The Firefighter's Match (8 page)

“He said he wanted to die.” The words were barely audible. Soft as they were, they hit him like cement.

“What?”

“This morning, when Mom was meeting with the rehab people, he looked right at me and said he wanted to die. And don’t tell me he didn’t know what he was saying because if you could have seen his eyes...” Her voice trailed off and he knew she was trying not to cry.

Even with all their problems, Alex thought about what kind of knife would go through his heart to hear words like that from Sam. He got up off the dock. “JJ.”

“No.” She put her hand out, tucking her chin down in determination. “Don’t you dare.”

“We’re not going to let Max die. Nobody is.” He ignored her stance, walking toward her even though she spread her fingers farther in defiance.

“Says who? What if that’s what he wants? What if he can’t stand the thought of living like some kind of vegetable? What then?”

“What if he recovers? What if he can make some kind of amazing life even if he doesn’t walk again? We have no idea what’s possible right now and...”

She raised the outstretched hand, and for a moment Alex thought she might slap him. “Don’t! Don’t you dare say
we.
”

It wasn’t something he thought about. It wasn’t a tactic or a response or even a conscious choice. It was as if something pulled him beyond his own strength or wisdom, and he simply ducked around her arm and held her. She stiffened, but he would not let that stop him. This wasn’t a smart choice, but there wasn’t any choice involved. She pounded his arm with her hand as her head dropped to his chest, her body still rigid and angry. Alex would have allowed her to hit him as many times as she needed to in order to let him close.

“Don’t,” JJ said, so much softer this time. “Don’t.” Her hand came down against his shoulder again, but this time it just lay there, lifeless. “Don’t.” He felt the heave of her words against his chest. There was a powerful anguish in how she halfheartedly pulled away, but he would not, could not relinquish his hold. He could feel how her jaw worked as she choked out a single, reluctant sob, and he tightened his grip around her, closing his own eyes to the swirl of pain that threatened to knock them both over. JJ pushed out the words, “He can’t die,” through what sounded like gritted teeth.

The pain she was in lit that old, familiar urge to run—to outpace the pain before it dragged him down. Instead, Alex tightened his grip. It didn’t matter if JJ believed it yet, but he promised himself that running was no longer an option. Not from this. Not from her.

Chapter Eight

“H
e can’t die.” The words felt like they tore themselves right out of her beating heart, startling her. She hadn’t even realized how much she feared losing Max. How much the threat of his loss tore open unhealed wounds.

“Hey, there,” Alex said in this voice she almost didn’t recognize for its closeness and tenderness. “No one thinks Max is going to die. I was with you when you first talked to Dr. Ryland, remember? I didn’t hear anything like that from him or anyone else.”

JJ wanted to pull away from Alex but couldn’t. She’d been holding herself up for so long that it felt wonderful to be held up by someone else. Still, after a luxurious minute, she made herself duck out of his grasp and walk to the edge of the dock. “Yeah.” She couldn’t even pretend at enthusiasm. It was hard enough to get to a weak agreement.

“Yes, really.” Alex turned her by one shoulder, staring hard. “What happened to you?”

She rolled her eyes. “My brother fell off a cliff, remember?”

“Not that,” he scoffed gently, tilting his head to meet her eyes. “There’s a wound a mile wide in there. Was it...back in wherever you were?”

JJ sat down on the edge of the dock, watching the reflection of the stars sparkle on the ripples of the current. It was easy to see why Max thought she’d find some peace out here—it couldn’t be farther from what she’d known in Afghanistan. “I don’t really want to get into it, okay?”

“Sure.” Alex picked up the ukulele and sat down next to her. He began to play softly again, some silly tune she recognized but couldn’t name. The rush of fear she’d just had tangled her thoughts. That, and her skin seemed to remember the sensation of his grip despite her every attempt to push it aside.

She tried not to talk, tried to let his music fill the darkness, but it was as if the story were clawing its way up, blocking her breath until she let it out. “Angie Carlisle.”

She waited for Alex to say, “Who?” but he simply paused the chords for a moment, looked up at her and nodded. Then he played again, letting her continue when she was ready. Her mom was always tugging stories out of her, digging for the cause of her moods until they hurt her, but Alex wasn’t like that. Maybe, here in the vast empty night, she could let a bit of it unravel.

