Page 67 of Chasing Smoke

“You have a charger, right?”

She nods and stands, going to the nightstand over on the other side of the room, opening up the top drawer. She pulls out a white cord, plugs in the charger, and hooks up the phone.

She turns to face me. “Now we wait.”

“Shouldn’t take too long to charge enough to turn it on. What can I do for you while we wait? What do you need?”

She’s hurting, and I want to take it away, make it better for her however I can. I’m dreading what we might discover on that phone. I don’t want my memory of Caleb to be tainted, but I’m second to Collins. I need to support her in this moment.

“I want to ask you something.” She moves back across the room and sits beside me on the bed.

I’m not sure what she wants to ask me, but I can already tell from the tone of her voice that I won’t like it.

THIRTY

Collins

“Will you tell me about that night?”

Ansel loses the color in his face. “The night Caleb died?”

I nod. I don’t want him to have to relive it, but I’ve always been curious, and I’ve never been brave enough to ask. Not until this moment.

When Caleb died, it didn’t seem like it mattered. The result was the same. I was a widow. But now, I’ve discovered so much that I didn’t know about my husband… I want to know if he was in pain or not.

“You don’t want to hear about that.” He stands from the bed and pushes a hand through his hair.

“Yes, I do. I’m ready now.”

We lock gazes across the room, and neither of us says anything for a long while. It’s obvious to me that my request is causing him anguish, but I don’t want this to be yet another thing I don’t know about my husband.

I stuck my head in the sand and ran from the truth of so many things for so long, but now I’m ready to know all of it. I realize that the only way I’m ever truly going to be able to move on is to know it all—the good, the bad, the ugly.

“Please, Ansel…”

He sucks in a breath and gives me one quick nod, coming back over to sit beside me on the bed. He takes my hand and sighs. “I was paired with Caleb to go in and locate the homeowner. We didn’t even know if he was inside for sure. Once we got in there, things deteriorated quickly. It was impossible to see, and…”

Ansel squeezes his eyes shut before letting go of my hand and dropping forward, elbows on his knees and hands on the back of his head.

“I’m sorry to put you through this.” I rub his back.

He shakes his head, not looking up or over at me. “And I knew we should get out of there. My gut was screaming at me to retreat, but Caleb wanted to keep pushing forward, and I went along with it, even though it felt wrong.”

“You couldn’t have known what would happen.” I’ve never blamed Ansel. Even now, hearing these details, I know it’s not his fault.

“You don’t understand.” His upper body jackknifes up, and he stares at me. “Sometimes as a firefighter, all you have are your instincts. And I’ve always listened to mine, until that day. Collins, it’s my fault that he’s dead. It’s my fault you’re a widow! And now I’m taking advantage and⁠—”

My stomach twists. Here I thought I was carrying it all, but Ansel’s been carrying a weight for almost two years too.

“Ansel, no, no.” He looks away from me, so I fall to my knees in front of him, cupping his face in my hands and forcing his eyes to meet mine. “It’s not your fault. You need to stop thinking it is. We both know that Caleb liked to push boundaries sometimes. I’m not saying that’s what happened that day, but it would be just like him to want to keep going even if there was a risk.”

It’s true. It’s one of the things I first found attractive about Caleb—how alive and engaged in life he was. He was always a bit of an adrenaline junkie. I remember we once took a trip to Colorado, and though he wasn’t that great of a skier, he insisted on trying all the Double Black Diamond runs. I was new to skiing, so I was stuck to the green ones—or the spa. If we were to go waterskiing on the lake, he’d insist on trying it with one ski and then eventually barefoot. He said he’d done so much of it on two skis over the course of his life that it was boring.

“I should have told him no. None of this would have happened if I’d told him no. I failed him.”

It absolutely guts me to see tears filling his eyes. “Listen to me—it is not your fault. I don’t blame you. Even knowing what I know now. I don’t blame you.”

He slides down off the bed onto his knees in front of me and wraps his arms around me. I feel his heart beating a million miles a minute.