Things You Save in a Fire

by Katherine Center

  Josie made my wedding dress, too. As thin as a slip, but with lots of ruffles. Her mystery husband wound up holding their squirmy baby during the ceremony while she held my bouquet. Hernandez talked his cousin into driving his shiny Airstream taco truck across the country to cater the reception for us—so he wound up in a position of honor, too. Cousin of Taco Truck Guy. He wanted us to note it in the program.

  But we didn’t.

  He brought us Austin’s new firefighter calendar as a wedding present.

  Our crew from Lillian served as the rookie’s groomsmen, and all his sisters stood up with him, too. We had a parade of little flower children. And we couldn’t decide between Captain Murphy from Lillian and Captain Harris from Austin to officiate, so we asked them both, and they both got certified, and they took turns.

  What can I say? When it came time for us to stand up and make our vows to each other, we had a lot of great people standing with us.

  My dad and Carol flew in for the wedding, and my mom and dad gave me away together. My mom wore a white silk eye patch that Josie made her with remnants from my dress.

  Later, my mom told me that she’d found a moment to take my father aside and apologize to him. For leaving him, of course, but also for the way that she’d left him—with so many questions so unanswered for so long. “You know that I never cheated on you, right?” she’d asked him, leaning in to study his eyes.

  But he hadn’t known. All that time, he’d thought she must have cheated. For years and years, he’d just assumed that she’d betrayed him as well as abandoned him

  “No,” she said, taking his hand and squeezing it. “You were abandoned. But not betrayed.” Then she shook her head and looked out at the ocean. “Not that it makes a difference now, really.”

  “It does make a difference,” my dad told her, and he squeezed her hand back. It didn’t change the past, of course, but it mattered.

  Colleen and Big Robby were there, of course, and the rookie’s cousin Alex bartended for free and handed out condoms on the sly. I invited the ICU nurse who’d sneaked me in, and I’m pretty sure the two of them hooked up.

  Did we invite DeStasio?

  We did.

  His attitude toward me improved quite a bit after I saved his life.

  And mine improved toward him after he got out of rehab, showed up at my place to sincerely apologize, with actual tears of regret, and made a pledge to spend his retirement years volunteering at the local women’s shelter as a way of atoning for his mistakes.

  In acknowledgment of his personal growth, I got him a T-shirt that says THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE.

  It didn’t change what he’d done, of course, but it mattered.

  Plus, he’d started dating someone—the director of the women’s shelter, in fact, which improved his personality quite a bit. I could almost see why people liked him now. Almost.

  * * *

  I WANT TO tell you that Diana managed to permanently kick her cancer through sassiness and sheer force of will, but she didn’t. Even before the wedding, the tumor had started growing again, and she already had another grim diagnosis.

  But, in that way of hers, she didn’t tell me.

  She let me have that one beautiful, breezy night to stand in my white silk gown and drink champagne and look fully forward to all the blessings that lay ahead.

  She never officially told me, actually. She never spoke the words. She knew that once the tumor was back in action, I’d figure it out. In the end, we got a year more than we’d hoped for. And she knew that neither one of us took even a single day of that extra time for granted.

  She’d hoped to see a grandbaby before she was gone, but we couldn’t get that done in time. I did manage to get pregnant, though—just barely—before we lost her. Somehow, she knew before I did.

  “Guess what?” she said, on the day before she died.

  “What?”

  “You’re pregnant.”

  The rookie and I had been trying for a baby—with enthusiasm—but nothing had taken yet. Several months of clockwork-like periods had left me a little discouraged.

  I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t feel pregnant.”

  “But you are,” she said, closing her eyes. “And it’s a girl. And you will love her more than you love yourself. And you’ll disappoint her, too—and never live up to the standards you set for yourself. But don’t worry. She’ll be okay.”

  “Yes,” I said, shoving tears off my cheeks. “She will.”

