The Fireman's Homecoming

by Allie Pleiter

  Tina squeezed Melba’s hand. “Nearly two thirds of the place was rooting for you to patch it up, if that makes you feel any better.”

  “Better odds than I expected,” Marge interjected. “Seems that Bradens boy is finally growing on this town.”

  Angry as she was, Melba felt a pang of sympathy for Clark. Fully grown, about to take on a major managerial position, and people still referred to him as “that Bradens boy.” They’re right, she said to herself as she sank back into the couch cushions, you can never go home again.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Jeannie’s gentle question was tempting.

  “I can’t, really.” She dabbed her eyes with the Kleenex Tina pulled from the box on the parlor table. The gesture made her think of the many times—the too many times—Clark had handed her a tissue or handkerchief from his pocket. “It’s complicated.”

  “When isn’t it complicated?” Tina said. She let go of Melba’s hand and touched her shoulder in such a motherish way that it made Melba’s heart ache. “I know your mother’s passed, but I think I speak for all of us when I say we’d gladly step in for you as that shoulder to cry on.”

  “That’s really sweet,” Melba said, feeling like God had handed her a whole handful of stand-in moms. It was a good feeling. “I’m just not sure there’s a solution on this one.”

  “Nonsense,” Violet declared. “God always has a solution, it’s just that we can’t always see it.” She picked up her knitting and looked Melba straight in the eye. “Have you fallen for him?”

  “You mean, like, in love?” Melba sniffed.

  “No—” Violet thrust her knitting back into her lap “—I mean down his front steps—of course that’s what I mean!”

  “Violet,” Jeannie chastised, “not everyone has your gift for...directness.”

  “No one has Vi’s gift for directness,” Marge muttered. Melba held in a snicker, for Marge could be oh-so direct herself. As if she’d heard the thought, Marge said, “But it would help us to know if you have.”

  “Help?” Melba moaned. “It makes it so much worse.”

  “Oh, there’s where you’re wrong,” Violet countered. “Obviously, he’s messed up, or you’ve messed up, or more likely both. Am I right?”

  Melba started to launch into a condemnation of Clark’s offenses, but Violet’s question made her stop and think: had she hurt Clark? Didn’t he find out something just as troubling about his family? “People in pain do stupid things,” Melba found herself quoting Pastor Allen’s most recent sermon.

  Abby caught the reference right away. “Don’t you hate it when God sends you just the sermon you need, often when you least want to hear it? What was the next part?” She held up a hand and wiggled her fingers as if to lure the memory in out of the air, finally snapping her fingers to say, “People of faith in pain do forgivable things, because people of faith are people of forgiveness.”

  “Doesn’t get much truer than that.” Marge nodded her head, then turned to Melba. “Did he hurt you, hon?”

  “He did something that hurt me deeply.” She couldn’t go into any more detail than that, but Melba did surprise herself by adding, “But he did the wrong thing for the right reasons. I think.”

  “Was he sorry he’d hurt you?”

  The sound of Clark calling her name, the forlorn repetition of it as it echoed off the riverbank...those things were wedged in her memory like thorns. He’d called her cell twice that day. She’d seen his car sitting at the end of her driveway late last night. She’d ignored him completely, some petty girlish part of her wanting the heartbreaker finally to get his due. “Very,” she said, the single word her own condemnation. How many times had she snapped at people who couldn’t seem to understand what having your life come unglued does to someone? She recalled the sharply worded memos about missed deadlines where she wanted to take a red marker and scrawl “My father is dying!” across the crisp black text. She’d wanted their understanding—but had she offered understanding in turn?

  “I don’t know what Clark did,” Jeannie said, “but things can’t be easy for him right now, either. It’d be a wonderful world if everyone behaved the way they ought to, but we don’t. We mess up and hurt those we love most.” Knowing what she knew of Jeannie, how she’d lost her husband, had her house burn, and been through a host of rough patches before finding love with Chad, the woman’s words had the weight of hard-won truth to them.

