Firefighter's Virgin

by Claire Adams

  “Your family doesn’t seem to be,” I said, but then I remembered his sister, how sad his mother had been.

  I was just finishing my croissant when my mother and Declan came back into the dining room.

  “So,” my mother said, “everything taste okay?”

  I nodded. “It’s delicious.”

  “And do we know how to get to LEGOLAND?”

  “I’m not sure where it is,” I said. I reached for my phone and looked it up. “Um...” I looked up at my mom. “Did you know it’s in Somerville?”

  My mother blinked. “Somerville?” she said. “What? I thought it was here in the city.”

  “It’s not,” I said. Somerville was about three miles north, and I knew that getting in the car and driving to Somerville had not been on my mother’s agenda.

  “I see,” she said. “Well. I had just assumed that it would be here in Boston proper because, well, why wouldn’t I? It seems a little foolish that it’s not here in the city.”

  “Are we not going to LEGOLAND?” Declan asked.

  I didn’t say anything; I wanted to see what my mother’s response would be. She appeared to have adopted the same tactic and was waiting for me or Cole to respond.

  “It’s okay if we don’t,” Declan said after a few seconds of silence had gone by. The three of us looked at him in surprise. “We can go another time. I like just getting to be here!”

  “Are you sure, buddy?” Cole asked. “I know that you were looking forward to it.”

  “Well... if we don’t go there, we can go somewhere here, right? We wouldn’t have to leave early, would we?”

  “Of course not!” my mother said. “Have you ever been to the Children’s Museum?”

  Declan shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “I know for a fact that one is here right in Boston, and you know what? I think that it might be even better than LEGOLAND.”

  I was impressed with Declan’s willingness to forego LEGOLAND; many other kids in his position would have thrown a fit if they found out they might not be able to go, but Declan truly did seem happy just getting to be with all of us and exploring a new place.

  We were getting ready to go when Bill came out of his study.

  “Are you ready?” my mother asked him.

  “You know, I think I’m going to hang back here,” he said. “I’ve got a couple really important calls I need to make.”

  My mother frowned. “I thought you took care of all that stuff already.”

  “I wasn’t able to get through on a couple of them. But I don’t want to hold you guys up; why don’t you go on without me?”

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s fine if you want to go,” I said, knowing that he probably didn’t have any calls that had to be made right then.

  “I appreciate you saying that, but I really should stick around here,” he said.

  “Well, I guess we’ll have to go have fun without you,” my mother said with a laugh, totally oblivious.

  Bill smiled. “You all have fun,” he said.

  And then we went out into the city. I felt as though I was able to appreciate the city more than I had in the past because I was there with Cole, and he was obviously enjoying being there very much. Declan alternated between holding his hand and holding my hand, and gazing with rapt delight at the tall buildings, the yellow taxis speeding by, the throngs of people passing us in every direction.

  We went to the Children’s Museum first, since Declan had been such a good sport about not going to LEGOLAND.

  “Oooh, look at all those balloons!” Declan said, pointing to a brightly-colored array of helium-filled balloons.

  “Maybe we’ll get you one on the way out, bud,” Cole said.

  Declan was easily distracted from the balloons, though, because there was so much cool stuff. We checked out the dinosaur exhibit, the construction zone, and the Raceways exhibit. I felt like I was a kid again, though my mother and I had only come to the Children’s Museum once that I could remember, a long time ago, when I’d been maybe 7 or 8.

  And my mother was right there, taking pictures of Declan, of Cole and me, of the three of us. At one point, she thrust the phone at Cole and asked him to take a picture of us.

  “I can’t remember the last mother/daughter picture we had,” she said, wrapping her arms around my waist.

  We went to the Countdown for Kindergarten exhibit (since Declan would be going to kindergarten soon, he proudly informed us), and then we checked out the bubble display. Then Declan said that he was getting hungry, but since we hadn’t brought any food with us, my mother asked if we wanted to walk to the Barking Crab, which wasn’t too far away.

