Page 76 of Never Forget
The apartment was modest but comfortable. Nothing flashy, but there was quality underneath the simplicity. I thought about how Sam could afford this. Not all firefighters lived like this.
Havensworth didn't have one fire department. It had a patchwork of districts, each funded by its own tax base, each paying its firefighters differently. A crew on James Island mightmake $36,000 a year. A crew in a wealthier district might make $50,000. Same job. Same risks. Different zip code. And because each district operated independently, a dispatcher like Megan couldn't just send the nearest unit to a call—she had to work within jurisdictional lines, even when lives were on the line.
Sam and Jack were career firefighters at Station 33, one of the better-funded stations, and it showed.
My eyes drifted to the corner of the living room. A record player. And beside it, a crate of vinyl albums.
I crossed the room and crouched down, flipping through the spines. Led Zeppelin. Creedence Clearwater Revival. The Eagles. Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Something tugged in my chest.
"Jack had half of these," I said.
Sam appeared in the kitchen doorway, coffee mug in hand. "We used to fight over who had better taste. Never did settle it."
I pulled out Creedence. "This was always playing at our house."
"Your dad got us into them." Sam crossed the room and crouched beside me. "He'd put this on during backyard cookouts and talk about seeing them live in '72. Jack and I must've heard that story a hundred times."
I smiled. I remembered those cookouts. Dad at the grill, Mom bringing out lemonade, Jack and Sam throwing a football in the yard while the music drifted through the screen door.
Sam took the album from my hands. "Come on."
He slid the vinyl from its sleeve and set it spinning. The first notes filled the apartment, and suddenly I was twelve years old again—summer heat and the smell of charcoal and my father's voice singing along off-key.
Sam settled onto the couch. I sat beside him, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him.
The music did what music always does. It made the room feel bigger and smaller at the same time.
"I wasn't there when he died."
The words came out before I could stop them.
"I should have come home sooner. He told me not to, but I should have come anyway." I stared at my hands. "I could have said goodbye. I could have been there with him at the end. Instead I was in New York drinking champagne."
Sam was quiet beside me. When he spoke, his voice was rough.
"No one was there when he died, Jamie. He was alone."
I turned to look at him. I hadn't known Jack spent his last moments without anyone beside him.
"I tell myself he wanted it that way," he said. "That he didn't want Rosie to see him suffer. I want to think he didn't want us to watch him go. That he wanted us to remember him happy."
I thought about Jack. The memories that came when I said his name. Sitting at the kitchen table at midnight, his patience never wavering as he walked me through calculus I didn't understand. The way he looked at Sarah on their wedding day, like she was the only person in the room. Rosie on his shoulders, both of them laughing at something I couldn't hear. The hug he gave me at the airport before I left for New York, holding on a beat longer than usual, like he knew something was ending.
His laugh. The sound of it, loud and easy, filling whatever room he was in.
Every time I worked on the reform proposal, every time I looked at Rosie's face, Jack was still there. Still alive somewhere in my mind. Because the images that stayed, the ones I carried—they were all happy.
"That's what I tell myself," he said again, quieter now.
Sam was showing me the thing he held onto so he could live with it. And I realized I wasn't the only one who'd been carrying this.
The guilt didn't disappear. But the weight of it shifted. It was still heavy, but we were holding it together now.
I reached over and took his hand. The music played on, but I'd stopped hearing it.
He was here. He'd been here through all of it—the funeral, the fire, the days I couldn't get out of bed and the days I had to anyway. I didn't know what I would have done without him.
