The Fireman's Son

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  When he announced that he was going to eat donuts for breakfast that week, she told him that he was not and took them back out of the cart.

  “You aren’t the boss of my stomach,” he informed her so loudly that the older woman shopping in the same aisle looked up. Faye ignored the disapproving look on her face.

  She couldn’t give in. But she was so tired of the constant fight.

  When they got home and Elliott insisted on carrying up all of the groceries, she started to breathe easier. When he wasn’t exploding with anger at the world, Elliott was kind and funny. He’d always been so helpful.

  She might not get many hours with that boy anymore, but the thought of even having a couple of them that weekend brought tears to her eyes. She quickly brushed them away before he saw them.

  And was rewarded by his refusal to put the water bottles on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. He had to use the restroom, he’d said.

  And didn’t come back.

  Something was going to have to change. She knew that. With Reese’s help or without, they couldn’t go on like this.

  And the thought of hearing from her ex-lover, of moving forward, made it hard to breathe. Made her yearn for sleep.

  About a year’s worth.

  While she desperately wanted to stop time, to put off the inevitable next step—either way it went—she was resigned to the inevitable when she got a text from him Sunday night.

  He wanted to meet her in his office first thing the next morning. Asked her to come straight in after dropping off Elliott.

  Will do, she texted back. She always went straight from the Stand to work.

  The waiting was over. The wondering would soon be over. There was a measure of peace to be found in that.

  She would have felt a whole lot better if he’d asked to meet her someplace outside of work. His choice of meeting spot told her his answer: business, not personal. He was going to turn her down. And ask her to resign.

  It had been a chance she’d had to take.

  In the morning, after it was done, she’d panic. And then do what she had to do. She’d get out of her lease. She and Elliott could move into the Stand until she found another job and a cheaper apartment. All things that could be dealt with in the morning.

  That night Faye lay down in her bed, covered up and cried.

  * * *

  SHE WAS ARMED with internal fortitude—anything for Elliott—and ready in blue jeans and her dressy white top, with her hair pulled back and makeup applied well.

  She knocked on Reese’s office door the next morning. She’d almost worn sandals instead of her work boots but had changed her mind when she heard her son call out to her from the kitchen to tell her they were out of milk. If he hadn’t had two bowls of cereal during the night, they wouldn’t have been. She’d given him a pastry for breakfast and put on her boots.

  She didn’t want Elliott to notice them missing from her feet and ask why. Not until she’d had the day to make plans. To give him a done deal so that he’d know that he was going to be taken care of.

  “Come in,” Reese called from his office, further evidence that she was leaving as of that day. He could have opened the door to her.

  Or even left it open as a sign of welcome.

  Seeing him in a white shirt and tie behind his desk put another nail in the coffin. And that was fine.

  She’d had to try. And now she’d move on. She’d find a way.

  Maybe moving Elliott across the country was the answer. Taking him away from what was familiar meant ridding him of a sense of living as Frank’s son. Maybe distance would help the memories fade...

  It didn’t jibe with what Sara said about keeping a semblance of sameness in Elliott’s world, but it made sense. It was the best she’d been able to come up with in the middle of the night, exhausted as she sat at the kitchen table and watched her sleeping son eat cereal.

  That and the fact that at least she wouldn’t be pulling Elliott away from new friends. New closeness. Her son had already done that by himself.

  “Have a seat,” Reese said, giving her a brief glance before returning his gaze to an open file folder.

  His actions bordered on rudeness.

  Still, she couldn’t blame him. At least not totally. She’d screwed up. Made incredibly foolish and immature choices—trying to jealously manipulate him rather than just ask him outright what was going on. Getting foolishly drunk. Waiting over two years to come to him with the knowledge that he might be a father—the first six years she hadn’t even known it was a possibility. She’d had a period after sleeping with Reese the last time. It had been really light. But hers had always been erratic, so, for her, light for a month wasn’t unusual.

  According to her doctor, when she’d asked after Frank’s revelation, that light period could have been normal for her, but she also could have been newly pregnant and spotting.

  Still, Reese wasn’t blameless, either. He’d gone out with Susan.

  All weekend long her feelings about that had vacillated. She’d been comforted beyond measure by the fact that her heart had been right when it had told her that Reese was being unfaithful to her. And devastated, even after all this time, to find out that he really had been.

  If making her wait now was some kind of power play, she hoped it did something for him. She was beyond being intimidated.

  When he put the folder down, she almost stood, just to be ready to walk out.

  For all she knew, the information in that folder was hers—maybe he was reading over the resignation letter he’d typed up, ready for her to sign.

  “I’m sorry to make you wait,” he said, his hands on the folder. “You’re a couple of minutes early and I’m a bit late. We had a call at five this morning. A heart attack...”

  He was talking about work. It calmed her. Gave the moment some normalcy. She stayed put and listened.

