by Teagan Kade
Ana must’ve been bitter. She gets that way after a break-up, especially when it’s the man who dumps her. It’s understandable. Who doesn’t get angry after a break-up? But I shouldn’t have trusted a scorned woman’s opinion on the man who did the rejecting.
I doubt she’d be happy to hear I spent the night with him, though. Guilt starts to nag at me, but I ignore it. There’s nothing I should feel guilty about when it comes to Derek and Ana. They’ve been nothing for a while, and she doesn’t even like him because, according to her, he is a ‘philandering pig who could never get a woman if it wasn’t for his uniform and badge.’
From what I’m gathering, the uniform and badge are not decorative to him. They’re rooted in tradition and bring with them a sense of pride and respect. I can see it in the pictures of him at the station, with his coworkers, and in his gear. He can’t be that bad if this is the life he chooses. A man who volunteers to put his life on the line for others every day can’t be a bad person. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
I unravel my legs and stand up, finishing my cup of coffee. As I walk back to the kitchen to rinse my mug out, the tension eases from my neck and shoulders. The anxiety melts from me and I feel lighter having rationalized Derek to myself. It sounds ridiculous, but knowing he isn’t a bad guy makes everything seem okay. Like everything will work out. Somehow.
I know I could be wrong. He might be a good guy who cares about my safety and well-being, but he’s also a good guy who loves his job. A seed has been planted by Officer Brady and, if my calculations are correct, the other firefighters know of these suspicions as well.
The smart thing for me to do is to walk away and let all this work itself out. I should distance myself from the fire and, specifically, from Derek.
But given the chance that Derek is the good guy I think he is, I’ll be safe regardless. Whatever happens, Derek will keep me safe. He did tell me that earlier, despite him not knowing everything.
That’s what I’ll do. I’ll put some distance between us. Well, only in terms of sleeping and housing accommodations. I’ll get myself a hotel and continue to spend time with him. Not in a romantic way, per se, but to gain access to any information regarding the fire. With him on my side and in my ear I’ll know what I’ll have to do and when I need to do it.
I smile, confident with my decision, and finish cleaning the kitchen before I head back to the bedroom to collect my belongings.
I can’t shut my head up. So what if the firefighter who saved me from the disaster is a good guy who’s amazing in bed? I think it’s a consolation prize for having to deal with the stress of my mother and the fire. If anything, it’ll keep me sane and safe during the whole process.
I find a sticky note in one of the kitchen drawers after gathering my clothes and fish out a pen from my purse. I don’t want to worry him when he gets home and I’m not here. I scribble down my contact information and let him know I’ll be staying at a hotel for a while and then I add a P.S.
I left with your shirt on, I write. Think of it as keeping me safe when you can’t in person. XO, Beth.
CHAPTER NINE
DEREK
“Chief’s here!” Mike says, running through the firehouse like a madman.
I sigh and roll my eyes. “McAllister?” I ask Mike absently. “He already knows what kind of lazy fuckin’ bums we all are.”
Mike, shocked, stops and stares at me. “Not McAllister, asshole,” he says. “McAllister’s boss, LAFD Chief Hardy.”
I jump up out of my chair and, on impulse, straighten out my shirt. “Shit. The Chief, not just Chief, Mikey. Fuck. We gotta look busy.” I look around the mess hall and begin picking up all the rubble from our standard firehouse savagery—dirty dishes, empty pizza boxes, spilled soda, and broken plastic ware–and marvel at the fact we didn’t have any cockroaches or other vermin.
I manage to clean up enough of the disaster to make the house look somewhat decent when Chief Mick Hardy walks through the doorway, wheezing heavily.
He looks at me, grunts, and sizes me up. I take the opportunity to do the same.
A tall, portly man, Chief Hardy has been on the job since my grandfather’s time. He, in fact, started in the LAFD with my father, when my grandfather was in the position he occupies today. When my grandfather was ready to retire, Hardy was the automatic shoo-in for the role.
