“I am a master of the thirty-minute vacation. You could learn a lot from me.” He had a picture of her laughing full and loud on the river, the wind tumbling through that incredible hair, sun splashing gold on her face. And he’d be right there with her. As a friend. Just a friend, absolutely and completely nothing more than a friend.
“It sounds wonderful...but...”
“No,” he said, daring to put a finger to her lips. That was a mistake. The contact shot through him, giving him twelve incredibly tempting and riotously stupid ideas, all of which should be abandoned immediately. “Don’t give me reasons you can’t.” He hadn’t squelched any of those rebellious impulses from his youth, after all. Evidently all they needed was the right inspiration, and it was standing in front of him. “You owe me. The dock behind Jones River Sports tomorrow at one.” With an application of willpower that practically made him groan, he stepped back and added, “And don’t you dare bring your knitting.”
“Okay.” He felt the fall of her resistance slide down the back of his neck and settle with warm satisfaction under his ribs. She was so different than anyone who’d ever caught his eye. Years ago this might have been about conquest or the thrill of the chase, but his connection with her went so deep so fast it felt like God was unlocking some part of him he was finally ready to view. But was he ready? A week ago, he would have said he definitely wasn’t. But now?
Now he wasn’t so sure.
* * *
Melba could almost convince herself life was normal. She had new friends, she was knitting again, and every moment didn’t feel drastic. She and Dad had shared a simple dinner that night, and now they sat in the living room enjoying the close of the day. Melba sat in her mother’s chair, working on the midsection of a sample prayer shawl for the knitting group. She’d always felt like a trespasser in this chair, but tonight she felt connected to her mother, grounded in a new and comfortable way. Tonight Melba could feel her influence everywhere in the cozy house, could pull up mental images of Mom touching this object or that, sitting in this chair or staring at that framed photograph. It was as if “home” had finally unfolded to meet her, as if the house opened up its embrace. She felt “settled” for the first time since transplanting her life back to Gordon Falls.
No doubt some of this feeling came from Gordon Falls’s newfound appeal. Pastor Allen was right, the women of the knitting group had become instant friends. Yes, they were all older—some by lots and some by only a little—but she welcomed their wisdom and the head-on practicality they showed when facing challenges. Especially Violet. Melba cringed when she remembered how she used to think of “strange Mrs. Sharpton.” Now, as she remembered Violet perched on a chair adjusting that outrageous hat on Clark’s clashing red hair, she adored the woman.
“You look so like your mother, sitting there.”
Melba looked up to see her father staring at her, his jigsaw puzzle abandoned on the coffee table. Despite the wistful look in his eyes, his expression was as clear and lucid as when she was a teenager. The surge of urgency, the desperate desire to grab hold of these clear moments and hoard them before they disappeared forever, almost made her gasp. Instead she placed a casual smile on her face. “That’s nice to hear.”
“That was her chair. She made the afghan on our bed sitting right there, waiting for you to come home from band practice. Did you know she’d played the flute in high school, too?”
“I’d forgotten.” It was delightfully unsettling to have Dad remember something that had slipped her mind. He was still all in there—hidden from view sometimes, but still all there.
“That chair used to be in our nursery.” He chuckled, and she tucked away the sound to remember forever. “You were such a cranky baby, she’d end up rocking you for hours.” He shifted in his chair and pointed at her with eyes all squinted up in amusement. “I even found a contraption down at Lindwig’s Antiques once, a sort of cradle/chair combination so she could rock you and play her flute or knit. Thought I’d solved her problem, but no. You’d have none of the thing—you wanted your mother’s arms and nothing but.” A wisp of shadow crossed his eyes for a moment, as if he’d bit into something sour.
“Did you ever rock me?” The question seemed ludicrous and terribly important all at once. As if it would be the key that would unlock the whole dark conversation she both craved and dreaded.
Dad’s mouth worked for a moment before he answered. “Now and then, when you’d let me or when Maria was too tired to care what you wanted.” He looked like he was going to say more, but fell silent.
“What was she like? Back when you were first married, I mean.” She cocked her head to one side and winked at him. “Before I came along in all my crankiness.”
“Your mother?” He ran one hand over the white doily covering the chair’s arm. Mom had crocheted those, too, only now they were tinted with age and use. “She was a beauty. Fragile in some ways, tough as nails in others.” He looked up. “She could melt your heart with those eyes—same big brown ones she gave you.” He smiled, a faraway kind of smile as if some memory had just popped up. “One look and she could get anything she wanted out of me. I thought sheep on the resort were the worst idea ever, but she kept staring at me with those big eyes and pretty soon, we had sheep wandering out in back.”
Those sheep had given birth to Melba’s love of fiber and fiber arts. Another gift of her mother’s passed on to her. “Did you know each other in high school?” Melba knew they’d met at the homecoming dance his senior year, but she wanted Dad to tell the story.
“I had eyes for her two years before she ever let me take her out.” He reached up and touched his own white-blond hair. “Towhead that I was, I thought her dark curls were the most amazing thing I’d ever seen.”