  Melba thought of her mother and father. How had they ever managed to piece their marriage back together after such a disastrous fall from grace? “It’s all a big mess,” Melba said, yearning to say more but knowing that wasn’t possible.

  “The world’s a messy, broken, fallen place,” Jeannie said, holding up her far-from-perfect knitting with a lopsided smile. Knitting wasn’t coming easily to Jeannie, yet she still kept at it, taking out mistake after mistake until the new rows slowly built up. “But it’s still a wonderful place. You said it the first day you came here. You said ‘even bad knitting can keep you warm on a cold night.’”

  Melba found the start of a smile. “I said that, didn’t I?” It was one of her boss’s favorite sayings.

  “What if you and Clark are just hitting a patch of bad knitting? You don’t want him to leave. I don’t think he really wants to leave, or he’d have been gone already. What if you just have to take the time to undo the wrong stitches and keep going?”

  “Maybe,” Melba said, looking around the room.

  Marge huffed. “I’ve had just about enough of these silly metaphors. Knitting, schmitting. Get out of here and go patch things up with that Bradens boy.”

  “That Bradens boy,” Melba said, stuffing her knitting into her bag and finding her coat, “is a good man.”

  * * *

  Clark refused to look at Chad as he stood in the back doorway of the firehouse. He’d hidden out here in the back courtyard, pretending to clean some valves, and wasn’t in the mood for any more of Chad’s lectures. Truth be told, Clark couldn’t really say why he hadn’t just thrown his things in the car and left already. If Chad had said he’d take on the job of chief, he would have. He wanted to.

  Well, part of him wanted to. It was the other part of him that wouldn’t let him just take off like he had all those other times.

  “He’s a hurt, angry guy who got stupid, Melba.”

  Clark stilled. She was here. Lord, please don’t let this hurt more.

  “Don’t let him throw all this away,” Chad was saying. “I know a thing or two about what a waste that is.”

  Clark didn’t know if he could actually turn to look at her. He may have said Gordon Falls was his home, but it was Melba he couldn’t really bring himself to leave.

  “Hi.” Her voice was small and shaky.

  He turned to see dark circles cutting shadows under her eyes, and her hair looking like it had tumbled through a tornado. “Hi yourself.”

  She dropped her bag next to the door and twisted her fingers together. “Don’t leave.”

  Her two words evaporated all the justifications he’d formed for why he ought to leave. He’d been sitting here cataloguing all the reasons why he really should put Gordon Falls in his rearview mirror, only to realize he’d just been waiting for those words. It would merely take that request from her to keep him here.

  He told her the truth she deserved. “I don’t know how to stay.” She’d stolen his heart at her wit’s end. At both their wits’ ends, for he knew he had no way to pull either of them from this hole. He loved her, and hoped she loved him, but did that really fix anything? “We can’t change all this mess. We can’t make it go away or just decide it doesn’t matter. It all runs too deep, you know?” He laid the brass fixture on the bench beside him. Ten seconds ago he’d vowed not to say this, but it came out anyway: “I can’t be here and not be with you. I can’t.
Only I can’t see how to stay and make this work, either.”

  “If you leave,” she said softly, “all this will just follow you. I know. I thought about leaving, too. I mean, I know I can’t—Dad and all—but I understand why you’d just want to walk away if you could. Only I don’t think we’re supposed to walk away from this. We’re supposed to be here, you and me. We’re supposed to get through this together.” She sighed, her eyes glimmering with tears. “But, oh, this is going to be so hard.”

  Together. She hadn’t ended it between them. His heart did a wild flip in his chest, pulling him up off the bench to take a startled step toward her. “You want to try? To see if we can do this?”

  “I need to try, Clark. I don’t think I can do this without you. It’s going to take a whole lot of God and a whole lot of you to get me through what’s ahead.”