Hardy’s advantageous position means he could close his eyes, figuratively speaking, as far as my more, uh, adventurous misdeeds are concerned. Provided I never jeopardize the job nor the house, and I never did, Hardy is able to let my more prurient hobbies slide.
Naturally, this earns me a lot of flak from the boys in the house, but, frankly, I didn’t care, and I still don’t, because my commitment is to my job and to saving lives, not to firehouse gossip.
That said, I’d be lying if I said I don’t worry, every day, about Hardy and his quickly failing health. He has COPD thanks to years of sucking in smoke, both from the job and from his three-pack-a-day Marlboro habit. He’s severely overweight and often makes the joke that ‘vegetables are what his food eats’. Because of his aversion to vegetables not drowned in butter, and his refusal to stop stuffing cigarettes in his mouth, he’s suffered two heart attacks, with the last one requiring a stent in his heart to keep it beating for a few more years. If he lives another five years he’ll be lucky, and it would be a long and brutal five years filled with a variety of ailments at that.
All these thoughts come rushing to my mind as he stands before me, wheezing like Darth Vader with an Irish brogue, a thick stack of papers in his meaty hand.
“Derek, my boy,” he begins, his deep voice full of phlegm. “Got some news on that fire in Whittier.”
Beth, I think to myself.
“Oh?” I ask, feigning indifference. “Anything in particular I should know about?”
He tosses the stack of papers on the table, coughing as he does so. “Yep. Wouldn’t you know it, that Whittier fire is no accident.”
I scoff. “Of course it isn’t. I’m not surprised. But what happened? Who did it, why, and, most importantly, how?”
Hardy rifles through the pile of papers and emerges with a few photos from the scene. He tosses them my way. “Check that out,” he says. “You can see from the pictures the place was staged. Whoever did it wanted you to think it was because of a scented candle, yeah?”
“Because bitches love candles,” I snark, looking intently at the photos Hardy has proffered.
“Yep, bitches love candles,” Hardy repeats. “But, look closely. Look how small that wick on the candle is. Look how far away the curtain is from the candle. Unless someone poured gasoline on it, there’s no way the fire sparked like that and took down damn near the whole house.”
I sigh, put the pictures down, and rub my eyes. “So, Beth didn’t do anything wrong. And this isn’t an accident,” I say, tiredly.
“Yep,” he replies. “The lass didn’t do anything wrong. But someone wants the lass dead, that’s for sure.”
“So you’re saying you have no idea how this fire got started, Chief?” I ask, my voice a little more on edge this time.
“We have our theories,” he says, not recognizing, or not caring to recognize, the agitation in my voice. “But, no, we don’t have concrete proof yet. We definitely need to do a lot more research.”
I clear my throat. “I’m going to head over there myself and see what’s going on,” I say. “Maybe I’ll find something you guys missed.”
It’s Hardy’s turn to be agitated. “Don’t even think about it, Derek,” he says, nearly growling. “Don’t be like that puppy who stuck its nose where it didn’t belong and found itself in a mess afterwards. Because that’s you. That’s always been you. And that might put you in a pickle I might not be able to get you out of.”
I scoff and push away the file, rubbing my temples.
Mick, sensing my deteriorating mood, changes the subject almost immediately. “Aye. But on to other things, Derek, my
boy,” he says, slapping my shoulder. “Let’s talk about the promotion.”
I barely give him a chance to finish the sentence. “No, Mick,” I say intently.
Mick laughs, coughing and wheezing. “Aye, Derek. Why’s that now? You’re the only one fit to serve in the position.”
“Did I slip into Gaelic, Mick? I said ‘no,’” I repeat, a little more forcefully this time.
Mick scoffs. “Well, ya can’t go on being the rogue forever, Derek,” he says. “Is that what you think you can do? That you can go on and be the bigshot firefighter for all the days of your life—just plowing your way through fires, drinking and fucking your way through bars, using your firefighter status to fuck every firehouse groupie in a five-mile radius in Los Angeles?”
