Love Inspired May 2015 #2 (45 page)

Lord, he's my child, but other people keep telling him otherwise. How do I fix this?

As she rounded the corner, she stopped short. Chris stood next to an angel statue, his hand resting on one outstretched wing. Beyond him, Matt Bailey crouched next to a small headstone at the other side of the graveyard. It was situated by the corner of the graveyard fence, a line of lilac bushes sheltering it from the prairie wind. He sat motionless on the balls of his feet, shoulders slumped. He was a big man—well built and solid.

“Who's that?” Chris whispered.

“Someone who's come to visit a grave,” she replied softly, not wanting to interrupt Matt's quiet moment.

Chris was accustomed to graveyard visits. She used to take him quite often to her late husband's resting place, but he seemed entranced by this figure of solitary grief.

Chris moved in Matt's direction and Rachel made a swipe for his shoulder to redirect him, but missed. She jogged after the boy and caught his shoulder a few feet behind Matt's crouched form, tugging Chris back.

“No, Chris,” she whispered. “People need privacy.”

Matt glanced back, mildly surprised to see them.

“Hey, it's Mr. Bailey!” Chris announced with a grin.

“I'm sorry to intrude,” she said with an apologetic smile.

“It's okay.” Matt cleared his throat and rose to his feet. “How are you doing?”

“Not too badly.” A breeze lifted Rachel's hair and she brushed it away from her face with a bat of her hand. It felt strange to be standing here making conversation, pretending that they weren't standing in the middle of a graveyard. Graveyards were personal places where people sat with their grief, and no one knew that better than she. Discomfort warmed her cheeks. “I just brought Chris by for a little family history lesson.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Matt said, his voice low.

Chris crouched down in the same spot Matt had occupied only moments ago and examined the small stone with solemn attention.

“Who's this?” Chris asked, reaching out to reverently touch the flat stone.

“That's a little girl who died a few years ago.” Matt cleared his throat.

“Is she your little girl?” Chris asked, and Rachel found herself holding her breath, waiting for the reply.

“No. She was...” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “She was a friend.”

“Oh.” Chris pointed across the graveyard. “Our family is just over there.”

Rachel felt a swell of relief at her son's words
our family
. Matt's eyes followed Chris's pointing finger.

“The graves,” Rachel explained, just in case Matt was expecting to see a group of living Emmetts, and Matt nodded again.

“Matt, I'm sorry to disturb you,” she said quietly. “We'll give you some privacy.”

“No, no.” Matt shook his head. “I don't mean to be rude. This...” He looked toward the grave once more. “She died in the Broxton Park Elementary School fire.”

“Oh...” The breath seeped out of her and Rachel looked from Matt to the tiny grave and back again. “You knew her?” she asked cautiously.

“No. Yes.” He sighed. “I tried to save her.”

“Oh, Matt...” Rachel put a hand on his well-muscled forearm. Chris headed back in the direction of his grandparents' graves, and Rachel dropped her hand. The big man seemed to be shouldering more weight than she could imagine, and his face, chiseled into a granite mask, didn't hide the pain in his eyes.

“I'd better go with Chris,” she said quietly. “We'll give you privacy.”

“I wouldn't mind the company, actually.”

“Do you want to come check out a few generations of Emmetts?” she asked.

“Sure.”

As they walked through the graveyard toward the other side of the church, some chickadees chattered in the bushes, and a hawk circled slowly overhead. A gentle breeze carried the scent of flowers over the sleepy graveyard, and Rachel paused to look up at the stained-glass windows. These were the windows at the back of the church that would appear over the choir stall for parishioners inside, and they depicted an image of the resurrection. The tomb gaped open with the stone rolled back, and a haloed angel stood next to it. Women with heads covered crouched to one side, hands raised in surprise or a symbolic gesture of piety, Rachel wasn't sure which.

Matt's gaze was directed away from the old church building, past the graveyard with the protective shrubbery surrounding it, to the expanse of pasture beyond where the grass rippled in the prairie breeze. She caught the restless sadness flickering in those dark eyes, and again, she felt as though the things that comforted her failed to comfort the people with her.