“Her name was Angie Carlisle. A bright, scrub-faced, too-young kid from Iowa. She died right in front of me, you know. I held her hand. I followed the medic’s orders and told her lies that everything would be all right. We were in the truck, trying to drive for help, and nobody else would look at her. They stared everywhere else because we all knew Angie wouldn’t make it. Only I couldn’t
not
look at her. I had to look. Watching her was my punishment for the slip I’d made.” Those last two sentences burned her mouth, burned everywhere as surely as the bomb that had charred Angie. Even though Dr. Ryland had proclaimed her the best person to deliver Max’s diagnosis, JJ didn’t think she could look Max in the eye and lie to him like she’d lied to Carlisle. In truth, that was as much the reason she was out here as the pretense of craving a night in her own bed.

“I’m sorry.”

JJ almost laughed. How many times in the days she’d known Alex had she heard the words “I’m sorry” from him? They were all heartfelt, but each was mostly as useless as the last. “Sorry” just didn’t fit for situations like this.

“That sounds really rough,” Alex continued. “And then you come home, looking for a little peace and quiet to sort it all out, and get hit with more disaster. Hardly seems fair.”

“Fair?” JJ spat the word out. “You still think life is supposed to be fair?”

“I think life is supposed to be an adventure. That God has peaks and valleys planned for each of us and we’re supposed to learn from all of it.” He stopped playing and shook his head. “That sounded so trite, I can’t believe it just left my mouth.” He turned to face her. “I really did believe that once. I think I still believe it, only I’m not sure how it fits with what’s happening now. I can’t work out how any of this would be okay with God. And if that’s how I feel, I can’t imagine how you feel.” Alex set the instrument down again.

“That used to be my gift, you know—seeing how everything was connected. Finding the reason the problem was really an opportunity. I could find a way to turn anything around—anything.” His eyes grew so intense JJ felt as if they looked into every last inch of her and saw all the dark thoughts, all the hopelessness she barely kept at bay. “But now I can’t. I can’t see the connection or the reason or the opportunity or any of it. And when I think about how it’s ten times worse for you and a hundred times worse for Max...” He squeezed his eyes shut. “He’s not going to die, JJ. He can’t. He’s got to live, to recover. He’s got to.”

JJ heard her own cries to God echo back from that dusty army truck. How she’d begged God to let Angie live, to spare her from the massive weight of guilt that had been pressing down on her since that day the insurgent charmed his way close enough to blow the barracks to bits. “It doesn’t work that way, Alex. We don’t always get what we want.”

“We get what we need, right?”

“No, Alex. We get what we deserve.”

* * *

JJ tried not to stare at the Gordon Falls fire chief. Her cousin Charlotte had told her the guy was new—and engaged to Charlotte’s friend Melba, no less—but JJ couldn’t help but be startled by the fact that Clark Bradens didn’t look much older than she was.

He looked up from the pile of papers on his desk. “I think we can waive most of the training requirements given your experience.” He looked up and offered a smile that explained why Charlotte had called him hunky. “I expect you’ve seen more action than a decade in Gordon Falls could dish up. If you’re looking for a place where the only thing we blow up is balloons, you’ve found it.”

“A little run-of-the-mill ordinary sounds nice,” she offered.

“You didn’t get it, though, did you?” Bradens set the papers down. “I’m sorry about Max. I’m the one who bought his boat, you know. He was a bit of a loose cannon, but a good guy.”

“He still is,” JJ shot back, feeling that gut punch she felt whenever anyone referred to Max in the past tense. “A loose cannon and a good guy, I mean.”
Don’t say his life is over,
she wanted to yell at people when they talked about him with
was
in their words.

“Of course he is—I didn’t mean to imply anything.” Bradens leaned in. “He’s got a long haul ahead of him, which means you’ll be here for a while. That’s an ideal situation for me, so I’m glad to have you as a test case of sorts.”

“Because you haven’t had a female firefighter before. Charlotte told me.”

