The seconds passed.
Finally, Sloane moistened her lips. “I can’t, Nick,” she whispered. “I just can’t do it.”
He wanted to wipe the shadows away. He wanted to take away the power of the past to hurt. He wanted to help her accept what had happened, put it aside and move forward into the future.
Sometimes wanting wasn’t enough.
Slowly, reluctantly, he released her hands and rose. “I guess that’s it, then.” He pulled his jacket off the chair and walked back over to her. For a second, his fingertips touched her cheek. “You might not want to hear it but I do love you,” he said softly. “If you ever change your mind, I’ll be here.” He paused. “Be happy, Sloane. You of all people deserve it.”
And he walked down the hall and out of her life.
Chapter Seventeen
A second. A minute. An hour. Sloane had no illusions things would get better quickly. She had too much experience with loss for such naiveté, so she sat at her desk and forced herself to work, grasping at it like a lifeline. Concentration wasn’t possible; she focused on rote tasks that didn’t require any and ignored the occasional concerned looks that Dave, her intern, flicked her way.
The phone rang. “Sloane Hillyard.”
“Ms. Hillyard, this is Gil Snowden over at the Chronicle. I’m doing a follow-up story on the Dorchester fire. I hear that there were a couple of guys who almost died last night, who would have died without some new equipment that you built.”
Sloane closed her eyes. “I’m not the right person for you to talk to. You should check with the fire department.”
“I did. They pointed me to you.”
Because her job description didn’t include falling apart, she took a deep breath. “What do you want to know?”
“The basics, for starters. What does it do, how does it work, how common is it. You know, the whole spiel.”
So she gave it to him, the essential rundown that she could give in her sleep, drowning him in details she’d memorized long before while his computer keys clacked madly in the background.
…there were a couple of guys who almost died last night….
“Okay, I think I got it,” Snowden said after a final burst of typing. “So this is the gear that Councilman Ayre was talking about before his reelection, right? Do you think he’s going to continue to push it now that the election’s over?”
“I wouldn’t know. Again, I’d check with the department.”
“You must be aware of his record of voting for departmental budget cuts,” he said, ignoring her. “Any comments?”
“You’ll have to take that up with someone else.” A typical reporter, Sloane thought. If he didn’t get an answer to his question, he asked it another way, poking and prodding until he got something he could use.
“Of course, funding cuts would affect the chances of the city buying your equipment.”
“I’m a resident of Cambridge,” she said with an edge to her voice. “I don’t really follow Boston politics.”
“Well you should. The firefighters really want this equipment. I just interviewed one of them, a Nick Trask.”
And an iron band tightened viciously around her chest. Dropping her head down in her hands, she waited it out. It would stop, eventually, she knew.
Just not any time soon.
She raised her head to see Dave staring at her. On the phone, Snowden was still talking. “…a big outlay.” He paused expectantly. “Ms. Hillyard?”
She gathered her wits. “Yes, well, I hope that the department will get the funding for the units. They ought to be standard equipment for every fire department in the country.” A nice, positive, meaningless quote.
“Of course, you’ve got a vested interest in that.”
“Pardon me?”
“Well, it’s nice business for your company. Exler’s a startup in need of a cash cow. No wonder you’re pushing it to fire departments. Makes you look good if you succeed. More stock options for when the company goes public.”
“Stock options aren’t my concern. The gear is.”
“And the gear is good for business.”
Sloane’s eyes narrowed. “It’s got nothing to do with my company or with business.”
“But it would be great for your revenue numbers. I mean, you’re not doing this for your health, right?”
In a flash, her patience evaporated. “You want to know why I’m pushing this equipment?” she demanded. “My brother was a firefighter, and he died in the Hartford meat-packing-plant fire trying to save the guys in his company.” Dave snapped his head around to stare at her. “I’m pushing this equipment so that that doesn’t happen again to anyone, anywhere. This is not about business, Mr. Snowden. It’s personal.”
Nick walked down the aisle of the home builders’ warehouse, the beeps of the forklifts echoing through the air, orange metal shelves towering on either side. By this time, he could probably navigate the aisles with his eyes closed. He’d been there a lot lately.
His house was the better for it. First the cabinets, then paint, then new tile in the bathroom. He’d spackled and plastered and grouted and sanded, wired in light fixtures and refinished doors. When he wasn’t at the firehouse or his side job, he was working on his living room, his kitchen, his study.
Not the bedroom, though. Too many memories lurked there.
And now he had a problem. After almost two weeks of knocking himself out, he was running out of things to do. Just the thought made his palms sweat. If he ran out of things to do he’d have time to think and if he had time to think, he’d think about Sloane and if he thought about Sloane…
He refused to go there. He refused to wonder how she was doing. Okay, he couldn’t help wondering how she was doing, but he refused to miss her. Except he couldn’t help doing that, either, which was why he found himself running to the home builders’ warehouse to pick out handles for his kitchen cabinets, of all ridiculous things, just so he’d have a way to keep his hands busy.
