Page 80 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

I go down on my knees in the gravel, mask off, helmet off, and the night air hits my face cold as creek water. Off to my left the girl is wrapped in a blanket sobbing into her mama's neck. The boy's sitting up on a cot with a mask on his face, giving somebody a shaky thumbs up. Merle Haskins is cussing a medic for cutting his shirt.

Everybody. Every single one.

Something breaks open behind my ribs and comes out of me half laugh, half sob, ugly and loud, and I don't care who hears it. Tater drops down next to me, arm around my neck, forehead against my helmet's dented crown.

"You went in," he says.

"I went in."

"You went in."

Two years I've carried a fire on my back. Tonight, I carried people out of one instead. That's what my hands are for. That's what they were always for.

I got there in time.

I tip my head back and the smoke column is thinning against the stars, and I say it to the sky where I hope she can hear it.

"We got there, Claire. Every one of them."

***

Dawn comes up gray and pink over the wreck of the mill, steam rising off the hot spots while the overhaul crews pick through. I'm sitting on the tailgate of Rescue 2, soot to my elbows, drinking the worst coffee in Texas, and I have never felt lighter in my whole life.

Because here's what tonight taught me. I ran into the thing that took everything from me, and I came out the other side. So whatever Nellie's scared of, whatever wall she's built, I can stand in front of it and not flinch. I'm done being careful.

She's at the hospital. Has to be. Every nurse in the county worked smoke cases all night, and Nellie Greer doesn't sit out a bad night. So, the plan is simple. Overhaul wraps, I hand off my gear, and I walk into that ER smelling like a burn pile and I say everything. Today. This morning.

I'm sliding off the tailgate when I see Debbie Sue.

She's standing past the tape, and she has no business being here. Not at a fire scene at dawn. Not when her whole floor is drowning in patients. And she hasn't slept, I can see that from here. Still in yesterday's clothes. Arms wrapped around herself like she's holding something in.

My gut knows before I do.

"Debbie." I'm grinning anyway, because I can't stop it yet. "Everybody made it. Even old Merle. What are you doing out here? Isn't Nellie still at the—"

"Owen."

One word. That's all it takes. Her face is wrong. Her face is the chaplain's face, and my whole body goes cold inside forty pounds of gear.

"Debbie. Where is she."

"She's gone." Her voice cracks down the middle. "She couldn't watch, Owen. She packed last night while you were in there. She didn't leave Saturday, she—" She presses her hand over her mouth, and what comes out from behind it comes out broken. "She left town at four this morning."

The mill smokes behind me. The road out of Willowbend runs empty and pale in front of me, all the way to the horizon.

I look at Debbie, at her wrecked eyes, at her hand still pressed to her mouth like there's more behind it. Like there's something bigger than leaving fighting to get out of her.

"Debbie." My voice doesn't sound like mine. "What aren't you telling me?"

Her mouth opens. Nothing comes out.

This is a woman who talked through her own C-section. Who narrates other people's weddings from the third pew. And she stands at the tape line with her hand pressed over her mouth and her eyes streaming, and she shakes her head. Once. Slow. Like whatever it is won't fit through the door.

Then she turns and walks to her car. Doesn't run. Walks, arms wrapped around herself, and that's worse.

Whatever Debbie couldn't say, it isn't at the hospital and it isn't in that car.

I know where it's been living all summer.