“She also told me you’re not one to shy away from a challenge.” The chief stood up, motioning for them to head out to the apparatus floor, where the vehicles were kept. “And my guys will probably present a bit of a challenge.”

JJ walked through the office door he held open. “If you’re asking me if I’ll pitch a fit when they cover my locker in pink ruffles, it’s been done before.”

He laughed. “Well, that’s good, but I had another question in mind.”

“What?”

The redheaded chief stopped and stared straight at her. “Are you running to or running from?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you’ve been through a lot. In my experience, if you know what you’re running to—what it is you’re after by coming to Gordon Falls—then you’re a whole lot less likely to get hurt than if you’re simply scrambling for any place that’s not a battle zone or a hospital waiting room. I could really use you, and I think you’d bring a lot to the department, but not if you’re using GFVFD like a giant emotional bandage.” He paused for a moment before adding, “It doesn’t work that way. I know.”

“I’m not looking for a bandage,” JJ declared, a bit more loudly than was necessary. “I gave you my paperwork even before Max...got hurt.” She still hadn’t found a suitable way to refer to the full-scale disaster that had befallen Max. “None of that’s changed.”

When Bradens arched an eyebrow—not quite in disbelief but more out of concern—she added, “Okay, I might need this a bit more at the moment than I did when I first applied. I think I need my life to be about more than just cheering Max through rehab, you know? I want Max to get his life back, but I need to get mine back, too.”

“And that,” Bradens said as he turned them toward the kitchen, “tells me you know what you’re running to. You’ll do fine. But I suggest you develop a taste for root beer. It’s kind of the required beverage around here.”

JJ smiled. “Love the stuff.”

He pulled open a fridge that seemed stocked top to bottom with brown bottles of root beer. “You’ll do just fine, Miss Jones.”

Through the kitchen pass-through, a young guy in a sweaty T-shirt at one of the dining room tables held his fork like a microphone. Out of nowhere he began to croon the Motown hit “Me and Mrs. Jones” as he sprawled dramatically across the table.

“Sykes here is not known for his taste in music or conversation. I apologize in advance for everything he’s bound to do.”

JJ was surprised to feel a smirk working its way across her face as she peered at the performance through the hole in the wall designed to disperse food, not entertainment. “Well, at least he can sing.”

Bradens held up a finger. “Don’t. Don’t encourage him in the slightest.” When Sykes continued his show, the chief slapped the light switch behind him and sent the guy into darkness. “Enough already. Save it for Christmas caroling.” He pulled a chair out from the single small table in the kitchen and motioned for her to sit down. “So how are things at Max’s boat rental and cabins? Are you going to be able to keep it up and running until he returns?”

JJ looked at him. “Thank you.”

He blinked. “For...?”

“For saying
until
instead of
if.
”

The chief quieted his voice. “Worried, huh? Well, I don’t see how you couldn’t be.” His eyes took on a compassionate warmth. “It’s a very serious injury. He’s got a lot ahead of him. And so do you. Melba knows a thing or two about what that’s like.”

The chief’s fiancée, Melba, was caring for her elderly father. Because Melba was a friend of Charlotte’s, JJ had heard a bit about how advanced the old man’s Alzheimer’s had become. And how coping with it had asked a lot of Melba. Charlotte’s grandfather also had had Alzheimer’s disease, and it hadn’t been a peaceful ending by any stretch of the imagination.

“You know, I was feeling sort of alone in this, but there are a whole bunch of people who’ve weathered crises like mine around here, aren’t there?”

Bradens smirked. “There are a whole lot of just good, plain people who’d help out whether they’ve been through hard times or not.” He held out the root beer bottle, and they toasted each other. “So yeah, you’re not alone. By the way, the crew meeting is Wednesday night.”

She thought of how good it had felt to let Alex hold her up for just that brief moment. Wasn’t reconnection the whole point in being here? She wasn’t alone—she was starting to believe that. “I’ll be there.”

Chapter Nine

A
lex was so shocked to get JJ’s call he nearly ran the entire way from the lawyer’s office to the hospital. When he pushed through the door of the family lounge, he was glad he’d hurried. JJ looked terrible, crumpled with a box of tissues on the corner of the horrid blue couch he was coming to hate.