  “I meant to have this all read before you got here but couldn’t proceed with our meeting until I got through it...” He motioned to the folder.

  So she’d been right. It contained her file.

  “I won’t keep you in suspense,” he said, his brown-eyed gaze calm but distant. “I’ve reached a decision. And I have...non-negotiable demands that go along with it.”

  He sounded like a chief. Not like a potential father of her child.

  She nodded.

  He was telling her not to beg again. He had no worries there. She’d made the last request of him she was ever going to make.

  “I not only agree to submit to paternity DNA testing, I insist upon doing so. If you were to change your mind at this point, I would take you to court for the right to do so.”

  Faye stared, caught up on the word agree. Court. Rights. That was all way beyond her ability to comprehend in that moment.

  “In addition, I insist that Elliott not be told until the results are in.”

  He paused, so she nodded. No-brainer there; she had already decided that.

  “I insist that if I am his father, I be involved in the process of telling him. I want to be included in the meetings between you and his therapist and be involved in the decision making that determines how, when and where he’ll be told.”

  Another pause. Another nod. She was going to have to start breathing soon or she wasn’t going to be conscious for some of this meeting. She tried to take in more than short, staccato wisps of air.

  “If the test is positive, I will be involved in decisions regarding his life, most particularly about educational choices and financial support.”

  She wanted to nod that time. It was taking everything she had to remain professional.

  And she suddenly understood his choice of meeting place. He wasn’t going to accept any emotion between them. This was all business.

  “And
I want it understood that we are not and are never going to be a family.”

  He raised his brows at her lack of response.

  “I understand.” She found words because she’d been over this part a million times in the past two years. She hadn’t quite processed that they were here, at this point, that it was really happening, but she’d played it over so many times in her imagination that she knew her part. “I’m fully prepared to give you full visitation, shared custody even, with the only caveat being that it’s within Elliott’s best interests. The only time I will step in, from here on out, is if my son is being further damaged by choices we’ve made.”

  He studied her for too long. She was about to crack.

  But she wouldn’t do it in front of him.

  He hadn’t mentioned her job. But it could soon become impossible for them to work together. To continue on as though they had nothing in common. Most particularly if it came out that they shared a son.

  “What about my working here? What will we tell the others?”

  “Your job is secure as long as you do it well. As for the rest, we’ll discuss that once we know more.”

  That was what she couldn’t do. Just leave things to chance.

  “Reese, don’t you think we should have a plan? DNA tests only take a couple of days now. When the results come back, it’ll be go time. We need to plan for either eventuality.”

  He shrugged. “If they come back negative, nothing changes. No need to plan for that eventuality. If it comes back positive, we meet with Sara and go from there.”

  He made it all sound so simple.

  Doable, even.

  It wasn’t going to be that easy. Maybe in terms of Elliott’s best interests, it would be easy to decide some things. But even there, they had to factor in her son’s emotional reaction. While ultimately it had to be better for Elliott to have Reese for a father, his immediate reaction could go either way.

  “Sara will guide us through Elliott’s part of this, Reese, but what about us? We have emotions, too.”

  He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “You and I are not an ‘us.’ We are just two people dealing with a critical situation.”

  He didn’t fool her that time. Reese was hiding. No way the man she’d known was that dead.

  “You will feel things, Reese, either way,” she told him softly. “All of this thought and energy spent, the waiting, the wondering, you’ll feel something if you find out he’s not yours. But even more, if he is, it’s going to change your whole life. Even if you chose to ignore the news and move away, it’s going to change everything. But being here, being a part of his life—”

  “I see I need to make something else clear,” Reese interrupted. His tone had changed, but it hadn’t grown any warmer, or more personal.

  “I have no intention of being a hands-on father, with talk of shared custody, et cetera. I’ve learned some things about myself in the years we’ve been apart. Things you’d have no way of knowing. I am not a man who believes in deep, abiding, forever love. I feel the feelings, but I know that they are transient. I’ve been thinking about why I went out with Susan and I’ve realized that this is part of it. You needed more than I could give you, Faye. I let you down. And my wife, too, for that matter. If that boy is mine, I’ve made up my mind that I will not give him false expectation as I gave both of you. Right up front, it needs to be understood that I can be relied upon for some things but not for others.”

  He’d gone and done it. He’d opened the floodgate. Right there in his office. She’d been teetering on the brink, had been so close to getting out of there intact.

  “What did I ever need that you didn’t give me? Except, in the end, fidelity. You make me sound like some clingy, needy woman,” she said. “I’ve never been that. Growing up alone with my father, having to take care of the house... I’ve always been self-sufficient.” She would not be told, ever again, that she was something she was not.

  Her years with Frank had solidified that one.

  His bowed head didn’t bode well. She bit her lip. This wasn’t about her. Couldn’t be about her. If she’d just screwed up Elliott’s best chance...