  “Melba.” Clark felt a wave of grace wash over him as he reached out to thread his fingers through hers. He knew, by the way his soul quieted at her touch, that he loved her. Chad was right; that made it worth the risk. “I am so sorry I kept anything from you. I told myself it was to spare you, but it was only me being a selfish coward.” His other hand found a lock of her hair, curling it around a finger and watching what that did to her eyes. “You’re so much braver than I am, did you know that? I spent a whole life running from problems, and here you turn and face them head-on.”

  Melba reached up and cupped his cheek, eyes crinkling in amusement at the scratch of his unshaven whiskers. He was a mess, had been since she’d walked away from him on the bridge. “Face them?” She shook her head. “It’s more like I stand still long enough for them to swallow me whole. I was so busy wallowing in my pain I wouldn’t see yours.”

  They both said “Forgive me,” at the same time, and it was as if someone had lit a match in the dark. All the shadows fled in the face of one stubborn spark. Clark pulled her close, lost in the wonder of how she melted against him. Oh, Lord, he prayed, thank You for her. Thank You for this.

  “Tell me how, Melba. Tell me what to do.” He felt her cheek against his pounding heart, fought for breath as he buried his face in the top of her hair. Here he’d thought God had sent him to rescue her, when all along God knew they’d have to rescue each other. You knew, You knew all along, didn’t You?

  He felt her hands circle his waist, enjoying how right that was, reveling in what it felt like to look down into her eyes. The strangest expression came across her face.

  “When you’re knitting a very complicated pattern...”

  “Knitting?” he rolled his eyes. “You pick now to talk about knitting?”

  Melba laughed, a sound that doused him with happiness. “Stay with me on this one...it’ll make sense.”

  Clark gave her a look of utter disbelief.

  “As I said,” she continued with that delightful determination of hers, “when you’re knitting a very complicated pattern, you use something called a safety line.”

  “A safety line.” He moved his face closer to hers. He was definitely not interested in discussing knitting technique at the moment. As a matter of fact, he had no interest in talking at all.

  “No, really,” she said, ducking her head against his advance and poking him in the ribs. She was going to have her say whether he wanted to hear it or not. There was something affirming in her clarity, as if the weight of the last days was slipping off both of them as they stood there. “This is actually important.”

  “I’ve got a whole other idea of important at the moment.” His hand wound its way into her hair again.

  “A safety line—” he watched her struggle to keep her train of thought as his hand found the nape of her neck “—is a piece of different-colored yarn or string that you weave through a sound place in your work. The last good place you know where everything was okay. That way you can keep trying, but you’ll be safe to undo the wrong stitches because they won’t ruin the whole piece.”

  He had a pretty good idea of where this was going, and for once her crazy yarn talk made sense. “Where’s our safety line?”

  Melba moved to let her lips hover a fraction of an inch from his. “Right here. I love you.” She offered him the tenderest of kisses.

  And there it was. Clark encircled her, holding her as tight as he dared while he lifted her clear off the ground and kissed her back as if nothing else in the world mattered. Kissed her again as if all the pain the world could dish up would never overcome the power of those three words. “I love you, too.” Clark murmured it into her hair, whispered into her ears, left it in a trail of tiny kisses down her cheek, poured it into his gaze as he stared at her twinkling eyes, and did just about everything else but shout it from the firehouse roof. “I am so unbelievably, breathtakingly glad that I love you.”

  Her sigh was a whole other sound from her earlier sigh—this one of bliss rather than stress. The whole silly safety-line thing made perfect sense. They were each other’s anchor, each other’s place to return to no matter how many times they stumbled in untangling the knots binding both their families. “I wish it solved everything,” she said, laying her head on his shoulder.

  “Maybe it only makes everything solvable. I suppose we’ll just have to...” Clark cringed as his pager went off and the firehouse alarm split the air above them. Melba, who had clearly never been in the firehouse when the alarm went off, covered her ears and winced. “...figure it out later!” he yelled over noise and commotion. “I love you,” he said into her ear as he turned to go.