“Doesn’t sound like the worst idea in the world, Hardy,” I say nonchalantly.
Hardy scoffs and throws up his hands. “Come now, Derek. Be reasonable. What would Don say?”
I look up and feel the room spinning despite myself.
I take a deep breath and try to focus on the walls, because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to throw up, scream, or fucking cry.
The ‘Don’ in question was my father, Donald, who served on the LAFD with Hardy—and to whom I was a constant disappointment.
“Hardy,” I say, “you know what Don would say? He would say, ‘I wouldn’t expect the kid to do anything else.’”
Hardy shakes his head, coughs, and wheezes slightly. “That’s not what Don would say at all. You know better than that.”
“It’s true, Hardy,” I say, fighting back tears. “I was nothing but a disappointment to the old man. He was the best firefighter on the force, and I don’t think he ever thought I’d be anything more than I am today. And he’s right.”
Hardy stands over me, puts both his hands on my shoulders. “No, Derek, my boy. No. That’s not true. He was never disappointed in you. He was always, always proud of you. He would tell me constantly.”
“Then how come he never told me, Mick?” I ask, using his first name for the first time in a long time.
“Aye, you know, there’re Irishmen of a certain generation that didn’t think to tell their boys that sort of thing. ’Fraid it would make them soft or something. But he would tell me all the time, every time, even on that night of the wildfire,” he says, his voice drifting off.
“The wildfire?” I ask. “You were there with him?”
“Aye, I was,” he says. “A terrible thing, that fire. Started by accident, you know. Homeless man took a shit in a paper bag and lit the bastard on fire, just so the bears and the wildcats wouldn’t find him in the woods, and boom, there it was. Would have been funny, too, if it hadn’t been so deadly.”
I sigh and hang my head. That’s always the case with those wildfires, I think. Always start by accident, and always, always kill people… including my old man.
Hardy continues regaling me about that night. “And so, your old man, Don, he was a lot like you, he was. Always rushing into the fire. Never giving a shit about himself, just worried about saving the people he needed to save. And that night, he saw a family, a homeless family, with young children in the woods. That fire was ready to all but tear them up, and he went running in there and got them right out. But then, there was a tree, you know, a bastard tree that caught fire and just tumbled to the ground and then…”
He drifts off, shaking his head and fighting in vain to contain the large, oily tears rolling down his face.
I take a deep breath, trying, and succeeding, to hold back tears of my own. “What’s this got to do with my father being proud of me?” I ask.
“Well,” he says, slapping his thighs, “on the truck, Don told me, just like he told me every other time, he was so proud of you. That one day you would be honoring the family name and sitting in the seat that Big Don—that’s your grandfather, you know—was sitting in at the time. Told me you were popular with the girls, even back then, but then you were dating that nice Irish girl, remember? Mary McCormack? The one with the family from Donegal, yeah?”
I nod, remembering Mary and her fire-engine red hair, her pixie nose, her perfectly freckled skin… and the carpet that matched the drapes, something that delighted me endlessly when I nestled my lips firmly between her legs.
There was nothing ‘nice’ about her in the bedroom, Mick, I think.
“I guess he thought she was the lass you were going to marry,” he continues. “And he said he was proud of you for finding a nice girl, for following in the family footsteps, and for being a strong, independent man like him—a man who handled his business and stood on his own two feet.”
He stops, sighs, and shakes his head. “Whatever happened to Mary, anyway? Why didn’t you marry her?”
I match his sigh with one of my own. “Two days after the old man’s burial, I was lost, you know? I dragged myself to Mulcahy’s, downed a whole bottle of Scotch. The next thing I know I woke up next to two different women—a black girl and another Irish girl who looked just like Mary. She found out and that was the end of that. Ever since then I prefer ’em two at a time.”
Hardy shakes his head. “They all look the same upside down,” he snarks.
“Right,” I say airily as he begins to leave. “You know, I never knew Don was proud of me.”
