Page 47 of Igniting Her

It was not an order. Ellie seemed to understand, because she settled again without answering. At midnight, the date changed. By the terms Cassie had written, Ellie had stayed overnight. Cassie watched the clock change and did nothing. Ellie fell asleep with one hand open against her ribs. The harbor fog thickened outside until even the nearest light disappeared.

At one, Cassie was still holding her, one full hour beyond anything the terms allowed.

She filed it under nothing and kept her arm where it was.

13

ELLIE

Mo started the carnitas before breakfast, which gave him almost twelve hours to refuse assistance and announce at regular intervals that the secret was patience.

“The secret is pork,” Teak told him at nine.

“The secret is knowing when not to speak,” he laughed.

“Then you’ve never made these successfully.”

Mo pointed the tongs at her without turning from the stove. “You’re one comment away from a plate of plain rice.”

Teak looked at Ellie. “This is how abuse flourishes in closed institutions.”

“Document everything,” Ellie advised. “Priya will photograph the bruises. Jamie can ruin your hair for witness protection.”

At the sink, Jamie raised one wet hand. “I’m not taking new clients.”

It was the first Sunday of the month, and apparently a sacred date on Station 12’s calendar. Ellie had learned about family dinner when Mo added fourteen pounds of pork to the grocery list and Cassie approved it without correcting the quantity. By noon, extra chairs had appeared around the long table. By three, somebody had set a stack of paper plates beside the napkins so an alarm wouldn’t leave good dishes abandoned under cooling food. At five, the rear door began opening and the station filled with people who walked in without knocking.

Mo’s wife arrived carrying two foil pans of rice and kissed Mo’s cheek while Mo was insisting he had the kitchen under control. Jamie’s husband brought a bowl of cut limes, a bakery box, and the six-year-old whose missing tooth had already been discussed at enough station breakfasts to qualify as department business. Priya’s wife came straight from work in navy scrubs and was drafted into slicing radishes before she had put down her bag. Teak’s boyfriend carried nothing except a paper sack of avocados and the confidence of someone who knew the station kitchen well enough to deal with it there.

Ellie had met none of them before. Within ten minutes, Jamie’s daughter had shown her the gap in her lower teeth, Mo’s wife had handed her a bowl to taste, and Teak’s boyfriend had recruited her into the argument over whether guacamole required tomatoes. Nobody offered her the careful courtesy reserved for guests. They gave her jobs.

It shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did.

She stood at the counter shredding cabbage while the room reorganized itself around all the people who belonged there. Mo’s wife knew which drawer held the serving spoons. Jamie’s husband opened the refrigerator and moved three labeled station containers without checking first. Priya leaned into her wife as they passed each other, shoulder to shoulder for a second, then went on talking about a medic refresher. Teak stole a strip of pork from the cutting board and received three separate slaps on the wrist.

Cassie came in from the bay with her radio clipped at her hip and a completed apparatus sheet in one hand. She stopped just inside the day room. For an instant, the captain seemed to be counting bodies, exits, chairs, and possible violations. Then Jamie’s daughter ran to her and held up a folded piece of paper.

“I made place cards.”

Cassie accepted the paper with the gravity she gave incident maps. “Did you?”

“Yours was hardest.” She announced this as an engineering finding and pulled Cassie closer to the table.

“I can imagine.”

Ellie kept shredding cabbage and absolutely pretended not to watch Cassie allow herself to be led by two fingers hooked around her hand.

The place cards had been cut from blank apparatus-inspection forms Jamie should probably have kept out of reach. Each bore a crayon portrait and a name written in large, uncertain capitals. Mo had been given a chef’s hat tall enough to interfere with a helmet. Priya had a stethoscope in one hand and a sword in the other. Teak’s hair occupied most of her card. Ellie’s portrait included a hose, three freckles, and flames coming from both boots.

“Accurate,” Ellie said.

“You run fast,” Jamie’s daughter explained.

“Also accurate.” Ellie smiled.

Cassie’s card showed a tall dark figure beside a red engine. The mouth was a single straight line. Above it floated one word in a speech bubble.

NO.