Falling for the Fireman

by Allie Pleiter

  Chad ran a hand across his chin. She hoped he was cataloguing a list of unpleasant tasks for Nicky. “I think we could keep you busy, if you don’t object to a little hard work.”

  So he had caught her intentions. This couldn’t feel like a vacation—this suspension had to hurt. Hopefully a lot. The paperwork and swatch-wrangling at Sweet Treats just wouldn’t fit the bill, and the last thing she needed was him underfoot while she cooked. It was hard enough to keep her own concentration, much less focus his. “I don’t object one bit,” she cut in before Nicky could reply. “The harder the better.”

  Nicky swallowed half the glass in two gulps, then refilled it and walked toward the door, leaving the gallon out on the counter. “Fine.”

  Her son’s single, curt syllable stomped on Jeannie’s last nerve. “We are not done with this, Nicholas. Not by a long shot.” She stood up from her chair. Nicky dragged himself back around to face her. “Put the milk away, thank Mr. Owens and then go start on that math Mrs. Hunnington sent home with you. I want it done before dinner, and then you and I have a long conversation ahead of us.”

  Nicky grunted something she hoped was “Thanks, Mr. Owens,” deposited the milk in the refrigerator and left the room.

  Jeannie let out her breath and sank wearily back down to the chair, letting her head fall into one hand braced on the table. “Am I awful for being relieved Nicky had somewhere else to go tomorrow?”

  Chad shook his head. “No, actually, I think it’s a very good idea. The smart plan of a woman with lots of fight left in her.”

  She hated how the threat of tears wound tight around her throat. “You’re wrong. I have no plan at all and I don’t have any fight left in me to keep this up. I’m on empty. Below empty. He’s a mess. I’m a mess. God is going to have to step in and work some kind of miracle here.”

  “You believe in miracles, Jeannie.”

  “I believe in prayer. I can call Abby back tonight, tell her the whole story and get people to pray.”

  “That sounds like you have more of a plan than you think.”

  “But then people would have to know all the details. The matches. They’ll start looking at Nicky as a troubled boy. He’s not. Scott Collins is wrong, Chad. Wrong. Nicky’s not a…criminal. My son is not a pyromaniac—whatever that really means. He’s just…better than this.”

  Chad’s eyes widened. “Is that what Scott said to Nick? What started the fight?”

  “Part of it. I can’t get all of it out of him just yet. He’s fighting me every step of the way.” She could barely stand to look at Chad. “He used to tell me everything. Now…”

  “He needs some help. Just a bit, just to get over a tough spot.” The knot in her throat twisted tighter so that all she could do was look up at Chad and will herself not to cry. The regret in his eyes broke her heart.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything for certain anymore.” It sent a longing through her so strong it was like fighting a physical force urging her up out of the chair and into his arms. That was dangerous. She couldn’t think clearly at all right now. She fingered the suspension papers lying on the kitchen table. “You should probably go.”

  “I’m sorry it’s come to this. Really, I am. But it’s here.” He looked at her carefully. “We need to see it through. There are programs…”

  “No. No programs. None of that teen offender stuff. Pyromania. That’s not Nicky, and you know it.” She pushed away the papers with flailing hands, feeling helpless. She hated to feel helpless, hated to think of Nicky as damaged. Troubled. Labeled. Criminal.

  “You said yourself, we don’t know what he hasn’t told us.” The pained uncertainty in his voice scared her to death.

  “Maybe this is all there is. Maybe this is God’s way of letting it out now before…before…”

  “Before what? He’s already suspended. Whatever’s coming is already here.”

  “Well, whatever’s here can’t have him.” She wanted to crumple those papers and throw them against the wall. Still, Nicky’s well-being was worth everything. Anything. “I’ll just have to dig up the strength somewhere, won’t I? Find some way to fight him out of this if it takes every blessed ounce I have to give.” Jeannie squinted her eyes shut, wiping at the hot trickle that ran down her cheeks. “Only I don’t feel like I have anything left to give.” She kept her eyes shut, holding the world out of sight, feeling as if the chair was the only thing holding her upright.

