Page 85 of Never Forget
I nodded. I'd heard. Every station was getting new bodies. The department had run thin for a while, and someone upstairs had finally decided to do something about it.
"I want you to take point on them."
I looked up.
"Show them the station. Teach them how we do things. Break them in the right way." Cap leaned back in his chair. "You've been doing good work, Sam. The guys respect you. The newer ones come to you before they come to me half the time. I've been watching."
I didn't know what to say.
"I know you didn't ask for this." Cap's voice was steady. "But I'm asking you to do it. The probies we get this year are going to shape this station for the next decade. I want them shaped by someone who gives a damn."
"Thank you, Cap."
I sat with the weight of what he was handing me for a moment.
I thought about the kid I'd been when I walked into the academy. Scared out of my mind. Convinced I was going to wash out in the first week. I hadn't signed up because I knew what Iwas doing. I'd signed up because Jack told me to. He'd said I'd find what he found there. Brothers. A place that made sense.
He'd been right. He'd been right about all of it.
If I told him about this, he would have grinned in a stupid way and told me it was about time Cap pulled his head out. He would have bought me a beer. He would have given me shit for the rest of the week about how I was going to ruin a whole generation of Havensworth firefighters before he finally admitted, late at night, somewhere between the third and fourth round, that he was proud of me.
I wanted to tell him. I wanted to walk out of this office and find him in the bay and tell him.
Grief was a funny thing. Some days I forgot for whole stretches of time. Some days I'd hear the rumble of the engine coming back from a call and half expect to see Jack swing down from the cab. Some days I'd reach for my phone to text him something and remember, right as my thumb hit the screen, that there was no one on the other end.
"I won't let you down, Cap."
"I know." His face softened. "That's why I'm asking."
The knock came before either of us had moved.
"Sutton, I'm stealing a minute of your time?—"
Deputy Chief Graff was already halfway through the door by the time Cap looked up. He moved through the station the way he moved through every room in the department, like the space belonged to him and he was generous enough to let the rest of us occupy it.
"Henry." Cap leaned back in his chair. "You always did know how to make an entrance."
Graff laughed. "Forty years, Sutton. I've earned it."
He crossed the office and stopped when he saw me.
"Reeves." His face broke into the easy grin he saved for moments like this.
"Chief." I straightened in my chair.
"I've been meaning to catch you." He clapped me once on the shoulder. "What's this I hear about Donovan's sister talking to our firefighters? Something about a reform proposal?"
I took a breath before I answered.
"She's noticed some gaps between how the department runs and how other cities do things. She thinks some of it could stand a second look."
Graff's smile didn't quite move, but something behind it did.
"And what does a girl from New York know about firefighting?"
Jamie's voice rose in my head before I could answer.So do we wait for more people to die before anything changes?
"Bless her heart." Graff's voice had gone fond. "She's been through something most people couldn't come back from. Losing her brother like that. Raising that little girl on her own. Women need to have something to occupy their minds. Especially after something like that."