  “I could really go for a lobster roll right about now,” she said.

  We all agreed that some food would be good, so we started to make our way to the exit.

  There was a group of people leaving at the same time, and we fell in step with them. “I’m going to text Bill a couple of these pictures,” Mom said, pulling her phone out of her purse. “I got some good ones.”

  Declan was holding onto Cole’s right hand, I was holding onto Cole’s left, and we stepped through the glass doors and out onto the sidewalk.

  “That was so great,” I said, and I turned to Cole and smiled up at him, then leaned in and gave him a quick kiss.

  The smile on his face deepened, and he turned to face me, bringing his hands up to cup either side of my face and return the kiss. It was longer, though, and when he pulled back, he looked me right in the eyes. “I’m really glad we are all here together,” he said. He kissed my forehead and then looked down at Declan. “You too, bud—” he started to say, but then stopped. “Declan?”

  Cole looked to his left, then his right, and I looked too, but Declan wasn’t where he had just been a few moments ago.

  “Where’d he go?” Cole asked. His eyes shot past me, looking down the street. “Declan!” he yelled. The people walking past looked at us. “Declan!”

  My mother had been several feet behind us, texting Bill. She looked up when she heard us yelling. “What’s the matter?” she said.

  “Where’s Declan?” I said. “Do you see him?”

  She shook her head. “I thought he was with you...”

  A strange calmness descended over me, even as my mother’s eyes widened and Cole continued to bellow Declan’s name. He would appear at any moment, I just knew it; he’d step out from around the corner, he’d have a big grin on his face, we’d chastise him for not staying within our line of vision... I just knew this was going to happen.

  Except it didn’t.

  Cole went down to one end of the block and disappeared around the corner, then came back, rushing toward me, shaking his head. My mother had gone the other way, and I looked behind us, asked the people coming out if they had seen a little boy who looked like Declan, wearing...wearing... what the hell had he been wearing? I couldn’t remember, and I didn’t want to give them the wrong information.

  I went back inside to see if maybe Declan had wandered back in, past my mother without her noticing. There was no sign of him. I did see a security guard though, so I went over to him and told him that we couldn’t find Declan.

  “How long has he been missing for?” he asked, his face very serious.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Not that long. Less than a minute, really.”

  And then Cole was pushing his way back inside, his eyes wide, frantic, even though I could tell he was trying to keep himself under control. The security officer was speaking into his walkie talkie.

  “You’re his parents?” he said to us.

  “Yes, well, I’m his father,” Cole said. “His name’s Declan. He’s 4. He’s about this tall, he’s got light brown hair, blue eyes...he was wearing... I think he was wearing a gray T-shirt with a fire truck on it and blue cargo shorts. Navy blue. I’m going back out there to look for him; I don’t think he came back in here.”

 
Before the security officer could say anything else, Cole dashed off, this time running the other direction down the block.

  Another security officer had arrived, and the two were talking together, so I went back outside, too. There were so many people. So many cars. All going in different directions, and where would a little 4-year-old boy have gone off to by himself?

  My mother hurried over to me, put her hand on my arm.

  “Did you find him?” she asked hopefully, even though I could tell she knew that I hadn’t.

  “No,” I said.

  She set her mouth into a determined line. “He couldn’t have gotten far,” she said. “He’s got to be nearby. We’ll find him. Come on.”

  We walked down the street, calling his name, but I was now overcome with the fear that something bad had happened and there was nothing I could do about it.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Cole

  He was gone.

  Literally gone.

  I’d pulled away from the kiss with Allie and looked down for him, and where he was supposed to be was just a blank space, empty air.

  I didn’t know if the security guard was going to be able to help, so after I told him what Declan looked like, I took off. No way in hell was I just going to stand around there waiting for someone else to find him.

