HF01 - Almost Forever

by Deborah Raney

  Captain Manuel Vermontez

  Lieutenant David Marlowe

  Engineer Zachary Morgan

  Firefighter Adam Hennesey

  Firefighter Molly Edmonds

  A scratchy soundtrack began to play, and the names of the fallen faded to black to be replaced by a series of projected images. One by one, the official portraits of the five firefighters flashed on the wall. Manny and David Marlowe held their helmets at their sides and wore stoic expressions, as if they understood the gravity of their jobs. Even filtered through the camera’s lens, Morgan and Hennesey had a certain light in their eyes—one the uninitiated might mistake for mischief. But Garrett recognized it for what it was. It was the same spark he’d so often detected in Molly’s eyes, especially when she’d first started with the department. It was the gleam of adventure, compassion, the promise of heroism, and a deep sense of purpose in what she’d signed on to do.

  Molly’s face appeared on the screen—life-size—and it literally took his breath away. Her pale blond hair was in its customary ponytail, and she wore a broad smile, as if she’d attempted the stony expression of her compadres, but the joy she took in her job—her calling—simply wouldn’t be subdued.

  He’d never supported her in her career the way he should have. Though he was proud of her, he’d always secretly wished she could be content with a normal, nine-to-five job. He’d worried about her safety and about how being a firefighter would affect her as a mother. He’d always wanted kids more than she did, and her job was one of the things that deterred her desire for children. None of that mattered now. He wished he could tell her, just once, how proud he was to be her husband.

  The music changed, a haunting tune Garrett recognized but couldn’t place. Someone had put together a video montage, clips from the parade down Main Street on the first day of school, and last summer’s company picnic. Molly hammed it up for the camera dressed in her favorite Hanover Falls Fire Department T-shirt and shorts that showed off her long, muscled legs. This time her hair was down, the way he liked it best, swinging around her shoulders, the sun making a halo for her. Arm-in-arm with Adam Hennesey and Zach Morgan, Molly looked straight into the camera’s lens. Garrett read her lips—“Hey, baby!” He couldn’t have said who’d been behind the video camera that day, but he remembered Molly’s smile with crystal clarity and knew it had been only for him. Despite that knowledge, he felt oddly jealous, seeing her on the arms of her comrades, knowing they were together in eternity now, while she was lost to him.

  Wordlessly the scenes played out before the mourners, the somber music an odd backdrop to the picnic’s merriment. Adam and Bryn Hennesey sat shoulder-to-shoulder at a picnic table, intent over corn on the cob. Something caught their attention and they glanced up as one, then tilted their heads together to mouth “cheese” for the photographer. They seemed unaware that the camera lingered on them, and he brushed a kernel of corn from the corner of her mouth, laughing as she wiped at the rest of her face, suddenly self-conscious. It was an oddly intimate moment, and Garrett froze, feeling he should look away, yet wondering if there might be a similar scene with him and Molly. He felt divided—longing for a glimpse of them together, but praying he wouldn’t have to watch it in front of this crowd.

  The camera panned the crowd before focusing on David and Susan Marlowe. Marlowe waved the camera off, but when the lens held steady on them, he looked resigned and hugged his wife close, holding a pose.

  A crescendo of flutes and piano as the camera jerked and faded in and out of focus. But when the scene finally sharpened, it took away the breaths of the mourners as one. Zooming back from a close-up shot of Manny Vermontez, the camera captured a tug-of-war between Station 1 and Station 2. Manny was at the front of the rope with Lucas, his son. And lined up behind them, in order of rank, were David Marlowe, Zach Morgan, Adam Hennesey, and Molly.

  What fluke of fate had put this particular team at the front of the rope that day? Garrett could only imagine how it would make Lucas Vermontez feel to see himself with this team of fallen heroes.

  The camera focused again, sharpened, and morphed to a black-and-white image of the tug-of-war. Garrett closed his eyes, unable to look at Molly’s jubilant face for another minute.

