Hearts on Fire

by Julia Gabriel

  Jack began running toward the back door. His hand was turning the knob—strangely unlocked for a shop that was closed for the week—when a big hand clapped him on the shoulder and yanked back hard.

  “What the hell are you doing?” It was Matt, his other older brother.

  “There’s a car parked over there and no one seems to know who it belongs to. Hasn’t anyone checked for someone inside?”

  Matt frowned. “Who’d be inside? The whole Trevor family’s out of town.”

  “Hell if I know! But there’s a car there!” Jack was right in Matt’s face now.

  “Fine. I’ll go in,” Matt said.

  “I’ll go with you.” The pull of the fire was too much for Jack. He wanted to be working this call, too.

  “You sure as hell will not. If dad doesn’t kill me, mom will.” He shot a fierce glare at his younger brother. “You will wait out here.”

  Jack took a deep breath. Mattie was right. He was a Wolfe, but not a member of the St. Caroline fire department. He didn’t belong here. He watched as his brother grabbed another firefighter and headed into the building. Two in, two out. Jack strode over to the car and cautiously touched the door handle. It was warm. If the fire got worse, it would be too hot to touch. He tried the handle, but the car was locked. No moving it now. He peered into the back seat, and recognition hit him like a backdraft.

  There was a brown sock monkey hanging from the driver’s side seat, its short arms clinging to the metal prong of the headrest. A memory he hadn’t given a minute’s attention to in years flared in his brain.

  This was Rebekah Trevor’s car.

  He spun around at the sound of yelling behind him. Matt and the other firefighter were out of the building—and between them stumbled a woman, coughing and choking.

  Chapter 2

  From the parking lot across the street, Becca watched the firefighters wrap up their work. The small crowd of onlookers was beginning to disperse. She needed to call her parents but undoubtedly they already knew. St. Caroline was a small town, even when you added in the summer residents. It was part fishing village, part quaint vacation town for the rich and powerful in the mid-Atlantic. The Trevor family could trace their residence on the eastern shore of Maryland back to the early eighteen-hundreds. They were as historic as the buildings on Main Street.

  She sat down on a narrow cement parking curb and crossed her ankles in front of her. Probably dozens of people had called her parents by now to give them the bad news. Both parts of it, in fact. One, Quilt Therapy was basically gone. Everything inside—from bolts of fabric to the sewing machines in the tiny classroom—was a total loss. And Bad News Part Two, the black sheep of the family was back in town—and within hours of her arrival, the family business had burned down.

  Everything she touched turned to ashes. All her life, that had been the case. She often wondered whether Michelle and Daniel Trevor ever regretted adopting her after her mother, Michelle’s younger (and wayward) sister, died young of a drug overdose. If they didn’t regret it before, they surely would now.

  From inside her canvas purse came the sound of her phone ringing. She took a deep breath. Time to face the music. She should be good at this by now. She dug out the phone and tapped the screen.

  “Hi mom,” she said glumly. Should she launch into abject groveling immediately? Or let her mother say her piece first?

  “Bec! Where are you, honey?” Her mother’s voice, soft with genuine concern, washed over her like a balm. She didn’t deserve this family. Nor had they ever done anything terrible enough to deserve her.

  “I’m in the parking lot across the street.” A hiccup seized her lungs and the sharp bite of pain unleashed the tears she had held back for the past hour. “I’m sorry, mom. I am so sorry.”

  “Are you okay? You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

  “No. That’s the least of your worries now.”

  “That is the absolute most of my worries, Becca.” Concern was replaced by sternness. “Why didn’t you go to the house?”

  “I did.” She wiped her eyes on her forearm. “When I got there, I realized that I didn’t have a key. But I remembered the security code to the shop, so I just came here. I was asleep on the couch …”

  “Where’s your key to the house?”

  “I lost it.” It had been in the nightstand next to her bed. She couldn’t remember even seeing the nightstand outside the apartment. Maybe someone had already made off with it by the time she got there.