  Diana did wind up leaving Wallace’s house to me, and the rookie and I wound up moving in, and we now have two toddlers ransacking the place on a daily basis. But we figure if that place could handle Samuel and Chastity McKee, and those eight children, and all the countless fish they pickled, it can put up with a few Hanwell-Callaghans.

  We kept the pottery shop open for a while, to sell off what was left of Diana’s stock to fans and friends. Some of the loveliest, most special pieces, we kept to display in an antique hutch with glass doors that lock with a skeleton key. Those, we’ll hold on to. But the rest of them, we use. She wanted us to use them. They are the bowls and plates our kids are growing up eating on.

  Eventually, the rookie converted the old shop into a lively little restaurant with seven tables. We stay open year-round, and there’s always a line out the door. DeStasio helps in summer, during the busy season. It’s hard work, but the rookie doesn’t mind.

  And yes, we all still call him the rookie.

  I went back to my job in Lillian. Eventually. After they groveled for a while.

  It’s actually a pretty good schedule for a mom. I only work two days a week—twenty-four-hour days, but still … Josie managed to have two more babies, and her mystery husband wound up shifting jobs after that to be home a lot more. Her littlest one and my oldest were born just days apart, and we’ve worked out a kid-sharing co-op to cover the evenings when I’m working and the days when Josie is. Between us all—as well as the world-famous C-shift babysitting crew of Lillian’s bravest—we get it done.

  It really does take a village. And a half.

  * * *

  SO I FORGAVE my mother. And my dad did, too. And the rookie forgave himself for once having been a very dumb kid. And I forgave DeStasio for recently having been a very dumb adult. And all in all, as a group, we pretty much mastered forgiveness.

  I even read a whole book on the psychology of post-traumatic growth, and how, in the wake of the terrible, traumatic, unfair, cruel, gaping wounds that life inflicts on us, we can become wiser and stronger than we were before.

  Am I wiser and stronger now?

  Without question. Even in the wake of it all.

  I’ve spent so much time wishing that what happened never happened.

  But it did. And the question I try to focus on is, What now?

  Now that I’m older, and better, and have done so much healing, I do try to think about the bigger picture. I pay attention to politics, and I vote for candidates who care about safeguarding women. I taught self-defense classes in Texas, and I’ll teach them again here once my kids get a little older and I have more time. I always make sure in my job to treat victims of assault with special compassion and tenderness.

  And I’ve started volunteering with a nonprofit group that asks survivors of rape and assault to go into schools, prisons, and colleges, and tell their stories. To girls—but, equally as important, to boys.

  It’s terrifying.

  I go once a month without fail, and I have to stop on the drive home every single time to throw up by the side of the road.

  But I do it anyway.

  I do it because I believe that human connection is the only thing that will save us. I do it because I believe we learn empathy when we listen to other people’s stories and feel their pain with them. I do it because I know for certain that our world has an empathy problem with women, and this is one brave thing I can do to help fix it.

  Honestly, I tell myself, if I could share my story with DeSta
sio, I can share it with anyone.

  I hope those kids hear me. I hope they come away resolved to be better people. To be more careful with one another. To try like hell to use their pain to help others rather than harm them.

  Maybe they get it, and maybe they don’t. All I can do is try.

  But when I get home, Owen is always there, waiting for me. He makes sure he has dinner ready—something warm and soothing and buttery. On those nights, I play with our kids and kiss their chubby little bellies until bedtime, and then he takes them up to their little attic bedroom with pom-pom curtains and tucks them in. When he comes back down, he brings me a blanket and a mug of tea, and we sit on the sofa and talk about the day. He tries his best to make me laugh. Sometimes he gives me a foot rub with lemon-scented lotion. Sometimes we watch bad TV.

  He can’t fix it, but he tries to make it better.

  And then, when it’s our bedtime at last, he falls asleep in my arms, and I fall asleep in his.

  Unless I can’t get to sleep right away.

  Then, just like I’ve done for so long, I close my eyes and imagine making chocolate chip cookies. I measure out the chips. I crack the eggs. I watch it all churn in the mixer. It’s the same as it always was. Except now it’s different.