  When he dared to open his eyes a minute later, the screen had gone black. The music faded, but the silence was taken up with sniffles and open weeping. Someone Garrett didn’t know stood and read a cheesy poem in a voice that quavered with emotion. It made him grateful this would be the only service for Molly.

  He’d heard last night that some of the men’s families also planned to hold private memorial services in their own churches. He had considered a church funeral for Molly, but they didn’t really have a church home yet, and he knew she would have been most honored to be remembered here with her fellow firefighters. Besides, he could not bear the thought of “burying” Molly twice.

  He wouldn’t do it. The engines of Station 2, shrouded in black bunting, sat on the closed-off street outside the auditorium. They would transport the flag-draped caskets to the cemetery on the edge of town, and Molly would be buried there under the same patch of sky as her fallen comrades.

  That would be the end of it. And he would just have to find some way to go on without the woman he’d loved for as long as he could remember.

  Like neatly embroidered threads, fire engines of every color and size stitched a full mile of the road that led to the Hanover Falls Cemetery. Every fire department in the neighboring counties had sent a delegation of firefighters to pay their respects.

  Even the drone of forty idling engines couldn’t drown out the wail of bagpipes. Bryn fought the urge to cover her ears. But with Susan on one side of her and her friend Jenna Morgan, Zach’s wife—Zach’s widow—on the other, Bryn’s hands were otherwise occupied as they stood arm-in-arm at the entrance to the cemetery where Adam and three of the other four fallen firefighters would be laid to rest.

  Finally the engines were shut down, and the bagpipers ceased playing for a few minutes as dozens upon dozens of men and women in dress blues spilled from the trucks’ cabs and filed across the cemetery lawn.

  A flash of memory pierced her. A Friday night last summer. She and Adam sat across from Zach and Jenna at Applebee’s, roaring at Zach’s spot-on impersonation of a local politician. They’d gone back to their townhouse after dinner for ice cream.

  She and Jenna’s friendship had blossomed after that night. They’d become shopping buddies, mostly, lingering at the mall for coffee or lunch after they’d blown their budgets. Jenna’s budget was always considerably bigger than Bryn’s, but it was nice to have a friend who understood the challenges of being married to a firefighter. Being the new kids on the block, Adam and Zach got stuck working holidays more often than not. It was nice to have Jenna to commiserate with her.

  Garrett and Molly Edmonds had stopped by later that night, and the six of them played a new board game Adam had picked up at a little game shop in Springfield. They’d joked about what geeks they’d become in their old age.

  But when they closed the door behind their guests long after midnight, Adam had turned to Bryn, still standing in the foyer. “Those guys are like the brothers I never had, you know?” he said, his voice husky.

  She’d cracked up at that because she knew he wasn’t talking about Garrett. He meant Zach and Molly, the two firefighters in the group.

  Molly Edmonds was a gorgeous woman when you got past the messy ponytail, and station-issued T-shirts and fatigues. A twinge of jealousy had pinched Bryn, and she was only half teasing when she told Adam, “I guess I should be thankful you see Molly as a brother.”

  He brushed her off. “You know what I mean.”

  She’d been touched to hear the catch in his voice. His only sibling, his sister, Donna, was eleven years older, and since the deaths of their parents, he’d lost touch with her. Thursday, the morning of the fire, it had taken Bryn two hours to track Donna down at a new address in California to tell
her about Adam. Bryn didn’t expect to see Donna at this funeral, and she wasn’t sure she would recognize the woman if she did show up.

  Bryn forced her head up and stared at the row of fire engines swimming in front of her. While a uniformed firefighter rolled a portable staircase from the back of one engine to the next, she worked hard to not think about anything at all. Truck by truck, a color guard mounted the steps and bore four red-white-and-blue-draped coffins down and through the cemetery’s iron gates.

  The engine bearing the casket of Susan’s husband, David Marlowe—a truck on loan from the neighboring Major County Fire Department—pulled away with its cargo still onboard. Susan’s gaze followed the casket, and she gripped Bryn’s hand so hard Bryn thought she might faint from the pain.