  I went all the way around the block, calling his name. I ran into Allie and her mother, and they looked startled to see me.

  “I don’t see him anywhere,” I said. “I don’t know if he managed to cross the street or something. I’ve got to keep looking...” I looked at Allie’s mom. “Would you stick around here, in case the security guards find him?”

  “Of course,” she said. “And I just know he’ll turn up, I just know it—”

  I didn’t stick around to hear the rest of what she had to say. Of course it was going to be something hopeful, something reassuring, but those words rang hollow to me right now. Most people go through life thinking this sort of thing would never happen to them, that the stories they see on the news or read about online happen to other people, but never them.

  But what happens when one day you are that person?

  I’d already been that person once, with everything that happened with my sister, and now here I was, potentially that person again. My feet thudded against the concrete. Sweat trickled down my brow. Where the fuck was he? How could someone his size have gotten so far?

  There was an easy answer to that, of course, one that I was trying valiantly not to let enter my consciousness. It muscled its way in, though.

  He got that far because someone took him.

  And once that thought was forefront in my mind, the onslaught followed. A deranged murderer took him. A sociopath. A pedophile. A sick, twisted person who was going to torture him.

  I tried to push that thought out of my mind, but when I did, I was suddenly imagining Declan, him being somewhere with people he didn’t know, wondering where I was, why I was letting this happen to him, why I wasn’t coming to save him.

  I shook my head and yelled his name louder. I asked people if they had seen him. Some people looked concerned, others looked a little wary, but all of them shook their heads. No, they hadn’t seen him. He seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

  There was no worse feeling than being completely helpless. And that was exactly how I felt as I power walked down the street, yelling Declan’s name. I could hear the note of desperation in my voice.

  I stopped walking for a moment and tried to take a deep breath. My shoulders were practically up to my ears, and my jaw was clenched; my whole body felt flooded with cortisol. I was standing outside a frozen yogurt place; the Children’s Museum was across the street, a few buildings down from where I was. I could see Allie; she had just come back out. She was alone, craning her neck up and down the street as if that might somehow make Declan appear. She hadn’t found him yet. I hadn’t found him yet. But I had to keep looking.

  I was about to start walking again when I happened to look into the frozen yogurt shop, the glare off the window shifting enough that I was able to see inside. And there, at one of the tables, was Declan.

  I just stood there, frozen in place, unable to believe my eyes. He had a cup of frozen yogurt that he was eating with an orange plastic spoon. He was sitting at a table with a group of other children, 6 or 7 of them, maybe. It was a large table, and there were two young women at it, too, sitting at the end. They had a bunch of balloons attached to a baby stroller that was parked next to them.

  Declan looked up right then and waved.

  I walked inside, trying to take deep breaths. Part of me wanted to yank him out of that chair and shake him. Part of me wanted to run over and hug him and never let him go. But instead, I walked over and forced myself to smile.

  “Hey, bud,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m eating frozen yogurt with my new friends,” he said.

  The two girls at the end of the table looked at me in confusion. One of them craned her neck around to look at the table behind her where a woman was sitting with a girl who looked to be maybe 7 or 8. Then, they both regarded me again.

  “Um...do you guys know each other?” the girl with brown hair finally asked.

  “Uh, yeah, we do,” I said. “This is my son, and he somehow snuck away and ended up over here.”

  The two girls looked at each other. “I thought that was his mom,” the other one said, nodding to the woman behind us. “I thought he had just come over from that table and wanted to sit with Oliver and his cousins. It’s Oliver’s birthday,” she added, as if that somehow made a difference.

  I nodded slowly, took another deep breath. This wasn’t their fault, those two girls, even though I felt an involuntary surge of anger toward them.

  “Well, happy birthday, Oliver,” I said, addressing the kids, not sure who Oliver was, not caring. “But Declan and I need to get back. You’ll have to bring them ice cream with you, bud.”

  “It’s not ice cream; it’s frozen yogurt.”