  A hand rested on Jeannie’s shoulder, cautious and tender. Without opening her eyes, she gave in to the longing, and lifted one hand to rest atop his. A jolt shot through his fingers as she did so. His hands were strong against her shoulder. It seemed like centuries since a man had touched her in anything but friendship, and while this touch was full of compassion, there was more than friendship in it. It spoke clearly, if reluctantly, of other things.

  She willed herself not to open her eyes; she knew what would happen if she did. She felt him, sensed him lean down toward her and her breath all but halted. If he touched her cheek, or did anything else tender like that, she’d be lost. “You should probably go.” The words barely made it out of her throat.

  After a long moment, she felt him pull back up.

  “Bring him by tomorrow morning.” She opened her eyes to see him walking toward the door. “I’ll be there.”

  I’ll be there. She grabbed those words and clung to them like a lifeline.

  “I think you like my mom.”

  Chad thought he’d finally gotten Nick to the point where he’d discuss yesterday’s fight, but as conversation-halting statements went, Nick had chosen wisely. He knew it, too.

  Not that Chad wasn’t an easy target. Sleeplessness had sapped his energy, leaving him without enough clarity to get through the day with a surly, uncooperative Nick. They’d done an hour of washing equipment and small talk, but today wasn’t just about hard labor or killing time. He was supposed to be helping Nick sort through the storm of his emotions.

  Chad pretended to search the kitchen for coffee creamer while his mind scrambled for the right reply. When had kids become so complicated? “Your mom is a nice person who cares about a lot of people, including you.” He set a root beer and a bottle opener in front of Nick as they sat at the firehouse kitchen table. Chad was grateful none of the firemen were around to see him be verbally cornered by an eighth-grader. “Besides, everybody likes her.”

  Nick popped the cap off his root beer and folded his arms across his chest. He was silent, but the unspoken “You don’t think I’m gonna fall for that, do you?” radiated from him. The dark colors he always wore looked wrong against his light skin, and seemed to clash with the bright palette of Jeannie’s world. Nick had his mother’s expressive eyes under all that unruly blond hair—the best features of both parents? His strong chin wasn’t Jeannie’s but he had her charisma already, despite the brooding wardrobe. His father must have been a good-looking man. Nick looked as though he’d grow into the kind of rugged young man high school girls swooned over. He hoped it would be the class president good guy type, but Nick’s current choice of apparel hinted too much at the dark, bad boy type.

  Chad sat down opposite Nick and stirred his coffee. Time for the direct approach. “We’re not here to talk about your mother. We’re here to talk about what made you punch Scott Collins yesterday. And why there are matches in your locker.” If he was going to be direct about things, he might as well put all the issues on the table.

  Nick pushed back in his chair, hands crossed over his dark gray T-shirt. “I hate when she calls me ‘Nicky.’”

  Chad wasn’t going to let Nick detour this conversation, no matter how hard he tried. “Duly noted.”

  “Like I’m some kind of five-year-old.” The boy had a point, but not the point in question.

  “Tell her.” He took a sip of coffee. “Right after you tell me what’s going on with you in school.”

  “She likes you, you know.” Nick leaned forward to spin the bottle cap on
the table. From somewhere behind him, Chad heard Plug wander into the kitchen, and Nicky’s body language immediately softened. “I heard her talking on the phone to Mrs. Reed about it, saying how she didn’t know if she wanted things to get complicated, whatever that means.” Nick scratched Plug’s ears as the dog settled his snout onto the boy’s leg. “When I asked her what she was talking about, she made up something about some church committee.” He braved a look up from petting the dog. “Mom’s the worst liar ever.”

  Chad wondered if God was toying with him, or if Nick Nelworth was too skilled at picking distracting topics of conversation. With a sigh, he redirected the conversation back again, despite Nick’s glare. “She’s really worried about you. You’re smart enough to know that what you did has lots of people worried.” Chad leaned down to catch Nick’s eye. “Look, Nick,” he said, hoping the boy noticed he never called him “Nicky” and it earned points in his favor, “this isn’t the time to get all silent and sneaky. What you’ve been through has messed up its share of grown men, men who didn’t have to deal with eighth grade on top of it.”

