Page 99 of Never Forget
I was heading home.
I was heading home to Sam.
CHAPTER 25
Sam
Two more days.
Forty-eight hours, give or take, and Jamie and Rosie would walk through the jet bridge at Havensworth International and my life would start feeling like my life again. The days since they'd left had been emptier. I'd filled the space with work to keep myself occupied.
Cap had given me the probies the morning after their flight. Four of them, fresh out of the academy, still excited enough to show up fifteen minutes early. I'd been running them through drills from sunup to sundown, catching the mistakes before they became habits. It was good work. It filled the hours. When I wasn't on shift I was picking up buddy shifts for guys who needed an hour at a doctor's office or an afternoon at a school recital. I said yes before I checked my schedule. The captain of B-shift had started joking that I was auditioning for his rig.
Jamie had her hands full up in New York. The packing, the office, the walk-throughs. I didn't want to be one more thing on her list. So I'd kept it to texts, mostly, sent in the breaks between drills.Rosie okay? Probies still alive. Missing you.
"Sam!"
Jenna was coming across the bay with Cole a step behind her.
"Hey, Jenna!"
Jenna had been coming to the meetings at Megan and Danny's before Jamie left for New York. A few weeks ago she'd mentioned that Cole had been asking about what firefighters actually did. I'd told her the station ran ride-alongs. I could show him around the station and if he was lucky, he might even see us in action.
He was tall for sixteen. Hair in his eyes. His backpack was still slung over one shoulder. He'd come straight from school.
"Glad you could make it, Cole."
Jenna squeezed his shoulder. "I'll be back at 6:00 p.m."
He nodded. She gave me a small wave on the way out.
I'd watched him in the corner of Megan and Danny's living room enough times to know the shape of him. He was quiet and careful. There was always a book in his lap. He wasn't a kid who settled easy into a new room, and the bay of a firehouse was a lot of room.
I figured I'd warm him up before I walked him through the rig.
"How's school?"
He shrugged. "Fine."
"You play anything?"
"Not really."
"Got a girlfriend?"
He winced before he caught himself.
"No."
It came out a beat too fast.
I kept my face neutral and gestured him toward the rig. There was always somebody when a sixteen-year-old winced like that. It was the kind of thing you didn't call out loud unless you wanted to lose him for the rest of the afternoon.
I gave him the tour. The rig. The gear. Where the turnouts hung and how we got into them when the tones dropped. Hewatched everything. He didn't touch what he hadn't been told he could touch. His questions came one at a time after he'd thought about them.
How did the water pressure work on a hydrant? How long did a tank of air last on the pack? What was the weight of the full turnout when you had it all on?
Then the ones every kid asked when they got near a fire truck.
