Love, Special Delivery

by Melinda Curtis

  “Shut it down.” Ben called it. When the water stopped, he removed his mask and pointed to the trees. “Did you see that car?”

  “I was busy.” Dad sank onto a bumper, gulping air. His mask-less face was ashen. “Watching you. And the gauges.”

  A rush of anger drowned Ben’s adrenaline high. He stepped forward and clutched Dad’s shoulder, giving it a shake. “Why didn’t you wear a mask?”

  Dad tugged off a glove and wiped his face. “I forgot.”

  “You don’t forget. You can’t forget. You’re the fire chief.” Ben bit back a rant that might break eggs.

  “Well, I did.” Dad produced his inhaler and took a hit. “What did you say before?” He drew in a labored breath that gave Ben sympathy gasps. “Something about a car?”

  “I’m taking you to the doctor.” Ben tried to help him up, tried to be patient, tried not to be mad toward or disappointed in or scared for his role model.

  “No doctor.” Dad shrugged him off. “Your mother will worry.”

  “As opposed to her grieving...” Ben began to shout. “...when you die!” He glanced down to count the eggshells he’d broken and stomped on the urge to break more. He couldn’t let his father get to him.

  “Don’t be maudlin.” The color was slowly returning to Dad’s face. “Do you suspect arson?”

  Ben fumed quietly for a moment, trying to decide if he should call Dad’s doctor, or Mom, or no one at all. He made a choice. The choice to respect his father and his fire chief. “Doesn’t it seem suspicious? A car left right after we put the fire out.” Arsonists often stayed to watch the havoc.

  “Maybe the driver was the one to call it in.”

  “Maybe.” His mind wouldn’t let the idea of arson go. He’d studied to be a fire investigator for years. It was hard not to put any of that training into play.

  Granted, the fire hadn’t been fast burning, which seemed to rule out accelerant. And it was within cigarette flicking distance from the two-lane, which would lead him toward suspecting a careless driver. But their audience... It felt like someone was flaunting their dirty work.

  The wind shifted, sending smoke in their faces.

  Dad bent over, hacking deeply. Ben had to help him inside the truck, where the air was cool and filtered. After Dad was settled and breathing almost normally, Ben stowed the gear, keeping an eye on the blackened ground in case an ember flared to life again. Nothing did.

  “Sorry I couldn’t help with the cleanup,” Dad said when Ben returned to the cab. He looked like a defeated old boxer who’d tried unsuccessfully to make a comeback.

  “It’s okay. I knew what I was getting into when I came here.” Double duty. Hiding Dad’s secret. Locking away his principles for the better part of a year.

  Ben put the engine in gear and headed into town, letting his mind wander. It meandered to a tin of matchbooks.

  “I just didn’t think I’d feel so worthless,” Dad said, his voice barely audible above the engine.

  If Dad had been among the new generation of firefighters, like Ben, he’d have worn a breathing apparatus at every fire—big or small. He wouldn’t have developed heart and lung disease. He’d be finishing a long and illustrious career in Oakland. He’d be planning retirement and trips with Mom, making jokes about poor working stiffs.

  And Ben would be switching gears, working as a fire investigator.

  Those matchbooks...

  “Where are we going?” Dad asked when they missed the turn to the firehouse.

  “I have a hunch.” There was one person in town he knew of who’d started a fire and been mesmerized. He hoped he was wrong. He hoped he was being paranoid, falling prey to a worst-case-scenario hypothesis. But being a worst-case-scenario thinker was a plus when it came to fire prevention, and Dad had just proved his judgment wasn’t the greatest.

  Ben pulled in front of the post office and wished he hadn’t.

  There was a small gray sedan parked in the lot.

  * * *

  EVEN WITH COUNTRY music blaring from the radio in the post office, Mandy knew when the town’s fire engine pulled up. The big engine rivaled the beat of the country song on the radio.

  “I’m not ready for a fire inspection,” Mandy muttered, turning the music down. It hadn’t been a week since the first one.

