Page 133 of Never Forget
I got in the truck. Sat with my hands on the wheel for a minute because I wasn't sure I could drive.
Jamie was on the porch when I pulled in.
She ran to the truck before I had the door open. She pulled me out of the driver's seat by the front of my shirt, put her arms around me and held on so tight I could feel her shaking.
"I'm okay," I said.
I kept saying it.
"I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay."
She wasn't letting go.
I wasn't letting go either.
We stood in the driveway until I'd said it enough times that one of us believed it.
CHAPTER 33
Jamie
How many more people have to die for things to change?
The number wasnine.
Nine men who woke up that morning and kissed their wives goodbye. Nine men who laced up their boots, drove to work and never came home.
Fathers who would never walk their daughters down the aisle. Sons who would never call their mothers again. Brothers who left holes in family photographs. Husbands whose side of the bed would stay cold forever. A grandfather who would never meet the grandchild his daughter was carrying at the funeral.
Nine men. Nine funerals. Nine families shattered.
The night of the fire, after Sam called to say he was okay, my phone rang again.
Anna. Sam's sister.
She was crying. The kind that comes from somewhere deep—relief and terror tangled together.
"He's okay?" she asked. "You're sure he's okay?"
"He's okay," I told her. "He's coming home."
Anna fell apart on the phone.
"Take care of him, Jamie. Please."
"I will."
The city stopped.
For two weeks, Havensworth did nothing but mourn.
First, a memorial service for all nine. The city gathered. Thousands of firefighters from across the country descended on Havensworth—dressed in uniforms from every state, brothers who never knew the fallen but came anyway. The church overflowed. Screens were set up outside for those who couldn't fit inside. I stood beside Sam in the back of the sanctuary and watched him count the departments on the patches he could see—Memphis, FDNY, Boston, LA County, dozens more. He knew every one of them by shoulder patch the way a civilian would know a state flag. He didn't say anything. He just counted.
Then the individual funerals. Stretched over days. Nine services. Nine flag-draped caskets. Nine processions through the streets of Havensworth.
I lost track of what day it was. Tuesday blurred into Wednesday, then into Thursday. Sam's dress uniform got more wrinkled with each service. He stopped shaving. Stopped sleeping. Just kept showing up.
He was a pallbearer for three of them. Men he'd trained with, laughed with, drunk with. I watched him carry the weight—literal and otherwise—until I was afraid it would break him. The second of the three was a man he'd known since the academy. After that service, I found Sam in the church parking lot with his hand on the hood of a truck, head down, breathing through whatever he was breathing through. I didn't go to him. I stood ten feet back and waited. He needed the air more than he needed me right then, and I'd learned in the last eight days to tell the difference.