Glass or ceramic? Copper or bronze? Knobs or handles, hooks or rings? He scowled at the fixtures and tried to forget that he’d planned to bring Sloane to help him pick out hardware because they were the kinds of things that women cared about, and he’d wanted her to walk into his house and see something she’d chosen.
He’d wanted her to walk into his house and feel at home.
The omnipresent ache for her sharpened. And he grabbed a handful of plain white knobs because it just didn’t matter.
An hour. A day. A week. Sloane drove herself relentlessly, working into the night until her neck ached and her vision blurred, driving herself pitilessly at the health club until her muscles refused to continue. Each morning, she set herself an impossible schedule in the hope that by night she’d be exhausted enough to fall into the oblivion of a dreamless sleep.
And each night she was disappointed.
Now, nearly two weeks after the fire, she stood in the hallway outside the city council chambers, waiting for Bill Grant.
“Sloane.” Bill Grant strode up to her, beaming. “Glad you made it. You sounded kind of iffy when I called you last week.”
“I’m still not sure what I’m doing here. What does the Ways and Means Committee need from me? They’ve got all my reports and all the specs. They’ve got the data from the rest of the fires. What happened in Dorchester should speak for itself.”
“They don’t just want to hear facts and figures, they want to hear about you. They want to hear about your brother.”
She stiffened in outrage. “I’m not going to talk about that to a room full of strangers. It’s personal.”
“Sloane,” Bill said in a low, urgent voice, “it’s what it takes to get the message through. I know it must be hard and I’m sorry, but if you really want to be sure it doesn’t happen again, then tell these guys what it’s like. Make them understand the reality. Your buddy from the Chronicle’s out there. He’ll make sure people hear about it.”
She moved her hea
d. “You don’t understand.”
“No, Sloane, they don’t understand. And you’re the only one who can make them. You of all people should know how much rides on this.” The door to the chambers opened. Grant looked at her. “It’s your chance to make a difference. Will you do it?”
A chance to make a difference. An appeal to let them paw over her soul. Could she live with herself if she did it?
Could she live with herself if she didn’t?
Sloane took a deep breath and walked into the chambers.
Nick sat on his couch turning the envelope over and over in his hands, staring at the seal of the Boston Fire Department. A few weeks earlier, he’d have torn it open in anticipation and curiosity, waiting to see how he’d fared and what his future might look like. Now, he knew what his future looked like.
Without Sloane, pretty damned lousy.
It would get easier with time, of course. Everything did. Eventually, he wouldn’t think of her every waking minute. He wouldn’t seize up when he walked down a sidewalk past someone wearing her scent. Eventually, he knew, he’d get past her.
Sure. In a decade or two.
Ripping open the envelope impatiently, Nick pulled out the papers inside. The cover letter didn’t matter; all he cared about was the list of results. And in a spurt of jubilation, he saw his name among those at the top. Not a perfect score but a ninety-nine percentile with a rank of second. Second out of more than two hundred. Not bad. The promotion would be coming as soon as a position became available.
And the one person he wanted most to call with the news was the one person who didn’t want to hear from him.
The problem was, Sloane thought, there were too damned many ways for a person to be reached. Even when she slipped out for an hour-long meeting, she had to slog through a dozen messages when she returned. She clicked on her e-mail, reading text and deleting spam as she punched her way through voice-mail menus.
And sat bolt upright when she heard the first message.
“Sloane, George O’Hanlan of Ladder 67.” The voice boomed out of the receiver into her ear. “Nicky got some good news about his exam so we’re taking him out to celebrate Friday night. Thought you might want to come along. We’ll be at Big John’s in Southie about eight. Come on by if you get a chance.”
Come on by if you get a chance.
And suddenly she found herself missing the men at the firehouse with a fierceness that surprised her. She missed their noisy good humor, the laughter, the ribbing, the warm crowded evenings in the firehouse kitchen. The unquestioned support. She’d only spent a few weeks around them. How had they gotten to matter to her?
Connections. They were suddenly all around, tripping her up everywhere she turned.
Sloane closed her eyes briefly and punched Delete.
The next voice mail was an interview request from the editor of Fire Engineering. He’d want to talk about the Orienteer. They all did. The Chronicle coverage of the Dorchester fire and the budgetary meetings had made Sloane the crusader of the month. There were the requests for demos, for test systems, for testimonials.
And the questions, always the questions. Her grief had gone from a very private thing to front-page news. In the first few days, walking into the Exler offices had made her want to cringe, colleagues gazing at her with eyes bright with sympathy, or worse, curiosity. She’d been through it back in Connecticut, in the aftermath of the fire, and had loathed it. The move to Cambridge had been a chance to get back her privacy—and her anonymity. And suddenly here it was, public all over again.
It was less difficult this time, though. Perhaps it was that time had passed. Perhaps it was because there was a purpose behind letting people know. Bill Grant had been right. If it was a way to bring attention to the Orienteer, a way to get people to look twice and to listen, it was worth it. And as the days went by, she found it hurt a little less.
If only losing Nick were that way.
She talked with the Fire Engineering editor briefly to schedule the interview. As she hung up, out of the corner of her eye she saw Dave watching her. “You need something?”