The side door to the church opened, and Aunt Louise poked her head out.

“I need a big strong boy to help me set up some chairs, Chris,” she called cheerily. “And I have some fresh cupcakes for when we're done...”

Chris looked askance at his mother and she smilingly waved him inside.

Cupcakes could lift any mood for a small boy. She wished it were so easy once they grew up.

* * *

The side door of the church shut with a bang and Matt glanced toward the pretty brunette. The wind ruffled through her glossy hair and fluttered the pale pink blouse around her slim waist. She was looking at him, her dark eyes thoughtful. He'd said more than he'd planned to, and the knowledge left him uneasy.

“So, what about these Emmetts?” he asked in an attempt to change the subject.

“Aunt Louise is one of them.” A smile toyed at her lips. “Forget the Emmetts. What about you?”

“My family?”

“No, you.” She met his gaze easily. “I've lost a husband, so I know a thing or two about grieving. It helps to talk.”

“I don't tend to talk about it.”

“Why not?” She moved away from him, toward the crumbling graves at the rear, and he found himself following her before he even thought about it.

“Everyone in this town had to grieve the loss of that little girl,” he said. “Some things are best left alone.”

“Well, I'm a stranger—almost.” She glanced up at him. “It won't hurt me to hear this like it might someone who knew her.”

“You know what happened,” he said gruffly, hoping she'd be put off by his tone, but her expression didn't change.

“Not really.” She shrugged. “I know there was a fire—”

He sighed. She was determined—he'd give her that. “It was a big one. It spread faster than anyone anticipated.”

“What caused it?”

“Arson.”

They stopped at a stone bench beside a scraggly rosebush. A few blooms adorned the thorny branches, and the leaves wilted from lack of rainfall. Whoever set up this spot had probably envisioned a beautiful little corner where someone could sit in the aroma of roses like in some British fantasy, but the reality of the situation included Montana weather. A stunted rosebush and a bench were as good as this was going to get. He sat down, staring at his shoes for a long moment. Rachel's silky blouse brushed against his arm as she sank down next to him. The sun slipped behind a cloud, the warm day perceptibly cooling. He wasn't sure he even wanted to talk about this, but he found the words coming out of his mouth before he could stop them.

“I was in charge of fighting that fire.”

“So you feel responsible.”

“I
was
responsible. All the students had been evacuated from the school but one. No one could find her, and after the men came out exhausted, I suited up and went in.” He shook his head slowly. “I can still remember the sound of her parents crying on the sidewalk.”

“But you did find her.”

“Yeah, I did. She was scared. A big fireman in uniform can be really terrifying for kids, and she was only five—one of the kindergartners. I almost missed her, but I saw her shoe sticking out from behind a garbage can, and I guess I came up too quickly. I was focused on getting her out of there—she'd already been in there so long—and she was trying to get away from me.”

“Is that common?”

“It can be. That's why we go into every school in town and show the kids how our equipment works. We don't want them to be afraid of a firefighter. Anyway, she kept trying to run away, and the smoke was getting thicker. By the time I spotted her shoe behind that garbage can, she was barely conscious...” Matt stopped, swallowed hard. “I got her out, but by the time I got her outside...” He cleared his throat. “She'd been burned quite badly. She never did wake up.”

Rachel stretched her legs out in front of her, and when he glanced over, he found her dark eyes locked on him. “Was this girl the first person to die in a fire here?” she asked softly.

“No.”

“But she's the hardest?”

Matt didn't know how to put all this into words. He'd rescued an old woman several years earlier who had died of her burns in the hospital. He'd personally pulled a young man out of the wreckage of a car and performed CPR on him for five minutes before the ambulance arrived, only to discover he had died on impact. He'd seen horrible things and been there as the emergency response, but Natalie Martin was different.

“She was the first child,” he said finally.