“That’s right, my boy,” Hardy says. “He was. From the day you were born until the day he died, he loved you with everything in him, and he was proud of you beyond words. If he knew you were up for the Lieutenant’s position, he’d be the first one buying rounds at the bar for everyone. ‘That’s my boy,’ he’d be saying.”
Hardy walks towards the door before looking over his shoulder one last time. “Think about it, Derek,” he says. “Don’t be afraid to give it a try. You’re worth all that and more.”
CHAPTER TEN
ELISABETH
The hotel options are slim pickings. My room at the Sunset View Lodge is disappointing, even though I picked the best from a small selection of three-star highway stops and I wasn’t expecting much to begin with. I asked for a non-smoking room and yet the entire place reeks of stale cigarette smoke. My recent brush with death is not the only reason I want to avoid the unpleasant odor.
My mother smoked constantly when I still lived at home. That’s probably how she got cancer in the first place. Living with a mother who burned through two packs a day, both inside and outside the trailer, has left me with a deep aversion to cigarettes and smoke. Even standing too close to a lit barbeque is enough to set off the panicky feeling I get when I think of home too much.
My mother always smoked these weird pink cigarettes they didn’t sell at the drugstore in town. The box said they were rose-scented. They made the whole trailer smell like someone bought a bouquet of roses and immediately set it on fire. I still have no idea where she got them. She always told me an ex-lover sent them to her from Paris, but I never really believed that. Unless she meant Paris, Arkansas, but even that’s hard to believe. We considered Sacramento exotic and it was only an hour away from our little trailer community.
The cloying smoky smell is at the top of a long list of things I do not care for in this room.
Some sort of color blind, floral-obsessed interior decorator must have been set loose inside. How can something be so flowery, yet so bland? Brown roses on the carpet. I again think of Mom’s cigarettes.
Part of me thinks I should have stayed at Derek’s. It’s distinctly a man’s apartment, yes, the lingering smell of a bachelor life clinging to everything, but it’s clean. And the water pressure in his shower is incredible. I know that first hand.
I go into a bathroom barely big enough for me to turn around in. The door nearly smacks into the toilet when I open it. It has one of those seats with a furry decal on the top. It looks more like a furry dead animal. There is no shower curtain.
“What the hell?” I moan. This is not what I need right now. After everything that’s happened to me lately, what I really need is a large, clean b
ed in a room that smells like lilacs and some room service. I didn’t think that was too much to ask for, even if I am technically a criminal now. I debate going downstairs to cancel my reservation.
I hear my mother’s voice in my head as soon as I formulate the thought.
What, you think you’re too good for this? You think you’re better than everyone?
That was one of her favorite insults to fling at me. It took me years to realize it wasn’t a bad thing I wanted to go to a good college or that I wanted a job other than waitressing. That’s what my mother does. Or did. I don’t even know if she’s able to work anymore. I guess if she is, she wouldn’t have reached out asking for help.
With a jolt I realize that with everything going on I never told my mother anything about the fire or the insurance claim. I haven’t even called her. God, maybe I really am a horrible daughter. I know leaving home was the right move, but now I’m thinking I could have done it differently.
I grew up living in the same double-wide my whole life. If I had a daddy, I don’t remember him. In fact, one of my earliest memories is of my mother chasing a man out of the trailer, waving a shotgun like a crazy woman, but I don’t think that man was my father.
My mother worked double shifts at a dingy diner down the road from the trailer park. She used to bring me along, leaving me in the dry storage room to play make-believe with the empty boxes and gigantic cans of vegetables and soup. Sometimes one of the cooks would sneak me a slice of pie or a cherry soda. My mother didn’t like that. She always said we were nobody’s charity case.
The diner barely paid enough to make rent, so my mother relied on the tips she earned to pay for most of my clothes and school stuff. Getting good tips wasn’t hard for my mother. She was pretty and charming. Men saw her as a wild thing they could tame and then eventually own. The best times were when my mother convinced some poor shmuck to loan her ‘just a little bit of money to get by this month.’ She would spend most of it on liquor, but at least she was in a better mood.