  No response.

  “I know from experience that if you keep that kind of stuff bottled up it’s going to come out in bad ways. I think it’s already come out in bad ways. Ways that could get worse.”

  Nick scuffed his shoe against the table leg and looked away. Good. He must be making a dent if Nick couldn’t look at him just now. Chad shifted his weight and pressed on, startled by how badly he felt the need to make a difference in this boy’s life. Only it wasn’t guilt or obligation that drove it—although those things were still there—affection had grown, too. He softened his voice and leaned in. “It won’t get easier. You can’t ignore stuff like this. It’s too big, too dark. I’m not saying you have to talk about it with your mom or even with me, but you ought to talk about it with someone. There’s a program for kids who…”

  “What?” Nick bristled. “So, you think I’m some kind of pyro, too?”

  “I don’t think you’re a ‘pyro,’ Nick, but I think you need to talk to someone.”

  “I’m not dumb. I know what those ‘programs’ really are. No way am I doing anything like that.”

  You’re thirteen. How do you know what you need? Chad thought to himself in frustration. He drew in a breath and backtracked. “Well, then, what about Pastor Allen? He’s our chaplain for the firehouse, and he runs the youth programs at your church, right? He seems like an okay guy to me. Or there’s Mrs. Corning.”

  Nick spun the cap again. “Mrs. Corning’s all full of programs, too. Why can’t anyone get that I don’t need to talk to anyone, especially Mrs. Corning?”

  Chad knew Mrs. Corning wouldn’t really get him anywhere. The school counselor scented her office with potpourri, drank herbal tea and used twelve psychological buzz words per sentence. In other words, warm and fuzzy enough to grate on any thirteen-year-old boy’s nerves.

  “I see your point, but Scott Collins’s black eye says we still have a problem.” Chad leaned back in his chair, hoping to let Nick know he was ready for a long conversation. “How about we skip all the other people and programs for now and you just tell me what happened yesterday and during the fire drill earlier? I’m on your side. If you talk to me, I can help you and your mom figure out what to do from here.”

  There was a long, fidgety silence. Nick spun the cap over and over, but Chad discovered the boy’s hesitation didn’t bother him at all. It had happened again, that unexpected flash of insight. He could read Nick as easily as he read Jeannie. Nick was deciding whether or not to trust Chad. Whether or not to talk about the storm going on inside him.

  Let him trust me. Chad was shocked to realize it was more of a prayer than a thought. Please let him trust me with this. He felt the need to say it again, sure God wasn’t accustomed to paying any attention to him.

  The cap turned more slowly, until it finally wobbled and fell over to chatter against the Formica tabletop. “Nobody gets it,” Nick said when it stilled.

  “What it’s like to survive a fire, you mean?” Chad said carefully.

  Nick nodded.

  Thank you. That thought didn’t feel odd as a prayer. Thank you. “I know. Everybody thinks they know how it feels, but they don’t. They try to be nice, but sometimes they say stupid things, don’t they?”

  “Scott says stupid things all the time.” Nick kept his eyes on the cap, tapping it with one finger.

  Chad stayed very still. “But you don’t punch him all the time. What’d he say yesterday?” Jeannie had given him the basics, but he wanted to hear Nick’s own words.

  “That I set the fire—the one at our house, I mean. That all this fire drill stuff was because of me. That everyone’s scared I’ll set the school on fire.” He tapped the cap with each accusation as if jabbing a finger back at Scott Collins.

  “No one thinks that.” Never in the entire investigation report—which he’d gone over twice—did anyone post any suspicions that Nick had been involved. A thirteen-year-old kid cannot manipulate faulty wiring.

  No response. Chad hated that bullies like Collins knew the weak spots so well.

  “You know we didn’t do that assembly just because of your fire, don’t you? Think back, Nick. I did that assembly at your school last year, and the year before that. It had nothing to do with you.”