  “Okay. Well, we’ll go to the hardware store and make a new one. I thought you didn’t have enough time off to come home.”

  “I do now.” She didn’t need to elaborate further. No one in her family would be surprised that she had lost yet another job. Another apartment. Another boyfriend.

  “Maybe we should talk about this when I get home. Daddy’s online now, looking for a morning flight tomorrow. Your sisters and I will be back Wednesday.”

  “He doesn’t have to come home—”

  “Sweetheart, you know how much he loves these quilt shows. He’s happy for a reason to leave.”

  Becca couldn’t argue with that. Dan Trevor was a popular pediatrician in St. Caroline. His sole purpose in traveling to the big quilt expos with his wife and daughters was to serve as a pack mule, to help lug home the samples and books they collected. She heard muffled conversation in the background, then her mother returned.

  “Alright, Daddy’s found one. He’s flying into Baltimore.”

  “I can pick him up at the airport.”

  More muffled background conversation.

  “He said he’d love for you to do that.”

  “Then it’s a date,” Becca said, gamely trying for a lighter note before hanging up the call.

  Across the road, one of the fire trucks was pulling out of Quilt Therapy’s small parking lot. She watched as it disappeared in the direction of the fire station. It looked as if one of the crews was planning to stay and watch the shop for awhile.

  “With my luck, it’ll burst into flames again as soon as everyone’s gone,” she muttered.

  “Probably not.” Someone sat down on the curb next to her. “It’s pretty much out.” A man’s hand held out her car key. “I moved your car for you.”

  She took the key and turned to him. One of the firefighters who had helped her out of the house had asked for the key, but this wasn’t him. This was Jack Wolfe. She had gone to school with him, though that overstated the matter a bit. They weren’t in any classes together after elementary school. Jack was one of the smart kids and Becca was … well, not.

  He was staring at her closely. Please don’t remember. Please please please. His eyes gave away nothing. That was always her impression of Jack Wolfe—that he was intense, serious, quiet. Kinda’ skinny. Although that last wasn’t the impression he was giving off now. She resisted the urge to drop her eyes to his chest. It was bad enough that she could see his long, tanned legs in her peripheral vision.

  “Thanks,” she said, giving the key a little shake.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  For an instant, she thought he was referring to something else. Something she definitely had no intention of mentioning. Zero intention.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “I can get you a bottle of water from the truck.”

  Her mouth was parched, but she shook her head. “I’m fine.” She let out a rueful laugh. “Well, as fine as I can be.” She looked over at the charred building that used to house her mother’s business.

  “Why weren’t you staying at your folks’ house?”

  “I lost the key. So I came here. The shop is locked with a security code. I’ve known that all my life, practically.”

  He smiled. “Yeah. I know what you mean. I could probably get into the firehouse with my hands tied behind my back.”

  She stood and looked around for her car. It was parked about twenty feet away. “Well, thanks.” She looked across the road and grimaced. “At least there’s somethi
ng left.”

  He stood too, and walked with her to the car. Jack Wolfe would be a gentleman that way. With Angela and Tim Wolfe as parents, that outcome was never in doubt. She put her hand on the door handle, then stopped. Where was she going? It was almost two in the morning.

  “What’s the matter?” Jack asked.

  She sighed. “Oh, I just realized that I’ll have to go back to my parents’ house. I should have just stayed there, then this wouldn’t have happened.”

  He leaned against her car. “What do you mean it wouldn’t have happened?”

  “I mean if I hadn’t been sleeping here, the shop wouldn’t have caught on fire.”

  A puzzled look slid down his face. “You didn’t set the fire, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “Were you smoking?”

  “No. I don’t smoke.”

  “Then what’s the connection between you sleeping there and the fire?”

  “I’m bad luck.” She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Jack Wolfe was from St. Caroline, born and bred. Their parents were friends. He knew her story. “Maybe I shouldn’t go back to my parents’ house, after all. Destroying one property is probably enough for one night.”