“No. I just, I uh…” He cleared his throat. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about your brother.”
Since that day he’d heard her on the phone with Snowden, Dave had studiously avoided saying a word about her revelation. In the days after the news had been made public, days of questions and well-meant condolences from the other staffers, he’d respected her privacy, allowing Sloane to slip gratefully into the peace of the lab each day.
Until now. Oddly, it didn’t make her uncomfortable. He was able to say it as if he meant it. Like Molly Trask.
Like Nick.
Her throat was suddenly tight. “Thank you. It was a long time ago,” she said. And a longing for closeness hit her like a physical ache. She needed to be close to someone, she needed to be held, loved. To avoid thinking about it, she punched the next message up. Only to be buffeted again.
“Sloane, Candy. Sorry to bother you but I saw an article in the paper about you and your gear and Mitch. I just wanted to be sure you were okay.”
Connections…
And abruptly she ached for them, for Candy, for Pete, for the people who’d been her family.
For Nick.
She was in her car and on the highway before she even knew what she was about.
The house looked different. Once slate blue, it had been repainted a cheerful yellow with white shutters. Flower boxes hung below the windows, empty now, but full of promise for spring. Seasons passed—chill autumn, barren winter—but sooner or later the ground quickened.
Sooner or later, everything was renewed.
Sloane rang the bell. She turned to look at the dogwood in the front yard, the one they’d planted together when she’d graduated high school. It had grown so much. They all had.
Behind her, the door opened and a rawboned teenager stood looking back at her, his eyes almost level with hers. Her jaw dropped. “Pete?” she breathed.
He studied her a moment, frowning. “Aunt Sloane?” he asked. His voice gave an adolescent squeak.
She nodded.
“What are you doing here?”
The suspicious note in his voice broke her heart. “I was in the neighborhood and…” She stopped. In the face of suspicion, honesty. “Actually, I wasn’t in the neighborhood at all. I drove down because I missed you guys. I wanted to stop in and say hi.”
He stared at her awhile and nodded finally. “That’s cool,” he said and stepped back from the door.
She wanted to hug him, but she wasn’t sure how to handle this new, grown-up person. When she put out her hand to shake, he took it awkwardly, unused to the ritual. The hell with it, she thought and used his hand to pull him close. He was stiff against her for a moment, then yielded and hugged her back. “I’ve missed you, Pete,” she murmured.
“Yeah,” he agreed and gave her another squeeze before letting her go.
“So I hear you liked the guitar.”
“Yeah. I was just upstairs practicing. You want to hear me play?” His tone was offhand but he watched her closely. His hair hung down into his eyes. The hems of his new-looking jeans ended around his ankle bones, as if he’d already grown out of them. He was no longer a little boy, he was a teenager on his way to being a man and she’d almost missed it.
“I want to hear everything,” she said.
Pete had gone through his blink-182 and Green Day books and had moved on to U2 when they heard footsteps downstairs.
“Pete?” Candy called from the kitchen. “Whose car is that?” Sloane headed for the stairs just as Candy came up, only to watch her jaw drop open in shock. “Sloane?” She frowned. “What are you doing here?”
She’d made a mistake, Sloane thought with a sinking heart. Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in. But too much time had passed and maybe this wasn’t her home any longer. “I thought I’d drop by and say hi. It’s Friday
night, though. You probably have plans.”
“Hey, Mom.” Pete stuck his head out of his room. “Sloane’s going to take me to see blink-182 next time they come to town.”
“She’s going to…” Candy held up her hand. “Hold on, let me catch up a little. Pete, you need to get the leaves up outside.”
“Ah, Mom.”
“You’ve got an hour before dusk. Get to it. Sloane, can you come downstairs a minute?”
Sloane bit her lip at Candy’s tone and followed her down to the kitchen. “I’m sorry I stopped by without calling. I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Don’t be crazy,” Candy told her fiercely and pulled her in for a long hug. When they stepped apart, she was blinking a little. “I’m just surprised to see you. I didn’t think I was going to for a long time, maybe never.” She sat down at the kitchen table, rubbing her temples.
Sloane took a deep breath and sat across from her. “About the other day when we talked…”
“I was out of line,” Candy said quickly. “I said a lot of stuff I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”
“No. I’ve been thinking a lot about it and you were right. It was a wake-up call. I was asking for it.”
“No one asks for anything, Sloane. We’re all just trying to get along.”
“I haven’t been, though.” The words came out slowly. “I’ve been hiding out for way too long.”
“It was a lesson you learned pretty young.”
“I outgrew the clothes I wore as a kid,” Sloane said. “I should also have outgrown that. I thought it would make things better. It didn’t. I know that now.”
“Good. I’m glad.” Candy rose and opened a cabinet to remove a pot. “Are you staying for dinner?”
Sloane hesitated. “Sure, if I’m invited.”
“Only if you chop the onions,” Candy said, blinking again. “I always cry.”
“So what’s going on with you?” Candy stirred the marinara sauce she’d thrown together from diced tomatoes, garlic and spices.
Where There's Smoke (Holiday Hearts #1) Page 21