Rachel nodded. “Kids...” Her chin trembled. “It makes it different, doesn't it?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you stay in touch with the family?”

Matt frowned down at the ground. “No. I don't need to keep reminding them about that day.”

“I'm sure they remember anyway.”

“Yeah, well...” He took a deep breath and met her gaze. “I wouldn't know what to say. And I doubt it would make any of us feel any better.” He'd already said too much.

They were silent for a couple of minutes, the breeze shifting her hair ever so slightly. He liked the quiet—it didn't require anything of him, and he could just sit here with this beautiful woman at his side. She glanced up at him.

“I remember being so angry with Ed. He had a habit of turning his phone off and completely forgetting to turn it back on. It drove me crazy, and that night, I'd been trying to reach him for hours, and Christopher was already in bed asleep. I was furious with him. Then the police knocked at my door with the news that he was dead.”

Matt winced. “Do you feel guilty for being mad at him?”

“No, not anymore.” She shook her head. “Sometimes I'm still mad at him for dying, though.”

“Inconsiderate.” He shot her a sad smile.

“Completely.” She shook her head. “But these things happen in life, and I know I'm not the only one to lose someone I loved.”

“Did it really help to talk about it?” he asked.

“Not to my friends.” She pulled her fingers through her dark hair. “I find that when you go through something like that, people shy away. They don't want to hear about it. It's everyone's worst nightmare.”

“Yeah, I could see that. So, who did you talk to?”

“My church had a support group of widows. Most of them were elderly ladies, but they fully understood what I was going through, and that was the place where I was able to really talk it through.” Rachel looked over at him thoughtfully. “I'm sure the fire station has therapists for you guys.”

He nodded slowly. “And I recommend them to all my firefighters.”

“But you don't use the services,” she concluded.

“No.”

“Why not?”

He raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. “I don't need it.”

Her laughter bubbled up, soft and lightly amused. “Everyone needs to talk, Matt.”

“Maybe so, but not everyone needs therapy.”

He knew his aversion to therapy was rooted in his male pride, but he couldn't bring himself to call up a phone line and have some twenty-five-year-old with next to no life experience ask him,
And how does that make you feel?
He could do that himself. He was well aware how he felt. He felt responsible for a little girl's death. He felt sad for everything she would miss, sad for her parents who would never be the same without her. He felt angry at God for not stepping in, and irritated with the town for grieving so publicly. People who didn't even know the girl held candles at vigils. People who only saw her picture in a paper waxed poetic about a life lost too soon. It was one big outpouring of public grief—complete strangers never once thinking that their cathartic release might be pure torture for someone else.

“I get it,” she said quietly.

“Do you?”

“Some things you need to sort out with a little privacy.”

“Exactly,” he agreed, eyeing her with mild surprise.

She nodded slowly. “Everyone means well, but no one seems to really understand, do they?”

“You seem to.”

A small smile tickled the corners of her lips, and a soft blush rose in her cheeks. “I came to Haggerston to give my son a new start...” She pressed her lips together and shot him an uncertain look. “Is it terrible that I'm glad to get away from the sympathy?”

“You don't like people to give their condolences?” he asked.

“I sound heartless, don't I?” She shook her head. “I just prefer some privacy when I deal with personal things.”

He chuckled softly. “We're more alike than I thought.”

“We are.” Her eyes crinkled into a smile.

Matt's phone blipped, the signal for an incoming email. He slid his finger across the screen, and the email popped up.

Mr. Bailey,

It was a pleasure to meet you the other day, and I'm recommending that you go further in the interview process. The next step will include an evaluation by myself, or another member of the hiring committee. I will be in touch about the details soon.

Good luck and all the best,

Abe Bernard

Matt slipped his phone into his pocket. This job as fire chief in South Maitland wasn't guaranteed, but it would be a welcome escape from Haggerston's barrage of memories. Didn't they say that a change was as good as a rest? A step up in his career, and a step outside the town that held his biggest regret seemed like the answer—at least to him. He glanced over at Rachel to find her eyeing him curiously.