  “Thought you didn’t have a key.”

  “I can sleep on the patio.” She looked up at the cloudless night sky. “Doesn’t look like rain.”

  “Bugs will eat you alive”

  Becca laughed bitterly. “That’s the least of my worries tonight.”

  Jack watched until Becca’s car pulled out onto the road and disappeared into the night. Then he jogged back across the street to where Matt and Oliver were packing up their truck, the last one to leave the scene. Matt’s face was streaked with soot and sweat.

  “You following us back to the station?” he asked.

  Jack shook his head. “I’m headed to the house. Been driving all day. I’m beat.”

  “Alrighty then. You can crash at my place too, if you want.”

  “Thanks. Appreciate the offer.”

  Matt climbed into the cab. Oliver was already in the driver’s seat, waiting. He hadn’t said a word to Jack and Jack knew why. He had called Oliver out on a mistake and been right about it. Oliver did not handle being wrong well.

  Whatever. He was in St. Caroline to spend time with his mother, not deal with his brothers’ miscellaneous varieties of bullshit.

  The red truck’s headlights flashed on and then it was gone too, down the road in the opposite direction Becca had taken. Jack was alone now in the dark. He looked around. This part of town was rather desolate late at night, after the shops and small business offices were closed. It wasn’t dangerous—no part of St. Caroline was—but no one really lived out this way. The houses that were around had been converted into retail spaces, like Quilt Therapy.

  He turned and looked back at the dark cottage. The fire was out. Everyone was gone. In the morning, his father would be back to take a look at the building in the daylight, try to ascertain what had started the fire. Jack wondered whether Becca had been lying about not smoking.

  His feet began moving, carrying him across the small dark parking lot and toward the cottage. He kept walking until he stood at the back door, which was still open a crack. He tested the doorknob. Warm but not enough to burn his hand. He pushed gently at the door.

  He shouldn’t do it. He should not go inside, and definitely not by himself. He’d told Becca the fire wouldn’t reignite. But it could. The structure could be weakened. Who knew what kind of shape the building was in before tonight? He could fall through a floor. He had seen it happen.

  But the pull was too great. He had fire in his blood. His father was a firefighter and both of his brothers, too. He was the namesake of a firefighter, his uncle. He had grown up with the rhythms of the station, could identify materials by the way they smelled when they burned.

  To be a Wolfe was to fight fires.

  He pushed the door open all the way and stepped inside. His last call in California was over a week ago and already he missed it. Not just the sense of doing something useful for people, but the camaraderie, the teamwork, the immediate satisfaction of fixing a problem … something he had known almost immediately that he wasn’t going to find in the practice of law. He stuck out law school for two years until his bored mind and idle muscles just couldn’t take it anymore.

  He climbed the stairs to the second floor. That’s where his brothers had found Becca Trevor. The smell of smoke and burnt wood was still strong, but the smoke had cleared and it was easy to see where she had been sleeping. The second floor was an office with a desk, a table stacked with folded quilts, and a sofa.

  Becca Trevor. He hadn’t thought of her in years. He had pushed her and that one night totally out of his mind. It hadn’t been his finest moment, by any measure—hence his interest in not remembering it. That stupid sock monkey in her car had brought it all back. A stupid high school graduation party he had gone to only because he had caved into peer pressure. He was never much of a partier in high school—still wasn’t, for that matter—but he had stepped out of character for one night ...

  Jackie Wolfe gulped down another bitter swallow of beer and eyed the goings-on at the graduation party. Some of these kids he might never see again. He wasn’t the only senior planning to leave St. Caroline and not come back. Not that he disliked his home town, but St. Caroline only needed so many lawyers and none of the ones it had were near retirement age yet.

  A hand clapped him square between the shoulder blades and he snorted beer through his nose. Raucous laughter surrounded him.

  “We need to get Jackie here laid before dawn,” Ian Evers said.