  “What?” she mouthed, cupping one ear. At least he thought that’s what she said; it was getting harder to hear.

  “I love you!” he yelled, determined to get that out at least one more time before he left.

  Chad’s bemused smirk as he ran into the engine bay told Clark he’d perhaps been louder than necessary.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Two weeks later, Clark stood on the firehouse roof and marveled at the May stars. It felt as if Heaven’s grandeur had spread itself out before him to welcome him home.

  “Chief.” His father’s voice came soft and hoarse behind him. Clark felt the weight of the word—it was the first time his father used the title. He was easing into his role, even comfortable with it, but from his father’s lips the title was heavy and solemn.

  “Chief,” he replied. George Bradens would never stop being chief, even without the capital letter launching the word. It was who Pop was, always.

  “I don’t think I’ll do this again,” Pop said, rolling his aging shoulders. “Up on the roof is your deal, not mine. That stairway’s too steep for my old knees.” He pulled in a deep breath of the beautiful evening. “Pretty, though. I can see the attraction.”

  The sounds of the party spilled out from below them. He could hear Melba laughing with her friend Charlotte, who’d come out for the occasion and made some remark about a cousin who ought to come in as the department’s first female firefighter. Pop had rolled his eyes, but Clark liked how he could consider the idea now that he was chief.

  He was officially chief. Pop was “retired.” It still stunned him to think of it. “They threw you a nice party, Pop. That’s the nicest welcome party I never had.”

  Pop laughed. “It was supposed to be your welcome party, not my goodbye party. I hate parties.”

  “Which is why we threw you one without throwing you one.”

  “Those ladies ought to be ashamed of themselves. A lot of underhanded connivers, they are. The party was supposed to be for you.”

  Clark could only sigh. “I figured out a long time ago that it was never really for me.” Pop started to protest, but Clark put his hand up. “I’m okay with it, actually.”

  “I’m not.” Clark had known stepping down would be hard on his dad, but the whole day’s events—the official handing over of the title and the party afterward—had beaten
him down a bit. “Chief” was all Pop ever was, had been the focus of his life as long as Clark could remember. He was coming to realize the brave thing his father had done by stepping aside to let him take over. Clark was coming to realize a lot of things. Corny as it sounded, love had changed him deeply. So many misfitting parts of his life had slid into place under the grace of Melba’s love. He understood grace and mercy in ways he never had—and probably couldn’t have—before. Life was infinitely more complicated now, but better in more ways than he could hope to count.

  He felt his father’s hand grip his shoulder. While they’d managed a companionable speaking relationship, they hadn’t touched since that angry night in Pop’s kitchen. The touch weighed as heavily as the title. “I’m...I’m sorry, son. For a lot of things. We didn’t get most of it right, your mother and me, but you? You turned out...you turned out a better man than I.”

  The enormous lump in Clark’s throat kept him from saying anything.

  “You scared me to death most of your growing up and I think most of my hair is gone on account of you.” Clark recognized Pop’s humor for what it was—an attempt to cover the huge emotion of the moment. “But your mother would have been beaming today.” He sniffed a bit and looked up at the stars. “I expect maybe she is.”

  “Yeah,” Clark managed to choke out. “She’d be happy.”

  “She’d have hounded me until we patched things up.” Pop stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I kept hearing her voice in the back of my head.” He looked at Clark. “I did love her. We made it work. I don’t think we would have if faith hadn’t come into our lives a bit after...all that, but that’s what God can do with a sorry situation like ours.” Pop turned his gaze back out to the front of the firehouse, all strung up with little white lights for the party. “Your mother once said she thought maybe it was all in God’s plan. Said she thought we might have never come to church if our marriage hadn’t been so broken we were looking anywhere to fix it. Maybe so.”