Page 44 of Never Forget
Then she was gone.
I stood in the empty apartment, staring at the brochures still spread across my kitchen table. College of Havensworth. Clemson. University of South Carolina. A future mapped out by a man who thought he knew what was best for me.
She didn't hear me, or at least, she didn’t want to. Amber Henderson had never been told no in her life. She didn't know what to do with a boundary except pretend it wasn't there.
But I meant it. It was over.
Whether she believed it or not.
CHAPTER 10
Jamie
"He discouraged me."
The words came out harder than I intended.
Loretta poured coffee while I talked. The kitchen was quiet without Rosie. She was at preschool until the afternoon, and the house felt too big in her absence. I wrapped my hands around my mug and told Loretta about Sam. How he'd confirmed everything Megan and Danny said. How he'd agreed the system was broken. How he'd gone quiet when I told him I wanted to do something about it.
"He told me Havensworth doesn't like outsiders."
Loretta set down the coffee pot. She didn't respond right away. Instead she pulled out the chair across from me and sat, her own mug cradled between her palms.
"He said that?"
"More or less."
She was quiet for a moment, studying me with that look she got when she was deciding how much truth someone could handle.
"That boy has been avoiding conflict since he was twelve years old," she said finally. "His daddy taught him that. Keepyour head down. Don't make waves. Don't give anyone a reason to come at you."
I knew about Sam's father. Everyone who grew up in this neighborhood knew, even if no one talked about it directly.
"He's not trying to dismiss you, Jamie." Loretta's voice softened. "He's scared for you. There's a difference."
I don't need him to be scared for me. I need him to not make me feel like I'm crazy for doing this.
"Sam has spent his whole life not rocking the boat," she continued. "You're asking him to capsize it. That's not nothing." She paused. "You need to give him a minute to figure out what kind of man he wants to be."
Maybe Loretta was right. Maybe I'd been too hard on him. Sam could take all the time he needed to figure out what kind of man he wanted to be. But I wasn't going to wait for him to decide before I got started.
By evening, the kitchen table had disappeared under paper.
Rosie was asleep down the hall. Loretta had handled bath time and bedtime while I cleared the dishes, and now the house was quiet in that particular way it got after dark. Just the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional creak of old floorboards settling.
My laptop was open in front of me. Jenna's card was propped against my coffee cup where I could see it. I'd been at this for hours.
LODD classification criteria varied by state, but the federal standards were clear. Death had to occur in the line of duty, during response to an emergency, as a direct result of job-related activities. Jack's death checked every box. He'd been on shift.He'd responded to a structure fire. He'd died from complications of smoke inhalation sustained during that response.
The only reason the city could deny it was the insubordination angle. He'd defied a direct order when he went back into that building.
But I'd found precedent. Other departments, other states. Firefighters who'd made judgment calls in the field, who'd prioritized civilian lives over protocol, who'd been honored for it instead of punished. The difference wasn't the action. It was how the department chose to frame it.
Havensworth had chosen to protect itself.
I pulled up the incident reports I'd found through public records requests. Staffing numbers for the past five years. Response times. Mutual aid requests, or the lack of them. The picture that emerged was damning. Crews running short-handed shift after shift. Stations operating in silos. Communication systems that didn't talk to each other.
Megan had called it fragmentation. That was generous. It was chaos dressed up as tradition.