  What she really wasn’t ready for was seeing Ben again. The past few nights, she’d stayed up late before going out to see the moon because their exchange had seemed too intimate. She’d told him about eggshells. She’d told him about sharing secrets with the moon. He must think she was an idiot!

  Not that this was anything new when it came to Mandy and men.

  Mandy didn’t have her act together when it came to the opposite sex. And especially not when faced—literally—with a confident handsome man like Ben. He probably liked women who were petite and polished and wore heels the likes of which Mandy didn’t have in her closet. She was launching a post office and raising a teenager. She didn’t have time for pretty clothes, stylish hair or makeup. Who was she kidding? She didn’t like clothes that showed how reed-thin her body was. She didn’t like spending more than a minute on her hair. And makeup? It gave her acne.

  On nervous legs, Mandy dodged the postal service maintenance crew, their ladder and the stack of boxes they’d brought containing fire alarms, extinguishers and lighted Exit signs. They’d claimed the sorting counter as their personal staging area, but they’d spread out like high tide on a flat marsh.

  Utley sat in the sunshine on the loading dock in a webbed camp chair, a burning cigarette in his fingers. How long had he been sitting there? She hadn’t noticed his arrival.

  Mandy touched his shoulder as she passed.

  The old man startled, dropping the cigarette on the concrete, barely missing the tin of matchbooks he’d saved from the trash several days ago.

  She paused at the top of the stair. “Did I wake you?” It was hard to believe anyone could sleep through her music or the whine of drills installing new signage and fire alarms.

  “No.” Utley’s eyes were heavy-lidded. “I was meditating.” He lifted his fingers to his lips as if to take a drag from his cigarette, noticed his fingers were empty, and immediately brushed at his lap as if dozing and dropping cigarettes was a regular occurrence.

  “It’s on the ground,” Mandy told him, hurrying down the concrete steps to meet Ben. “Don’t light another.” She’d already told him twice he couldn’t smoke on the premises.

  She’d received her first mail delivery this morning and wasn’t sure how much of a stink Ben would put up about her operating without the fire control panel working. She didn’t want to admit all her safety measures weren’t in place, but she didn’t want to disappoint her supervisor and delay mail delivery either.

  She reached Ben in the middle of the parking lot.

  He wore his turnout gear and smelled pleasantly like the wood fires her grandfather used to make when they went camping. She’d wondered about their next meeting. Would he be the rigid fireman or the compassionate neighbor?

  Question answered. Ben wore his intimidating scowl, as if they’d never spoken in the darkness about eggshells or the moon.

  The post office phone rang.

  Mandy yelled to Olivia to take a message before turning to Ben with a smile she hoped didn’t betray how nervous he made her feel. “Has it been a week already? It’s been a challenge to pull work crews out here. But they’re here today.” She was babbling faster than a political talk show host. “And I’m checking things off my list.” If she sounded any perkier, she might puke.

  Ben stared at her as if he’d sat down at a poker table with people he didn’t like. Namely her. And then his glance moved over the cars and trucks in the parking lot. “Have you been here long?”

  “All morning. I just finished
sanding the flagpole.” She held up her red, raw hands, waving to Keith in the fire truck. The fact that the fire chief wasn’t getting out had to mean this wasn’t a fire inspection...she hoped. “I only went up about eight feet. I’m not very good on a ladder. I get vertigo.”

  “The flagpole out front?” Ben walked backward a few feet, every step magnetically drawing Mandy, too. He stopped where they could both see the front of the post office.

  “Yes, the one and only flagpole.” She’d left the ladder and supplies at its base. Was that a fire hazard? “Are you here for my inspection?” Or just to torture her?

  “No one inside can see or hear you when you’re out there,” Ben noted, poker-faced. His lip was no longer fat, making the hard line of his mouth that much harder.

  “It’s a two-way street. I can’t see or hear anyone inside either.” Which was a blessing when Olivia was in drama mode. “Is there something wrong? I mean, I didn’t dance naked out here. I was just sanding.”

  “It’s hard work getting this place in shape.” Utley shuffled up to them, adjusting his blue postal cap to shield his eyes from the sun. He always looked like he was on a tropical vacation. Today he wore a green Hawaiian shirt with white flowers over his khaki shorts. “Glad I could help.”