  Now, it’s not just me baking cookies alone. Now, I always imagine my sixteen-year-old self there, too—right beside me.

  When the cookies are ready, we pull them out, sit side by side on the sofa, and eat them—still warm and gooey—and drink glasses of ice cold milk. Sometimes I put my arm around her. Sometimes I say compassionate, understanding, encouraging things. Sometimes I lean in and promise her with all the conviction I possess that what happened to her won’t destroy her life. That in the end, she will heal, and find a new way to be okay.

  She never believes me, but I say it anyway.

  I know these moments don’t really happen. I know I can’t truly step back in time and mother my long-lost self. I know the teenage me and the current me can’t actually hang out like that, eating cookies and rolling our eyes at the world like besties.

  It’s pure fiction. Of course. I’m just telling myself stories.

  But that’s the life-changing thing about stories.

  We believe them anyway.

  * * *

  BUT, HOLD ON—did I ever forgive Heath Thompson?

  Not exactly.

  I forgave myself, at last. Even though I’d done nothing to require forgiveness.

  I didn’t really forgive Heath Thompson.

  With him, in the end, I guess you could say I chose revenge.

  I don’t know if you read about it in the papers, but he wound up going to jail for a long time.

  And not for what you’d expect, either.

  Tax fraud.

  Though, in that same month, in a front-page story, he was outed as a patron for an expensive prostitution ring. And then, in the wake of that, he was sued by thirteen different women for assault. And then his wife left him—but not before posting some deeply, eternally humiliating photos of him in some very embarrassing outfits on the internet.

  We’ll leave it at that. Use your imagination. Then make whatever you’re picturing a hundred times more humiliating and try again.

  But what did he go to jail for? Tax fraud.

  On top of it all, he turned out to be embezzling city money to pay settlements to the women who were suing him.

  Which the good people of Austin, Texas, did not take too kindly to.

  Yeah, he went down in flames.

  One of the women he’d assaulted ran for his city council seat—and won.

  All this was in the papers and on cable news for months. But somehow I missed it.

  I must have been too busy being happy.

  Honestly, I didn’t even hear about it until years later—when Heath Thompson tried for parole and was soundly rejected, and the whole series of scandals churned back through the news cycle.

  I spent some time after that wondering if I should have spoken up—and wondering why I hadn’t. Partly, I just didn’t know about the lawsuits, way back home in Texas. I’d like to think I would have joined them if I’d known.

  But I can’t know for sure.

  For so long, it was everything I could do to keep my head above water.

  Sometimes I wonder, if I’d been able to tell someone sooner about what he did, if I might have been able to protect the women he harmed after me. Maybe. Maybe one brave voice could have stopped him. Or maybe, just as likely, I’d have been blamed and humiliated and ignored—and he’d have gotten a pass.

  I know why women don’t speak out. It’s hard enough just to survive.

  And, by the way, the blame for what Heath Thompson did to all of us sits nowhere but on his shoulders.

  The morning I discovered all the news about his scandals, I took a few minutes to enjoy his spectacular downfall, and then I got right back to making us all heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast.

  I had more important people to think about.

  I guess it really proves the old saying: “The best revenge is marrying a kindhearted guy with a washboard stomach who brings you coffee in bed every morning.”

  Wait—is that the saying?

  Maybe it’s “The best revenge is spending your life in a cottage by the ocean with a world-champion kisser who takes the phrase ‘with my body, I thee worship’ literally.”

  That might not be it either.

  How about “The best revenge is flying kites on the beach with your chubby toddlers.” Or “The best revenge is dancing to oldies in the kitchen with your goofy friends.”

  Or maybe “The best revenge is to love like crazy.”

  Gosh, what is that darned saying? “The best revenge is…”

  “The best revenge is…”

  Oh, well …

  I forget.