Melba hadn’t heard her father ever call himself that slang word for blond-headed. Every childhood photo of him she’d ever seen showed blond hair, and she used to find his flaxen hair so very different from hers growing up. “I love that I got her hair. I used to hate it in high school. Straight hair was in and I felt like a freak.”
That brought a chuckle from him. “I remember. Oh, the nights crying in the bathroom upstairs over whatever you tried this time to make it straight. I’d try to tell you that hair was the thing I loved best about your mother, but of course, that’d only make you cry harder.”
“How’d you finally win her over?”
His face changed, as if the lines of his wrinkles deepened right before her eyes. He picked up a puzzle piece and was silent for a moment. “I don’t remember,” he said softly.
He was lying. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did, and the realization stung. She wanted to call him on it, but she didn’t really have that right. He was entitled to his privacy no matter how much she craved details. She tried to content herself with being glad he’d shared as much as he had, that she’d been able to see him smile over happy memories. Besides, she told herself, it was possible she was wrong and he couldn’t genuinely recall.
She still craved answers. Dad just might not be the best source for information right now. It felt wrong to push her questions, to risk hurting or upsetting him again. Maybe there were other places to find the answers she sought. For now, it was time to change the subject.
“Well, I’m sure glad you did.” She made her voice chipper, as if she hadn’t seen the shadows pass over his face. “Hey, there’s still cake left, isn’t there?”
Dad smiled. “Sure is.”
Melba put her knitting back into its bag and stood up. “I think there’s only one thing to do about that, don’t you?”
Chapter Eleven
Melba watched a heron lift gracefully from the water and fly overhead. Clutching the side of the boat as it raced around the river bend, she felt the sunshine seep into her bones. The sensation of space and freedom refreshed her, and she understood why Cl
ark had bought the boat without a moment’s hesitation. “It’s like the air is bigger out here,” she shouted above the engine. “Does that make any sense?”
Clark stole a glance at her as he navigated the boat toward a quiet cove. “Absolutely.” His grin told her more than his shouted reply. He backed down the throttle as the boat made a sweeping arc toward shore and the engine’s roar died down. “She’s got the right name, don’t you think?”
Escape Clause. It fit perfectly. Melba didn’t want to run away from her problems, but it felt delicious to leave them behind for a brief time. Being out here in the glory of a Gordon Falls sunny spring day was exactly what her soul needed. “Perfect.”
Clark ran a hand through his tousled hair, then cut the engine completely. A thick and wonderful silence settled around them. “Ah, but you haven’t even gotten to the best part.” He reached under the front deck, produced a small anchor, then deftly tossed it overboard and tied the rope up to the cleat with the speed of an experienced sailor. “Pull out your cell phone.”
Melba couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do less. “Absolutely not.”
Clark grabbed her handbag and handed it to her. “No, really, pull it out.”
“Escape and cell phone don’t go together in my book.”
Unzipping the top, Clark hovered a hand over her purse. “You don’t want me to dig in here and find it myself, do you?” When Melba groaned, he added, “Please. Really, it’s the best part of this whole place.”
Rolling her eyes, Melba took the bag and fished out her cell. Reluctantly flipping it open, she raised an eyebrow at Clark.
“Look at the bars.”
In tiny red letters, the upper corner of her screen read “X NO SERVICE.” She looked up to see Clark’s satisfied smile.
He spread his arms wide. “Iron-clad guaranteed silence. A tiny slice of time where no one can get to me, no one can need a thing.” Tilting his head toward the sun, he pulled in a deep breath. “Escape.”
Melba couldn’t decide whether to inhale or gulp. A tendril of panic curled around her stomach, fighting against her lungs, which yearned to pull in a breath as deep and satisfying as Clark’s. No one could reach her. The idea was as attractive as it was terrifying. “We can’t stay here.”
Clark settled onto the seat across from her. “No, we can’t. Not for long.” He leaned in. “But think about it. For thirty minutes, no one can interrupt you. No one can hijack your day or throw another problem in your face. You have thirty minutes of absolute peace.”
Peace. When was the last time she’d known anything close to peace? Even when she sat still, she was scrambling...clutching for calm, worrying, trying to stretch safety nets in every direction. Clark’s words and the look in his eye pulled a craving up out of nowhere, a desperate need to soak this spot’s beauty into her soul. To push the jangle of anxious noise far away? To drop the striving for even a tiny stretch of time? Oh, what a luxury that would be.
Clark seemed to see her struggle. He seemed able to read her so easily. “I’m not saying run away from your problems or all that stuff you’re responsible for now. Just...drop them for a while. Long enough to catch your breath.” He drew his hands up in front of his chest while he pulled in a deep breath, nodding at her.
His words made her feel starved for oxygen, as if she’d run too far too fast. Well, hadn’t life made her do just that lately—run too far too fast? Melba closed her eyes and slowly, deliberately filled her lungs. The air was sweet and cool, letting light and space into all the tight places. Her exhale released knots and fears and stress. She did it once more before she opened her eyes, knowing Clark’s powerful stare would meet her when she did. “The world can spare me for thirty minutes, can’t it?” It seemed so obvious, almost arrogant of her to think otherwise. What was thirty minutes in the face of all that lay before her? Especially when it had done this much good in the first five minutes out here on the water?
