point in arguing with her or trying to change her mind. They both knew this had been coming for a long time, but they had no way to prevent it. Even though he’d given up his place on the USGS advisory team when he married her, they still moved every few years. He’d been in Vancouver for two years, thenHawai‘i for five years, and he’d be leaving here next year. But Linda wanted to practice law, and for that she needed to move to a city and stay there so she could build a practice.
When they’d first married, none of this seemed important. She’d talked about doing pro bono work, said his travel didn’t matter. But of course it did matter. For his part, MacGregor had said he was willing to take a university position and settle down. But of course he wasn’t. He was a research volcanologist by training and temperament. That meant being in the field. He felt good only when he was in the field. He got restless if he spent too much time indoors. It was one of the reasons the guys in the data room called him a cowboy.
There had been a time after the twins were born when they might have worked it all out, made the necessary compromises. But they’d waited too long, had become more and more removed from each other.
That day, he had watched her pack for a while, and then he’d gone to hug the boys and—
The screen door slammed behind him, jolting him out of his thoughts.
“Are you trying to torture yourself? What’s next, you take out the home movies?”
It was Jenny. She’d caught him standing in the doorway to the boys’ room, saw him blinking back tears as he turned around.
She said, “I thought you were going to move out.”
“I am.”
“When, the twelfth of never?” She headed toward the kitchen. “I brought you the checklist for all the extra personnel we’re going to need in case you want to go over that tonight. Last big eruption, they had forty extra park rangers. We’ll need at least that many, and we’d better requisition them. And extra police, Hilo and Kona, for additional traffic control. And weneed to set up an infirmary with a full-time doc, paramedics, and a standby ambulance… there’s a lot to arrange.”
Despite himself, he smiled. This was Jenny being Jenny.
He followed her into the kitchen. “Want some saimin?” he asked, putting it in the microwave.
She wrinkled her nose. Despite being a Honolulu native, Jenny didn’t like the local food. “Got any yogurt?”
“I think so.” He opened the refrigerator. “Strawberry?”
She looked at him suspiciously. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but how old is it?”
“Not that old.” He managed a smile. “And is there any other way for me to take a question like that?”
He got the yogurt out of the refrigerator, fished in a drawer for a spoon.
“What’s this?” Jenny said, pointing to the blue folder on the kitchen table.
“Some old Defense Department study that Rick and Kenny dug up and wanted me to look at.”
“‘Vulcan,’” she read aloud, sitting down. “The Roman god of fire.”
The microwave beeped and he removed the steaming bowl of noodles. He sat down at the table and, with chopsticks, picked out the floating pieces of Spam and set them aside on a plate. The dirty little secret about island saimin was that it was made with Spam, and although MacGregor had told his housekeeper multiple times that he didn’t like it, she kept using it.
Jenny thumbed quickly through the folder. She paused and frowned, then turned the pages more slowly.