  Tomorrow morning a hearse would carry Lieutenant Marlowe’s casket up the Interstate to Springfield, where he would be buried beside his parents’ graves. But today Susan stood in solidarity with the other widows, and with Garrett Edmonds, Molly’s husband.

  At Susan’s suggestion, the five of them had walked in the cortège from the auditorium rather than riding in the hearses that tagged behind the fire trucks. David and Susan’s two sons—both called home from college by the tragedy—walked behind their mother in the parade, somber-faced. Ten city blocks they’d all marched, in front of the slow procession of fire engines bearing the caskets.

  On the other side of her, Jenna Morgan scanned the gathering crowd, weeping softly. “Oh, there. I see Zach’s parents. I need to go be with them.”

  Bryn nodded and squeezed Jenna’s hand, then watched her cross the leaf-strewn lawn and fall, weeping, into her mother-in-law’s embrace. Bryn envied her friend’s ability to let loose of her tears, even though it surprised her to see Jenna so close with Clarissa Morgan.

  She wiggled her toes in too-tight pumps that had rubbed twin blisters on her heels. But the blisters were nothing. Every ounce of energy not taken up with gathering her next breath was expended on simply remaining upright.

  The last three-and-a-half days had been a blur of funeral-home visits and phone calls, and interrogation by television and newspaper reporters. Since talking to the police in the chaos of that night, Bryn had managed to dodge the formal police interviews Susan and fire personnel were subjected to, but a reporter from the Hanover Falls Courier had called her house half a dozen times, and twice she’d seen a van with the paper’s logo on the side sitting outside her house.

  And then there’d been the mortuary. The caskets were all closed, of course, but Bryn’s imagination could conjure all too well what those satin-lined boxes contained. Only a steel skeleton and a pile of ash remained where the Grove Street Shelter once stood.

  The mortuary hadn’t had need of Adam’s clothes. His uniform, with his boots, sat folded on the front of Engine 1. Bryn wondered if they were the boots he’d been wearing when he died. Surely those hadn’t survived the fire. She shuddered. Morbid thoughts. But they kept coming.

  After the first explosion, almost twelve hours had passed before they’d recovered Manny Vermontez’s body, trapped beneath layers of rubble. By that time, a crowd had gathered, keeping quiet vigil on a day that had dawned bright and sunny.

  Bryn had kept watch with them, in spite of the fact that Adam—Adam’s body—had been carried away in an ambulance hours before. As long as she lived, she would never forget Emily Vermontez’s keening wail when her husband’s body was carried out. Manny’s was the fifth and final body to be removed from the carnage.

  Manny and Emily’s son, Lucas, a handsome rookie firefighter, was still in the hospital in serious condition. Lucas Vermontez would live. His mother would not have to bury two men she loved.

  Bryn had heard someone tell Susan, as the families of the fallen were being seated, that Lucas had not yet regained consciousness. Which meant he probably didn’t know yet that his father was dead. And that, against Chief Brennan’s orders, Manny had run into the burning building just before it collapsed, searching for his son.

  Lucas had his life, but he was not here to bid his father—the man he revered above all others—farewell.

  Bryn searched the crowd for her own father. She knew Dad was here somewhere, but in the mash of people streaming onto the cemetery grounds, she couldn’t find him. He’d volunteered to walk with her in the cortège, but she had made excuses, worried he wasn’t strong enough. Now, thinking about him alone in the crowd, she wished she’d accepted his offer. Dad had barely had time to grieve her mother’s death three years ago, and now they were burying Adam.

  Again she pushed aside a terrible truth that kept trying to get her attention as the wind whipped her hair about her face and drove spears of cold into her bones.

  The rest of the short graveside service was torture, and when the bagpipes began to play again—a mournful rendition of “Amazing Grace”—Bryn thought she might be going mad.

  For if the hellish nudgings of her imagination were true, surely there was no grace on earth or in heaven that could save a wretch like her.

  She couldn’t stay locked up

  here forever.

  There were things she had to

  take care of . . .