  If by helping, Utley meant lending moral support while he napped or reminisced about the old days, the retired postal worker was doing a bang-up job.

  “Are you going to tell us about the fire?” The old man planted his sandals hip distance apart and rocked from side to side. “That’s why you’ve got your gear on, isn’t it?”

  A flicker of fear for Ben skimmed Mandy’s spine, so light she barely recognized it. But not so light that it didn’t send heat into her cheeks. “Are you okay? Is Keith okay?”

  “We’re good. It was just a little grass fire,” Ben said carefully, staring at her face. “It went down quickly.”

  “Oh, good. I’m glad.” The heat in her cheeks changed to a prickle of discomfort at his continued scrutiny. Did she have something on her face? Ink? Rust? Cookie crumbs?

  “Is that...” Ben leaned around Mandy, peering at the loading dock. “Is that the tin of matches I threw away?”

  “It’s my tin of matches.” Utley patted his pockets as if searching for something. “I’ve been using them. I never let anything go to waste.”

  “I tried to stop him.” Mandy tried to keep her voice down, brushing her fingers over her cheeks.

  “You should have tried harder.” Yep, that was her überprincipled fireman Ben.

  Few men were taller than she was, which meant few men made her feel feminine. Mandy glanced down at her tennis shoes and her blue work shorts, and sighed. Honestly, Ben was right about the matches. She was the postmaster. She shouldn’t have let Utley keep the matches after the fire department wanted them removed. At the very least, she shouldn’t have let Utley keep them here.

  She continued to explain her case to Ben in a voice below hearing aid range. “He’s having a hard time adjusting to me in charge. He thought he’d be the next postmaster, and he’s heartbroken. So he nags and he criticizes, but it doesn’t mean much. The matches were a compromise.”

  A crease strobed between Ben’s brows, and his lips twitched downward. She’d probably ruined her credibility by admitting she talked to the moon. She had to reestablish herself.

  “Utley.” Mandy turned to her grandfather’s friend and coworker. “The matches will have to go home with you.”

  Utley stopped patting pockets and reached in one, most likely for a pack of cigarettes.

  She laid her hand over Utley’s, preventing him from taking it out. “And you’ll have to respect the no-smoking rule at this facility.”

  “So that’s how it is.” Utley worked his wrinkles into a deeply lined frown. “All those years of service and now I’m like a stack of unclaimed mail.”

  “Well, we never throw unclaimed mail away,” Mandy said, trying to lighten the mood.

  “It’s not right.” Utley turned and shuffled back toward the loading dock.

  “About the cars back here,” Ben began.

  “Wait.” Mandy snapped her fingers. “I almost forgot. I got a special shipment today. Keith has a package.” She hurried past Utley and up the stairs. “It must have broken open during transit. Someone along the way resealed it.” She picked up the white plastic bag, but something fell out. “Shoot.” They hadn’t resealed it very well.

  A pill bottle rolled across the floor toward where Ben stood on the loading dock.

  Mandy swooped it up and checked the name on the prescription to the address label. Satisfied they matched, she handed both the bag with several other prescriptions and the escaped pill bottle to Ben. “You might want to check the shipping manifest to make sure all the meds he needs are in there.”

  Ben stared at the bottles and then back at her.

  What was he waiting for her to say? “I hope to be ready for inspection in a day or two. Shall we say Friday?”

  “You want...” Ben moved out of the way of Utley, who was headed toward his chair and the tin of matches. “That’s all you want. An inspection date?”

  “Well, clearly, I want to pass.” She forced out a laugh.

  “We’ll see.” Ben left. It was hard to tell beneath his fireproof jacket, but Mandy felt as if she’d been given the cold shoulder.

  Mandy glanced over to the maintenance crew in case they’d been doing something a fireman wouldn’t approve of, but there was nothing suspect about them. Three were opening boxes and one was reading instructions.