“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“I had to tell him again. I thought it’d be better, but it was so much worse.”

“Max?”

She nodded. “He looked straight at me and asked me if he’d ever walk again.” JJ pulled another tissue from the box even though she had a fistful already in hand. “So I told him. I know Dr. Ryland said we should feed the situation to him slowly, but I couldn’t lie to him, Alex.” Another tissue. “I couldn’t. He’d see it in my eyes if I tried to lie anyway. So I took a deep breath, tried to find the right words and told him.” She looked at him with red-rimmed eyes. “He was asking for the truth. How could I not tell him?”

Alex took her hand. What drove her to take so much of this on herself, to shoulder so much of Max’s pain? “You couldn’t not tell him. You did the right thing.”

“You should have seen him. I thought he’d rant and rave, make a scene like Max is so good at doing. That boy has a mouth on him that could curl your hair. But no. He didn’t say anything. Not a single word.” She ran her free hand down her face as if to wipe away the image. “He just shut his eyes and gave up. You could see it in his face, Alex—he gave up. Like he didn’t think living was going to be worth the effort anymore.”

Alex caught her other hand and held them both now, giving them a reassuring squeeze. “He just got awful news. Really, I don’t see how he could have reacted any other way.”

“Max? Max is a master at reacting. At overreacting. I was expecting Mount Max to erupt. Dr. Ryland told me they need to see fight left in him, and I told him that that wouldn’t be a problem.” JJ caught Alex’s gaze. “There was no fight in there at all. It’s like it wasn’t even Max.”

Alex searched for some way to reframe the experience for JJ. “His body’s been though this incredible trauma. Maybe he can’t have fight in him just yet. Maybe wanting to...to give up...is a perfectly natural reaction for him right now. Who wouldn’t give in to despair, at least at first, if you’d just heard you’re not likely to walk ever again? That doesn’t mean he’s never going to fight it.”

That seemed to help her, even if just a bit. “I didn’t cry in front of him,” she declared, pulling in a bolstering breath. “That was the goal I set for myself—not to cry when I told him.” She sniffled, then stared at the pile of tissues she’d dumped on the chipped coffee table. “Once I got out the door, well, that was another story.”

Without thinking the better of it, Alex reached out and brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “It’s done. It’s better from here because now he knows. You’ve done what you needed to do, and I’d guess you did a pretty amazing job at a nearly impossible task.”

“You think?” It was the first time she’d asked him for assurance. Mostly he’d just offered it, forced it even, but the fact that she’d sought it from him sent a small surge of emotion pulsing through his chest.

“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “I do. Why don’t you go tell your mom how it went and I’ll see about how AG and the studio are doing with their side of things.” His cell phone had registered three calls from Sam this morning already, but Sam hadn’t bothered to leave messages so it couldn’t have been anything more urgent than Sam’s chronic impatience. “I’ll say a prayer that the old Max will be back and roaring before you know it.” As a diversion, he asked, “When do you start at the firehouse?”

“Wednesday.”

Alex stared at JJ and tried to picture her under a barrage of fire gear, sweaty and sooty. His brain wouldn’t create the image. No, his mind was too busy recalling the feel of her clinging to him on the dock the other night. “See?” he said. “New beginnings all around.”

Alex felt settled, somehow, being here. The urge to run wasn’t completely gone, but it wasn’t yelling at him every second, either. It was a new beginning of sorts for him, as well.

* * *

“Why don’t you ever call me back?” Sam’s voice was filled with annoyance when Alex returned his call. So much for any settled feeling.

“Why don’t you ever leave a message?”

“Maybe some info isn’t the kind of thing that ought to go to voicemail. I need to be able to reach you, Alex.”

“I was with the Jones family. I didn’t think it was a good idea to cut out and take a call.”

“How’s Jones?” It annoyed Alex that it was caution—rather than compassion—that tinged his brother’s voice.

“He just heard he won’t be walking again. How do you think he is?”

“You saw him? He talked to you?”

“No, Sam. I’m not going into his hospital room. What kind of person would do that, even if they’d let me?”