  5

  Monday, November 12

  Bryn gazed into the mirror above the bathroom sink. Her reflection stared back, pale and devoid of makeup, purple circles rimming her eyes, the irises a muddier shade of brown than usual. Her hair hung in shapeless hanks to her shoulders. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d washed it. Adam had always loved her auburn hair, but now it looked dull and brittle. Almost lunchtime and she’d just changed out of her pajamas. How had she aged ten years in the week that had passed since the funerals? Those seven days seemed like an hour. Or a year. Time had ceased to have meaning.

  She’d requested two weeks off from her part-time job at the library, and for a week she’d holed up in their house—her house. Adam had the foresight to insure their mortgage so that she now owned their townhome free and clear. Whether she could afford the taxes and the monthly maintenance fees, though, remained to be seen.

  The little two-bedroom townhome had always been a cozy haven for the two of them. But when Adam was working too many shifts and she stayed here by herself, even the mellow shades of gold and burgundy in the paint and rich fabrics she’d chosen seemed cold. But it was a very different kind of alone, knowing Adam would never walk through that door again. Without his presence, the space had been rendered cold and sterile.

  In seven days, she hadn’t left the building except to get the mail in the entryway. And she’d stopped even that when the sympathy cards started pouring in.

  She didn’t dare turn on the radio or TV for fear of hearing another story about the heroic fallen firefighters from the Grove Street Inferno, and except for a couple of calls from Susan Marlowe, unless caller ID showed her father’s number, she ignored the phone the dozen times a day it rang, knowing it would be a reporter. Or a fire investigator. Or the police.

  She opened the medicine cabinet, and reaching for the mouthwash, her hand rested on Adam’s bottle of aftershave. Before she could think through the consequences, she unscrewed the lid and brought the bottle to her nose. It was like letting a genie out of a bottle. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine Adam standing at the counter beside her, fresh from the shower and wrapped in a towel, his hair spiky and smelling like a little bit of heaven. Dear God, I miss him.

  She capped the bottle and replaced it on the shelf. She turned on the faucet and held a hand under the stream, waiting for the water to warm, but turned it off again, thinking she’d heard something. Eyeing her reflection, she froze, listening. Down the hall, the doorbell chimed. She was in no mood for company.

  She dried her hands and crept down the hall to the front door. Peering through the peephole, she let out her breath. Dad. Her father tried to talk her into moving in with him after the funeral. Hugh Terrigan could be stubborn, but he hadn’t pushed her on this. Instead, when she declined,
he’d taken to stopping by every couple of days just to check on her, or bring by fast food—most of which got tossed in the garbage as soon as he left. If she didn’t answer the door now, Dad would worry himself sick. Sighing, she pushed her hair off her face, turned the lock, and opened the door.

  “I was starting to think you weren’t home.” He looked her up and down. “You okay, honey? You don’t look like you feel very well.”

  “I’m okay, Daddy.” She forced a laugh, and the tug at the corners of her mouth felt foreign. “I just don’t have my makeup on yet.”

  “Well, go do something about that. You look terrible.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  He grinned and patted her cheek, but deep furrows carved his forehead. She wasn’t going to get off that easily. “I thought I’d take you out to lunch.”

  “Dad—I’m really not hungry.”

  “You’re too skinny. You’re not eating, are you?”

  “I’m eating. It wouldn’t kill me to lose a pound or two.”

  He shook his head. “You’re too skinny.”

  “I’ll make us something here. I’m just—I don’t feel like going out, Dad. Please.”

  “Bryn, you can’t hide out here forever. I know it’s hard. Believe me, I remember how it was when your mother—” Even after three years, he still couldn’t talk about Mom without choking up.

  He held out his arms, inviting her to cry on his shoulder. But she bent and picked at an imaginary thread in the carpeting. Anything to keep from having to pretend she could cry. The ashes stinging her eyes the night of the fire had elicited more tears than she’d shed this week. She could not cry. And she couldn’t tell her father why.

  When she’d composed herself, she straightened and reached to touch his arm. “I’m okay—”

  “Honey, you’ve got to get out of here. Come stay with me. I’ve got the extra bedroom just sitting empty. It’s not good for you to be alone all the time.”