  “I’m tired of putting supplies away.” Olivia wore blue jeans and one of Mandy’s postal shirts. Her headphone wires were tangled in her fingers as if she’d just taken them out of her ears. “The caller asked for you, but hung up when I said you were here.”

  “It was probably Dave, calling to check up on my progress.” Mandy hadn’t reported in today, and probably wouldn’t until later, after she’d delivered the mail.

  Olivia shook her head. “It was a woman.”

  Mandy shrugged. If it was important, she’d call back. “I need to get the mail out.” Thankfully, there wasn’t much. Residents of Harmony Valley had been slow to change their post office boxes from Cloverdale.

  Olivia’s put-upon gaze landed on the departing fire truck. “Was there a fire?”

  “Yep.” Utley held up a matchbook and a cigarette, both of which he put in the matchbook tin under Mandy’s stern glare. “Didn’t you see him wearing his gear? Wish I’d been a firefighter.”

  “Isn’t there a checkers game at Martin’s Bakery?” Mandy asked innocently. The man was moodier than Olivia.

  Utley lurched away, clutching the tin of matches. “I suppose I know when I’m not wanted.”

  Guilt tugged at Mandy’s resolve. “See you tomorrow.”

  He waved a hand in the air as if to say he was done with her.

  “Hey.” Olivia touched Mandy’s arm. “It’s less than two weeks until my birthday.”

  Mandy hustled past Olivia toward her office. “What kind of cake do you want?”

  “Let’s talk dollar figures.” Olivia trailed after her.

  “We’re not buying an expensive cake from the bakery.” The work crew was worse than a child on Christmas morning. Boxes, plastic and Styrofoam pieces created an obstacle course Mandy was determined to get through. “You’ll get a homemade cake and twenty dollars in a card, just like always.”

  “I don’t care about your gift.” Olivia darted past Mandy and blocked her entrance into the office. “I want to know how much money Grandpa left me, so I know how much I need for cosmetology school.”

  This was it. The moment Mandy had been dreading. Grandpa had known for years how he wanted to divide his estate. But he’d told only Mandy.

  Those years be
fore Grandpa died had been a scary decline for him in many ways...

  He’d been taking too many naps during the day, and when she’d asked him about it, he’d given her a weak excuse. “I’m not very good at managing my insulin.” Which was true. But the naps were just the beginning of a long and drawn-out end.

  His kidneys were failing, worn down by years of diabetic mismanagement. He had to quit work and seek dialysis. He didn’t like needles to begin with. And now he felt his dignity was being robbed. He always seemed fatigued, short of breath, short on memory and, increasingly, short on patience and common sense.

  When dialysis no longer worked, and they’d been discussing alternatives like home, hospital or hospice, Mom had shown up. They hadn’t seen her for years, not since Grandma’s funeral. Grandpa had taken thirty minutes to recognize her. And then he’d tottered to his bedroom alone.

  A few minutes later, Grandpa had called Mandy into his room to help him dress. In a moment of clarity, he’d said, “I have a number for your mother in my phone. I check on her sometimes and tell her how you girls are doing.” He’d handed Mandy an envelope. “Long ago, Blythe and I made you trustee of the estate. I’ve decided to leave everything to Teri.”

  To Mom? Mandy’s knees buckled. Not that he had a lot to leave—a savings account and the house in Harmony Valley. “Why would you leave her anything?”

  “Why would I leave everything to...?” His eyes grew distant as he drifted mentally. “Because...because... You and Olivia will be all right. You have the post office. Olivia can go to beauty school through the occupational program at high school for next to nothing. My Teri...” He choked up. “She needs a home base. You manage the finances for her so she always has a place to go.”

  Mandy wanted to say No. She wanted to say Never. It’s what Grandma would’ve said.

  But he’d raised Mandy as if he was her father. “If that’s what you want.” She couldn’t look him in the eye.

  Grandpa nodded.

  Mandy thought about her grandparents taking her in, caring for her when they didn’t have to. Never complaining. Giving her love. Grandpa had given her a job when Grandma’s cancer returned and Mandy realized she couldn’t go away to college and leave Olivia behind. He’d given them more than any house was worth. He’d given them love and a home.