“The mom and the lawyers are rattling sabers already, both here and at the studio. I thought maybe if you talked to him...”

Alex pushed out an annoyed breath. “Exactly when did you get so heartless?”

“About three minutes after Morgan sent his latest update. We might be solely responsible, Alex. There’s a handy little clause in the studio vendor agreement that exonerates them from failures of promotionally provided equipment. We might not have solid enough legal grounds to go after
WWW
for damages, so if the Jones family sues us, we’ll only have our own assets to call on.”

“Surely a clause like that can’t apply. They mishandled equipment they weren’t even supposed to be using. We don’t know yet if the guy on the belay line secured it right or used the hardware SpiderSilk needs, do we?”

“Morgan knows that. Only he says it’s a lot harder to prove that than to substantiate failed equipment. Our stuff is physical evidence, whereas what the guy on the line did is only witness hearsay.”

That wasn’t good. “The cameras were rolling. They must have it on tape. Can’t we use that to get to what really happened?”

“Of the three cameras running at the time, not one of them was pointed near that guy. They’re smart like that. They cover their tracks. Which means we need to cover ours.”

Alex didn’t like the sound of that. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning you absolutely have to stay close to the Jones family and keep their anger aimed at the show rather than at us. The hit won’t even ding them, but it could kill us. Even you have to have thought about that.”

“Not all of us see the world through dollar-colored glasses, brother. I’ve pretty much only been thinking about what kind of struggles Max Jones is facing. And how to keep whatever happened from happening again. Ever.”

“Yeah, well, if things keep getting worse, that may not be a problem. It’ll be hard for AG products to fail if there’s no AG anymore.”

The thought had crossed his mind—mostly if the studio decided to do whatever it took—or cost—to deflect all blame to AG, not necessarily if the Jones family sued them out of existence. Honestly, Alex couldn’t see why God would go to such great lengths to put him in close proximity to the family that would end his company. No, he still couldn’t shake the unnerving notion that there was more to why JJ Jones had been thrust into his life. He just didn’t know what it was. “Let’s just all try to stay a bit calmer than that, okay? Watch what you say, Sam. I’m sure the corporate staff are nervous enough as it is. Has anything been on the news?”

“No, thankfully that’s the one success we’ve had in all this. The studio has been able to keep things off the radar, and you know we’ll do the same. It’s Jones I’m worried about. If he or his family calls in the press, we’re done for.”

Based on JJ’s account, it didn’t sound like Max would be waging that war anytime soon. “I think we’re okay there for now.”

“Well, make sure of it. It’s a smart idea to stay close. But could you answer your phone a little more?”

Alex chose not to reply. He wasn’t going to give any credence to Sam’s idea that he had any intention of cozying up to the Jones family in order to save AG’s bacon. “Tell Cynthia to call me. I want her to find me a few contacts for rehab experts in the area. Tell her to start sending my mail here.”

“So you will be sticking around?”

Alex looked back behind him to the door, which had closed behind JJ. “Yes. I’m sticking around. But not for you.”

He was sticking around. What a strange new concept for the old Alex. It made him feel a settled sort of nervous, closer to growing pains than feeling trapped. He just didn’t know if he’d still stick around if things went from bad to worse—and they very well might.

* * *

“How are you settling in?” Melba Wingate offered a smile to JJ from across a box of soup cans. Everyone was working together on a firehouse food drive, and Chief Bradens had conveniently made sure that JJ and Melba wound up working the same collection table. On this beautiful Saturday morning, the crews were driving the engine around town collecting cans of food from the town residents while others packed up the supplies that the crews had dropped off or that locals had come in person to deliver. It felt every bit the small-town event, and JJ could feel tones of homegrown comfort and cheer soothing out her raw edges.

“I would have liked a smoother landing, that’s for sure.” JJ actually felt herself smile as a preschool-aged girl skipped up with a box of macaroni and cheese. The whole morning had felt spacious and lazy. “I feel like I’ve been running full-tilt since I got here.”

