Page 56 of Smoke and Roses

He looks at his hands. The frostbite scars on the backs of them are red from the cold. “I didn’t know if I could still do that,” he says. “Pull somebody out. After Kodiak.”

I don’t ask what happened in Kodiak. He’ll tell me if he wants to.

“You did it,” I say.

“We did it.” He grins at me, and this time it gets to his eyes. “Good teamwork, Ranger.”

“Good teamwork, Fish.”

Caleb walks over from the command truck with his clipboard. He takes in the truck, the side we laid open like a sardine can, the firewood, and Devin and me standing in the middle of it.

“Good work, Raines,” he says. “Mathews.”

He walks back to the truck.

Devin stares after him. “Did he just say that to our faces?”

“I think so.”

“Rob says he does that about once a year. Rob says when he finally said it to Cassia, she cried.”

Rob, coiling hose on the rescue, yells, “She did not cry!”

“Hell yes, she did,” Novak yells back from the road, where he’s directing traffic with a flashlight and enormous enthusiasm. “She told me herself!”

We sweep glass and pitch Lyle’s firewood into the pullout so his boy can pick it up with a trailer. I end up next to Rob at the pile.

“Her grandma gave away peonies?” I ask him.

He drops an armload and straightens up with a hand on his back. “Every Mother’s Day. Any lady in the valley who’d lost a kid, or never had one, or whose kids lived too far off to come home. Drove around in her old station wagon all morning.” He looks at me sideways. “Lindsey still does it. She didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“Course she didn’t.” He grins. “Ask her sometime what she does for the widowers on Valentine’s Day. Bring a handkerchief, Sarge.”

Mother’s Day is in May. That’s a long way off for a man who used to plan about a week ahead.

I plan for it anyway.

When I get home that night, there’s a note taped to my door in Lindsey’s loopy handwriting. Lyle Sorensen’s wife called the shop to tell me you saved her husband. She wants to make you dinner. I said you like enchiladas. You’re welcome.

Under that, smaller: Come over. I made dinner. I missed you.

I read the note three times on my landing. Then I go over.

She’s in her kitchen in thick wool socks and my blue shirt, which she now wears every night like it was always hers, stirring a pot of chili. Her little house is cold. Her breath fogs when she laughs at something on the radio.

“Your furnace is out,” I say from the doorway.

“It’s not out. It’s resting.” She doesn’t turn around. “It does this every October. It’ll come back.”

“How long has it been resting?”

“Since Tuesday.”

“Lindsey. It’s Saturday.”

“I have a woodstove.” She points the spoon at the little iron stove in the corner of her living room. It’s cold and empty. “I just ran out of wood. Gary’s supposed to bring some by next week.”