“One more thing.” Clark held up one finger while the other pulled a small drawstring bag out of a small shelf on the side of the boat. “No peeking,” he said, as he set a button on his watch and then pulled it from his wrist. He dropped the watch and his cell phone into the bag. “Yours, too.”
Feeling a bit foolish, Melba closed her phone and dropped it in the bag, followed by her watch. “Is that really necessary?”
“It’s a ritual of sorts, I suppose.” He tugged the strings shut and hung it from the speed control on the boat’s dashboard. “Learned it from my chief in Detroit. For thirty minutes every morning he would go up on the roof of the firehouse. Alone. Hung his watch and pager and phone from a little bag just like this on a hook by the stair door. Everyone knew you did not go anywhere near that door when the bag was hung. He did it every day. He said it kept him sane.” A flicker of shadow passed over Clark’s eyes. “Kept him human in the face of...well, everything you see when you do what we do.”
“Did you do it in Detroit? Go up on the roof like him?”
“Not at first. I thought it a dumb old-guy thing at first.” He paused for a second, shifting his gaze out over the water before he added, “Then after, well...lots of things changed after.”
She’d heard something happened to him in Detroit, some kind of accident, but had never heard exactly what occurred. Melba twisted her ring, wondering if it was okay to ask about it now.
He turned back, raising one eyebrow. “You’re not going to ask ‘after what?’”
“I didn’t know if it was okay.” A mama duck, followed by three fuzzy babies, swam into view and Melba thought about all the unasked questions waiting in the neighbors’ eyes when she brought Dad, soaking wet, home from the riverbank. She knew sometimes the kindest thing to do was not to ask.
“Sometimes it isn’t.” Clark looked at her a long moment, shifting in his seat to face her with his arms resting on his knees. He was a bit too close—the air hummed between them in a way that had nothing to do with an outboard motor—but Melba told herself she didn’t mind. “But now’s okay.” He broke his gaze, looking down at his hands. He fingered a scar across the back of his left hand, which made her wonder if the scar had been from his accident. He glanced up at the little blue drawstring bag.
She put her hand out. “Hey, you don’t owe me any explanations.”
“No,” he said, touching her hand, “it’s just that I’m trying to figure out if there’s a version that fits into thirty minutes. This isn’t the kind of story you can stop in the middle.” He let his hand stay around her fingers for a moment. She felt the warmth of them, the calluses and strength, aware they’d crossed another line toward each other. Some part of her expected it to feel wrong, or at least dangerous, but it felt right. Like a little shift settling things into a new place.
She offered him an encouraging smile. “Some stories are like great black holes that way. You want to give yourself enough time to crawl out the other side.”
“Yeah, like that.” He seemed grateful to be understood. She knew what that was like. He gave her hand a squeeze and then released it. “Fires are like warfare—they change, grow stronger in one place and weaken in another. You’re always trying to second-guess them, beat them before they beat you. When you get up into a building with more than one story, you’ve got to figure out where it’s safe to go now and what’s gonna come down around your ankles. You read the fire, like the tide.” He paused before adding, “And it’s always in the back of your mind what could happen if you don’t get it right.”
Melba sucked in a breath, her imagination casting horrid visions.
“You’re trained, you’ve got all kinds of backup, but it’s never really safe. Part of you denies that the fire is even there—you can’t function if you don’t forget about it on some level—but it never really goes away.” Clark sat back, pulling into what she could only guess were difficult memories. “It wasn’t t
hat large a fire—fully involved, which means the whole building was going up—but not a huge structure. I could give you the whole technical rundown, but the short version is that the second floor gave out underneath me and I fell into some kind of storage container. All solid with only a top opening, kind of like a well, only square. Broke my leg in two places, and I must have hit some kind of window on the way down because I remember glass everywhere and I was bleeding.”
He seemed so calm, but even his brief description set Melba’s nerves on edge. She couldn’t see how men and women faced that kind of thing every day. She wasn’t that brave. “That’s terrible.”
“I wasn’t on the ground two seconds before I knew, just by looking around, that there was no way out. I couldn’t get myself to safety. The rest of the brigade would have to come save me.” Clark shot her a smile that didn’t quite mask the memory darkening his eyes. “For a guy like me, Mr. Independence, well, that just cuts right to the heart of everything, if you know what I mean. I couldn’t save myself, and I’m the guy who likes to save everyone. It was my way of staying on top, of keeping in control.”
“They found you and got you out.” Melba said it more for herself than for him, not sure she was ready to hear grisly rescue details.
“I’m here, so yes.” He stood up and walked to the back of the boat. “But believe me when I tell you it was the longest twenty-seven minutes of my life. A guy can rehash a lot in twenty-seven minutes. You can stuff a whole lot of regret into a dark box at the bottom of a fire.”
It was easy to see why Clark craved wide-open spaces like the river. “That’s awful to be so alone for so long.”
The Fireman's Homecoming Page 10