  “Where’d you get the money for that, anyway?”

  “I just ordered it, and they gave it to me.”

  I looked behind the counter, where there were three high school-age looking kids. Of course they did.

  “Right,” I said. “All right, I’m going to go pay for that ice cream, and then we need to get going, okay?”

  I went over and pointed Declan out to the girl standing at the cash register. “I’m paying for his ice cream,” I said. “Apparently he ordered it but didn’t pay for it.”

  The girl shrugged. “Oh, that’s okay. It happens sometimes.”

  “It’s actually not okay,” I said. “So I’d like to pay for it.”

  I pulled my wallet out of my pocket and yanked out a five-dollar bill, which I placed on the counter. I didn’t bother to wait for her to give me change; I just walked back over to Declan and told him we had to leave.

  He’d finished his frozen yogurt by then, so he said goodbye to his newfound friends, and I led him outside. We walked a few steps away from the entrance of the frozen yogurt place, and then I stopped him and squatted down so I was eye level with him.

  “Declan,” I said. He had a little smear of chocolate frozen yogurt on the corner of his mouth, which I reached up and wiped away with my thumb. “Declan, first I want to say that I am very relieved that you are safe. The second thing I want to say is that you scared us all. A lot. We had no idea where you were because you just walked off without telling us where you were going. What if I hadn’t seen you at the frozen yogurt place? What would you have done then?”

  “I would have left and gone back over to the museum.”

  “What if we weren’t there, though?”

  “You wouldn’t just leave me!” he said.

  “Of course we wouldn’t. But we didn’t know where you were.”

  He looked down at his shoes. “They were leaving the museum, too,” he said. “I saw all those balloons. So I followed a
fter them because I wanted to see the balloons. And they ended up coming over here, so I sat with them because they were getting frozen yogurt, and I wanted one, too. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  I exhaled. “I’m not mad,” I said. “I was scared. I was afraid something had happened to you.”

  “What do you think had happened?”

  “We don’t need to get into the details. But I need to know that you understand that you cannot do something like that ever again. It’s not safe. We can’t get separated, okay? When we are in a big place like this, I need to be able to see you at all times. Do you understand?”

  He nodded. “Yes,” he said.

  “Okay, good. Let’s go back over and find Allie. She’s been really worried, too.”

  Declan took my hand, and we walked to the corner and waited for the light to change so we could cross. He had crossed the road by himself. Well, he’d been tagging along with that group of kids, but still. I shuddered at the thought of him dashing across when the oncoming traffic had a green light. Now that he was here, now that he was safe, all those awful possibilities flared again.

  Allie was talking with the security guard as we approached, but when she saw that I had Declan, she ran over to us, then dropped down to her knees and threw her arms around him.

  “Declan!” she exclaimed. She had tears in her eyes, and I could tell she was trying valiantly not to cry. “Oh, Declan, you’re here! We were so worried about you! Where did you go?”

  “He was across the street eating frozen yogurt,” I said.

  The security guard gave us a moment and then stepped over to me. “He’s all right?” he said.

  “Yes, he’s fine. Thank you for helping us look, though; I really appreciate it.”

  He nodded. “Glad this one had a happy ending. They’re not always so lucky.” He gave me a pointed look, and I knew he was trying to shame me, knew he thought of me as just one more careless parent who was too interested in their phone to keep an eye on their kids.

  The thing was, he wasn’t too far off. I looked down as Allie was listening to Declan describe where he had gone off to, what flavor frozen yogurt he’d ordered. I hadn’t been distracted by my phone; I’d been distracted by another person, but in the end, did that really matter? What mattered was Declan had run off, and I had allowed it to happen because I’d been preoccupied. I wanted to just erase the whole thing from my memory, because he was here, he was safe. I wanted to embody the all’s well that ends well mantra, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that things could have so easily gone terribly wrong, that this outcome could have certainly gone a different way.