“You have. I’m glad we finally had a chance to meet with all the running back and forth to Chicago you’ve had to do.” Melba reached over the table to grab a paper bag from the chief, who’d just accepted it from an adorable family hauling a red wagon. The twinkle in the woman’s eye as she touched her fiancé’s hand was unmistakable. Those two were seriously hooked, as the captain used to say. JJ swallowed the memory that Angie Carlisle had been seriously hooked with another man from her unit despite clear regulations to the contrary. None of that truly mattered, as Angie had asked for the guy with her final breaths, and JJ hoped she’d never forget that lesson. “How is Max?”

JJ employed her now-standard answer: “It’s hard to say. We can’t really expect much of anything from him at this point, and it’s too early to know how his injuries will play out, much less how he’ll come to deal with it all. One minute he’s calm and maybe even resigned, the next he’s a ball of anger.”

Melba lined up soup cans in the box on the floor between them. “Clark would say that sounds just like Max. They weren’t really friends, but Clark bought Max’s boat earlier this year, so they talked shop often enough.” She lowered her voice. “I know he wasn’t the most cautious guy in the world, but no one deserves to be hurt like that. I wish we knew how to help.”

“I have dozens of people telling me how I’m supposed to be helping, but none of it seems to be of much use.” JJ was startled at the sentiment; she hadn’t realized how frustrated she felt. “It’s making me crazy to just stand by and watch Max go through so much.”

“It’s always harder to watch, you know. No one really gets that until they have to watch someone they love suffer right next to them. Your cousin Charlotte’s been a great friend to me with my family situation because she’s been through it. She’ll be a great friend to you, too.” Melba cocked her head and shrugged. “I’d like to be a friend to you, too. I’m in the thick of it myself, but maybe we can keep each other company in the trenches.” She straightened up and winced, crinkling up her nose. “Is that a lousy metaphor to make to a military person?”

JJ actually felt a small laugh bubble up from some forgotten corner of her spirit. “It’s fine. A bit overused, but in this case, it fits perfectly.” She started another row of soup cans, genuinely pleased to return Melba’s kind inquiry. “How’s your dad? Did he hurt himself badly when he fell last week?”

“Oh.” Melba’s expression lost its sparkle. “You heard?”

“The chief took your call while I was in the office. I didn’t mean to overhear, but it sounded like he took a serious tumble.”

“He was so bloody. Honestly, it amazes me how one small cut on the forehead can make such a huge mess. There are days I’m glad I’m marrying a man who isn’t fazed by that sort of thing.”

JJ waited for Melba to make an additional battlefield comment, but she didn’t. JJ was relieved, but she couldn’t really say why. Maybe it was becoming okay for not every conversation to be about what happened over there or what happened to Max. Maybe that’s how life outside of a uniform—at least an army uniform—grew into place.

Melba continued, “I suppose it’s not too far from Max’s case. Good days and bad days. And not much use trying to guess where it goes from here. Charlotte will tell you that kind of guessing will tangle your brain—and that’s not a knitting metaphor.” Melba raised a dark eyebrow. “Do you knit?”

It felt like an absurd question. A knitter was about the furthest thing from how JJ thought of herself. Still, she knew Melba was enthusiastic about the craft, and nearly every member of the Gordon Falls Volunteer Fire Department sported some cap or gloves or scarf that had come from the woman’s handiwork. JJ offered a smile. “Not really my thing.” After a second, she added, “I like to look at it, though, and all the guys love the stuff you made for them.”

Melba laughed. “I think Clark orders them to love it. He denies it, but I have my suspicions.” She closed up the now-f box of cans, writing “SOUP” in artistic letters across the lid. “I have no intention of making you learn. The guys make enough fun of me as it is and don’t think I don’t know how much of an uphill battle you’ve already got ahead of you with that macho bunch. Are they treating you right?”

“Actually, I don’t think they know what to do with me. I know pranks and such are part of every firehouse, but no one’s pulled anything on me yet. I think they can’t figure out what to do.”

Melba parked a hand on her hip. “Wait, you
want
them to prank you?”

“Not exactly. What I want is for them to see me as one of the shift.” JJ reached for another empty box and started stacking cans from the truck that just unloaded its charitable haul. “If the chief can come up with another way to make that happen that doesn’t involved stuffing my locker full of pink lace or ladyfingers, I’m all for it.”