  “No, we don’t,” Jack answered. None of the girls in school had evinced much interest in him up to now. They were always more interested in his brother, Matt—one year older and a hell of a lot better looking.

  “We can’t send you off to Cornell a virgin.” More beer-fueled laughter. “The girls of the Ivy League would never forgive us.”

  “Well, good luck with that,” Jack retorted.

  But shortly after midnight, Jack found himself walking to Becca Trevor’s car. Improbably enough, she had come onto him. Between the beer and his friends’ enthusiasm, Jack’s better judgment fell by the wayside. They were right, he told himself. He was leaving town, even sooner than most of his classmates, since he was taking summer classes at Cornell. And it wasn’t as though he was about to do anything dozens of other guys in school hadn’t done already. Rumor had it Becca Trevor had slept with half the senior class. Why should he be the only one heading off to college a virgin? God knew, Mattie razzed him about it all the time.

  So they’d had sex in the back seat of her car, Becca riding him, her blouse unbuttoned and her amazing breasts bouncing right before his very eyes. For fifteen window-fogging minutes under the watchful gaze of a silly stuffed monkey, he had been in sweet, sweet heaven.

  He’d been a little drunk. She’d been a little drunk. It should never have happened. He turned and headed back down the stairs. Nothing about his performance that night had been memorable. Of that he was certain. He pretty much just sat there and let her do all the work.

  Outside, he took a deep breath of fresh air. The odds of her remembering it were slim and none. Right?

  Chapter 3

  Jack stopped just outside the doorway to the kitchen, surprised to see his mother awake this early. She was sitting at the big oak table, the one that had hosted years of family dinners and late night homework sessions. A puddle of morning sunlight spilled across the wooden top. Her thin fingers wrapped loosely around the handle of a coffee mug, her head bent to a magazine.

  His heart felt suddenly huge in his chest, his shoulders bucking with the force of its beating. His father told him her condition had been downgraded to terminal, but that fact hadn’t been real until he saw the dark shadow of stubble covering her head. The last time he was home at Easter, she was wearing wigs or scarves to co
ver the chemotherapy-induced hair loss. Her hair was growing back in now, which meant only one thing. No more chemotherapy.

  They had given up.

  Her face lifted. She smiled at him and he wanted to scream, rage at the world, hurl things.

  “Morning, Jackie. I didn’t hear you and dad come in last night.”

  That was as bald-faced a lie as the smile on her grey, gaunt cheeks. For most of her life, she’d been sister, wife, and mother to firemen. He knew she never dared fall asleep until they were all home or back at the station safely.

  “Coffee’s ready,” she added, nodding toward the coffeepot on the counter.

  He poured himself a cup, then carried the pot to the table to top off hers. Then he pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “How was your coast-to-coast drive? Check that off your bucket list now?”

  He nodded dumbly. How could his mother sit here and calmly talk about bucket lists? Driving cross country had never been any sort of goal for him. He’d done it simply because he wanted his car here, if he was going to be in St. Caroline for awhile. Not to mention, he had no idea if he’d be going back to California afterward. He had no idea what he was going to do in six months. Right now, he didn’t particularly care what the future held for him. His mother was going to miss all of it.

  His wedding. His children. Birthdays. Holidays. All of it, gone.

  So the future? Yeah, he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

  “Your father said Michelle’s shop is probably a total loss.”

  He nodded. “Looked that way,” he agreed. His mother and Michelle Trevor were lifelong friends.

  “Was the fire quilt still in there, I wonder?”

  “Don’t know.” The fire quilt was made by the shop’s customers every spring, to be auctioned off at the annual fireman’s carnival.

  “Let me know if you see it tonight.”

  “I thought I’d stay here with you,” he said.

  “Nonsense. I don’t need a babysitter, Jack.”

  “Didn’t say you did. Just thought you might like the company.” That’s why he was here, to spend time with her before she was gone. “Did you help with the fire quilt this year?”