Page 29 of Smoke and Roses

Darla Ostler called and wants 14 centerpieces by Saturday. Lord help me. You’re coming. Bring forearms.

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Betsy came in to “buy a carnation.” She asked if you’re a good kisser. I told her to mind her own business. Then I told her yes.

Good answer.

I put my phone away before Rob can see my face.

I’m in the bunk room at 2140, lying on my back thinking about Lindsey and all the places I want my hands on her when the chimney fire call comes in.

“Engine 1, Rescue 1, chimney fire, 4410 Old Snowbasin Road, the Tolman residence. Caller reports flames from the chimney, smoke in the living room.”

It’s an old two-story farmhouse at the end of a long lane, with flames standing three feet out of the brick chimney like a torch.

The Tolmans are a young couple with a baby. They’re out on the lawn in their coats. The baby’s screaming. The husband keeps saying, “I just lit a fire, I just lit a little fire.”

“Raines, you’re with me,” Rob says. “Interior. Check the attic and the walls for extension. Clint’s on the roof.”

I mask up on the porch and check my air.

We go in. The living room is gray, the smoke banked down to waist height. The woodstove insert in the fireplace is glowing cherry red, and the brick around it is hot enough to feel through my gloves.

It isn’t a big fire. Rob says they’re common here.

But it’s smoke, and it’s close, and it’s a house, and it’s still a foreign land for a new firefighter.

My breath comes loud in my mask. My heart is pounding in my ears. For one heartbeat I’m not in Eden. I’m on a road outside Kandahar with one of my men yelling my name and the door that won’t open.

Damn it. Not now.

“Sarge.” Rob’s hand is on my shoulder, a solid weight. “Thermal camera. Upstairs. Bedroom over the fireplace. Let’s go.”

We move upstairs, checking the spread, testing the walls with the camera. Clint drops a chimney bomb down from the roof, and the fire in the flue chokes off.

Rob pulls the coals out of the stove into a metal can and I carry them outside. I’m still breathing hard. The husband shakes my hand. “Thank you, thank you. You saved my home.”

I nod tightly and move past him on feet that feel strange on the ground. Luckily, I make it around the back of the engine before I throw up.

Rob comes and stands between me and the house so nobody can see. He waits until I’m done. He hands me a water bottle.

“Same damn thing happened to me,” he says. “My first house after the Army.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“You didn’t ask.” He leans on the engine next to me. “You did good in there, Sarge. Solid as a rock. Nobody knows but me.”

I rinse my mouth and spit. There’s still a knot the size of a football inside my gut.

“Go home,” Rob says. “I’ll tell Caleb you’ve got a stomach thing.” He bumps my shoulder with his. “And Sarge? Go home to her. Not upstairs.”

Chapter Ten

It’s 2:10 in the morning when somebody knocks on my back door.

Not my front door. My back door, the one off the kitchen that faces his stairs. I know who it is before I get there. Nobody else in Eden would come to that door at two in the morning.

He’s standing on my back step in jeans and a gray hoodie with his hands shoved in the front pocket. Travis’s hair is wet like he just got out of the shower. His face is pale under the porch light.