  Still, she wanted to ask him what false expectations he’d given his wife. Why his shoulders had dropped. As though, in telling her who he was, some life had drained out of him.

  She wanted to but didn’t. And wouldn’t. He was not her business. He was firmly outside her circle of control...

  He threw out a hand haphazardly. As though he didn’t know what to do with it. “I just need it understood that there are to be no expectations other than the ones we delineate.”

  Good luck with that one. She couldn’t afford not to give him everything he required. But...

  “Reese, I think you need to understand something here. Elliott is an at-risk child with a mind of his own. You can set down whatever laws you want for him, but you can’t dictate what he does with them. With his mind. Or with his heart. We can discuss all of this with Sara, but I can already tell you, just knowing my son, if he finds out you’re his father, he will definitely have expectations. And something else I’ve learned, you might as well forget about living up to them. It’s impossible.”

  Chin jutting—she was beginning to hate it when he did that—he rocked his head from side to side. Not nodding. Nothing with that much commitment attached.

  “I work in a dangerous field. If I’m faced with risking my life to save another life, I do so. And will continue to do so. The boy will have to accept that, at the very least. That is as far as I can compromise on that one.”

  What was wrong with him? This wasn’t the man she’d known. It was barely a semblance of him. She wanted to ask about his wife’s death. Had he loved her so much that losing her had killed a part of him?

  But he’d said he’d let his wife down, too. She’d died in a car accident. Surely he didn’t think he could have prevented that?

  So how did he think he’d let her down?

  And how was she going to agree to his stipulations when she knew they were impossible? There was no way he could be involved in any capacity without some expectations being formed.

  “No one is asking you to give up your job,” she said. As far as she knew, anyway. Unless...had his wife wanted him to quit fire work? But he’d said that Faye had expected too much, too. “If you remember, Reese, I encouraged you to follow your call to work with fire. When we found out that it meant going to different colleges, I still encouraged you to go. I helped you get settled in your dorm. I was proud of your career choice, not afraid of it.”

  His jaw clenched. She’d overstepped. Gone too far.

  Fine.

  “You said that you were willing to take part in counseling as we proceed with this,” she said. “Sara will tell us how to help Elliott understand.” It was the best she could give him.

  She wasn’t going to lie to him. Or compromise her integrity with him.

  He picked up the folder. “I’ve typed up my stipulations, along with my consent to the testing,” he said. Picking up a pen, he signed the top page, then handed the folder and pen to her. “As soon as you sign, we can discuss details for the testing.”

  The news was beginning to sink in.

  She was finally going to know if Reese was her son’s father. Irrationally, inexplicably, uncontrollably, she wanted that more than she wanted to live out the rest of her natural life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ONCE THE DEAL had been signed, Reese couldn’t get the testing done soon enough. What Faye had said about the outcome changing his life forever wasn’t sitting well with him. He tried to ignore her words.

  But they nagged at him. Like a pesky gnat he could barely see but that kept making him itch.

  His first thought had been to get samples from Elliott and Faye—tests were more co
nclusive if the lab also had the mother’s DNA for comparison—immediately and take them to his friendly LA lab, have his own sample taken, and have them processed immediately.

  Faye thought it better for Sara to determine how best to secure Elliott’s sample so as not to raise his suspicions, and to have a local lab run the test.

  There was no valid, professional or mature reason to disagree.

  By noon on Monday, he’d already been swabbed and dismissed. When he’d pressed, the technician had told him he could know as early as Wednesday, depending on how soon the other two samples came in.

  With the rest of the day off, Reese threw in a load of laundry. Went hiking. Did another load of laundry and headed to LA to look again at the serial gasoline fire evidence. That was what should occupy his thoughts. That was what should keep him up at night.

  He’d done every test he could think of on the white paint. It was interior paint generally used on household walls. Which meant that whatever the perp had burned in that particular fire had most likely come from inside a house.

  The escalation told him the arsonist was angry.

  Dead chickens...he didn’t know if those were accidental or on purpose. The gasoline hadn’t gone all the way to the pen, but dried brush had caught fire, which was how the chickens died. It was the only thing different about that particular crime scene. Other than the fact that the fire had been set closer to human habitation.

  Each one was getting closer.

  His arsonist could be getting more careless. Or perhaps the fire truck had taken longer than he’d expected to arrive on scene. The arsonist needed whatever was in the middle of that circle to burn off before the truck arrived, but then needed the truck there quickly to avoid notable damages.

  Was the perp testing Reese? It wasn’t the first time the question had occurred to him. Was it someone who had a beef with him? Trying to find out if his crew—and he as investigator—could keep Santa Raquel safe?

  The police department was working any and all leads. They’d already cleared anyone else connected with the fire chief position when it had been open. Anyone who’d interviewed, expressed interest, and any family members of the same.