  Acknowledgments

  I started dating a cute, funny, mischievous paramedic right after I graduated from college, and I’ve been with him ever since. All these years later, he’s now a history teacher, but he still volunteers as a firefighter/EMT. All to say, when I started writing a book about a firefighter, I knew exactly how much I didn’t know.

  So glad I found Gary Ludwig’s book on life in the fire service: Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Prayers. I was also lucky that so many firefighters were willing to let me visit their stations. I am so grateful to the many folks at the Houston Fire Department who answered so many questions: Captain Jerry Meek and the great guys on the D-shift at HFD Station 11 for their warmth and candor and hilarious stories. Kevin Brolan, retired Chief Investigator, Arson Bureau, HFD, was very helpful as well. Maria Jordan at HFD Station 17 graciously talked with me about what it’s like for women in the fire service. Thanks also to Kristi Baksht’s friend Kim, who introduced me to her husband, Andrew Eckert, a firefighter/EMT at HFD Station 16—who gave me a tour of his station, answered a thousand questions, and even demonstrated a pole slide.

  I also want to thank the authors who kindly recommended my last book, How to Walk Away, to readers. It takes a village to get the word out, for real, and I’m grateful beyond words to Emily Giffin, Nina George, Elinor Lipman, Jill Santopolo, Graeme Simpsion, Karen White, Brené Brown, Jenny Lawson, Catherine Newman, and Taylor Jenkins Reid. Sincere thanks also to novelist Caroline Leech for coaching me in Scottish. A hundred grateful hugs!

  Thanks also to Vicky Wight and Bridget Stokes of Six Foot Pictures, who have seriously given me the thrill of a lifetime this year by turning my novel The Lost Husband into a movie.

  To all my pals at St. Martin’s Press: I am so devoted to you! I’ve been writing novels a long time, and I know exactly how lucky I am to have your support. Sally Richardson, Rachel Diebel, Jessica Preeg, Erica Martirano, Karen Masnica, Jordan Hanley, Lisa Senz, Janna Dokos, Elizabeth Catalano, Devan Norman, Brant Janeway, Meghan Harrison, Olga Grlic, Danielle Fiorella, India Cooper, and Andrew (and Katherine) Weber—I seriously love you. And a special, sincere, adoring set of thank-yous
to my agent, Helen Breitwieser, who believed in me all along, and my editor, Jen Enderlin, who took me on and changed everything.

  Hugs to my fun family: Shelley and Matt Stein (and Yazzie), Lizzie and Scott Fletcher, Bill Pannill and Molly Hammond, and Al and Ingrid Center. Sincere thanks to our bookkeeper, Faye Robeson, who is not quite family, but pretty darned close.

  Thanks to my genuinely delightful kids, Anna and Thomas, who are so patient with me when I think in circles instead of straight lines, and who crack me up every day. I am so grateful to get to be their mama.

  Thanks to my amazing mom, Deborah Detering, who has doggedly refused to ever give up on me. Everything I know about believing in myself, I learned because she showed me how.

  And, at last, a thousand heartfelt thanks to my husband, Gordon. He’s one of the world’s true good guys, and I’m more grateful than I can say. For everything.

  ALSO BY KATHERINE CENTER

  How to Walk Away

  Happiness for Beginners

  The Lost Husband

  Get Lucky

  Everyone Is Beautiful

  The Bright Side of Disaster

  About the Author

  KATHERINE CENTER is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, including How to Walk Away, Happiness for Beginners, and The Bright Side of Disaster. Her fourth novel, The Lost Husband, is soon to be a movie. Katherine has been compared to both Nora Ephron and Jane Austen, and The Dallas Morning News calls her stories “satisfying in the most soul-nourishing way.” Katherine recently gave a TEDx talk on how stories teach us empathy, and her work has appeared in USA Today, InStyle, Redbook, People, The Atlantic, Real Simple, and others. Katherine lives in Houston with her volunteer firefighter husband and two sweet kids. Come visit her website—and join her mailing list—at www.katherinecenter.com, or sign up for email updates here.

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