  “It’s a dumb assembly. We know that stuff already.”

  Chad remembered calling anything that made him uncomfortable “dumb” at that age, too. “Well, I should have changed it this year. I owe you an apology for not figuring out a way to make all of this fire safety stuff easier on you.”

  That got his attention. “No, you don’t. You don’t need to do anything. No one needs to do anything for me. There’s nothing wrong with me, I’m no pyro and I don’t need any stupid program, got it?” He rolled his eyes, looking like a young boy again. “Seriously.”

  After that speech, Chad was sure Nick would get up and walk out, but he didn’t. That had to be a good sign. Moving his coffee cup aside, Chad tried a different tactic. “Did you know it took your mother four tries to light a match the other day?”

  “Ha. I did it in two.” Nick froze and looked up, caught.

  Chad nodded. “It’s not like I didn’t know already. Your mom and I were testing smoke alarms, but you? You had no business doing that in school.”

  “Outside of school.”

  Chad glared at Nick. “Anywhere. Look, Nick, you’re not some kind of freak. Fires mix up people’s feelings.” He thought of Jeannie’s death grip on the leash as she crossed Tyler Street and how her hands shook lighting the match. “Your mom’s pretty strong, and brave, but even she’s having trouble. I had trouble. The only dumb thing here would be to pretend that you’re not having trouble.”

  Nick forced a laugh and pointed at him. “You. You had trouble. You’re a fireman.”

  How many times had he voiced the same thought? Firefighters felt pain the same as everyone else, only his came laced with both personal and professional regrets. If it took covering some uncomfortable ground to keep Nick from more pain, Chad found himself willing to speak about his past. “Someone very close to me died in a fire. While I was just starting to be a firefighter. It made me do some really stupid things for a while.” He paused for a moment before adding, “I’d like it if that didn’t happen to you.”

  “All my stuff is gone.” Nick began bouncing the cap on the table, the words finally gushing out of him. “I hate our apartment. I don’t have a bus stop but driving in the Jeep is even worse. I hate how my teachers keep asking me if everything’s okay. Mom’s acting all weird. Every time I have a nightmare she acts like I’m gonna need to see a doctor or something. I wish everyone would just lay off.”

  It was as if the safety valve finally opened up, letting some of the pressure off. He’d finally done something to help the kid, and it settled in his chest with a satisfied glow. “That’s quite a list. I might start punching jerks if I had all that to
deal with, and I know better.” He caught Nick’s eye with a hint of a smile. “I hope you know better. Your mom’s just nuts and worried because she loves you. A lot. And she’s hurting in her own way, you’re smart enough to know that. So, the way I figure it, the smartest thing to do here would be to give her less to worry about. Right?”

  Nick gave Chad the first smile he’d seen since the fight. “What’d you do? I mean, when you had your fire, what’d you do?”

  I shut down my life for eight years. He was venturing into territories Chad was absolutely not ready discuss. “I didn’t punch anybody, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Nick didn’t budge. He sat back again, arms across his chest. “So…what’d you do?”

  “You’re right. I like your mother.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Whoa, are these Chinese fireworks?”

  Chad turned from the box of old reports he was sorting in the storage room to find Nick coming down the hall holding Helen’s box of Chinese lanterns. He must have found it in the back when he was sweeping out the engine bay. “No, they’re something else.” He did not like the way Nick’s face lit up at the thought of fireworks. Aside from the requisite stint riding the engine in the town parade, most firemen Chad knew weren’t fond of the Fourth of July on account of the mishaps and injuries from amateur fireworks displays. Nick Nelworth would not add himself to that list if Chad had anything to do with it.

  Nick set the box down and squatted beside it. “So, what are they?”

  “They’re some things a friend sent.”

  “You have friends in China?” To Chad’s dismay, Nick was peering into the part of the box top Chad had opened to pull out what he had come to call “Helen’s Annual Letter.” He’d been smart enough to extract that little emotional time bomb before bringing the box to the firehouse, but it now left an entryway big enough for Nick’s hand to pry the box open farther. “What’s in here?”