Page 2 of Never Alone
There was something about her smile.
I'd seen it before. On calls, mostly. The one that went on before the door opened and came off after you left. Women who smiled like they were holding the door shut with it.
I shook the thought off. I was probably reading into it. It was a bakery. People smiled at customers.
I turned the engine over and pulled out.
Sam and Jamie hosted whenever the rotation gave A-shift and B-shift the same Sunday off. They lived on a quiet street in a house that had been theirs long enough to look like them: porch chairs worn in at the seats, a hose coiled loose by the front steps, Jamie's planter by the walk that she kept alive through sheer stubbornness.
I parked behind Ethan Davis's truck, took the cake and the paper bag from the passenger seat, and went up the front walk.
Megan opened the door before I'd raised my hand to knock.
"There he is," she said. "Look at you, Lieutenant. Get in here."
Megan was Davis's mother. She and Jamie had been best friends since they were girls. The friendship was older than I was. She took the cake out of my hands before I'd cleared the doorway and tilted her head down the hall. "Everybody's out back."
I followed her in. She turned into the kitchen with the cake and the bag, and I could see Jamie at the cutting board with Sean's wife Carol, both of them laughing at something I'd missed. Jamie looked up as I passed.
"Hey, kid."
"Hey, Jamie."
The back porch opened onto the yard, and for a second, I just stood there.
Sam and Jamie's sons, Jack and Ben, were on the grass with Sean's two daughters, all four of them taking turns rolling a tennis ball at Biscuit. Biscuit was eleven now and didn't run for anything. Sam and Jamie had adopted her for Rosie when Rosie was old enough to take care of a dog. The owner had been havinga hard time placing her—she'd been the runt of the litter—until Rosie saw her, and that had been the end of the discussion. Rosie was away at college now, and Biscuit had stayed.
The grill was at the far side of the yard, and it had three captains around it. Sam on the tongs. Danny across from him with a beer. Tyler at Sam's shoulder, laughing at something Sam had said. Elena was crossing the grass toward them with three cold ones in her hands, the way she always did, because she'd been married to Tyler long enough to know what the three of them wanted before they thought to ask.
Sean was at the cooler, restocking it from a fresh case. He looked up as Elena passed and handed her one without breaking the conversation with whoever he was talking to.
The rest of the crew was scattered around the yard. Davis and his brother, Keith, at one of the folding tables. Martinez nearby, beer in hand, mid-story. Hutch was at a niece's something. I'd lost track of which.
I'd been worried, on the drive over, that the day was going to feel like a production, with all eyes on me. It didn't. It felt like every other barbecue at this house for the last decade, which was the highest compliment I could give it.
Aunt Jenna was at the serving table on the porch, arranging a stack of napkins into something tidier than they needed to be. She looked up when she heard me come out, set the napkins down, and crossed to me.
She had been married to my father's brother. After my father died, she and my cousin Quinn had more or less been family. My mother was her own situation. And my older sister?—
I'd come home from school, and the house would be empty and quiet, and after a while, I'd start walking the six blocks to Aunt Jenna's instead.
She hugged me—both arms, hard, a little too long. Then she pulled back and looked at me the way she did when she was about to say something she'd thought about on the way over.
"Your father would have been proud of you."
I didn't have anywhere to put that. I didn't try.
The screen door swung open behind us.
"Lieutenant!"
Quinn came out with a stack of plates in one hand and the silverware caddy in the other, her phone tucked under her arm against her side. Twenty-six, not quite my height. Two and a half years as a paramedic. She'd called me the night she passed her last board. She'd talked through the relief and the weight of it for half an hour and I'd listened. When we'd hung up I'd sat on my apartment floor and thought about Aunt Jenna—twenty years in an ER—and about Jack Donovan going back into a building he wasn't supposed to be in, for a woman and a little girl he didn't know. Quinn had been eight years old. She remembered enough. She'd become a paramedic for both of them.
"Don't," I said.
"I will though."
"I know you will."
