I Never Thought I'd See You Again: A Novelists Inc. Anthology

by Неизвестный

# #

  Week #5 after the breakup.

  It was so exciting, Jane almost couldn’t stand it. The officer on a day shift at Ladder 5 was sick and Jane had been designated as his sub for her first shot at lieutenant. The only dark spot was that Riley had lost his officer’s spot and she could only imagine how he was feeling.

  No, don’t think about him.

  Her group had been called to a house fire right near the station and arrived in three minutes flat. “Ready for your first foray?” Lisa Beth asked as she swerved the truck onto the fire ground. She’d been surprised to find Lisa Beth subbing, too, though rumor had it she did a lot of that.

  “You betcha. You gotta have my back, girl.”

  “Of course. We women stick together.”

  Jane grinned.

  A rescue squad had been brought in, too, but from the looks of the small house and the gray smoke, the call would be routine. The captain of that squad came over to her. “Phillips, good to see you.”

  “Thanks, Cap.”

  “Your people need to ventilate the roof. When you’re ready, give me the signal and I’ll send my guys inside.”

  Soon, a ladder had been heeled by one member of the crew, the K-12 saw lugged up by another, and she and Lisa Beth ascended the rungs one behind the other. Lisa Beth positioned herself along the cut line the first two had marked off, and, using halligans, the three of them ripped back the dark shingles as Jane walked around the roof.

  Something didn’t feel right.

  She jumped up and down on a section near the middle.

  Just as she heard, “We’re ready, Lieutenant,” from one of the guys, and the loud buzz of the saw, Jane realized what was wrong.

  “Stop right now, all of you,” she shouted over the noise. “Head down the ladder fast.”

  “What the hell?” one man asked when the saw suddenly stopped.

  “Just go. The roof’s spongy. It’s gonna cave.”

  The two men and Lisa Beth followed her orders and descended quickly. Jane was right behind them as soon as they jumped off the ladder. She was four rungs down when the roof collapsed.

  The force of it shuddered the ladder.

  Jane grabbed the steel railings but lost her footing and slid downward.

  She woke up to pain. “Oh, fuck.” She hurt all over.

  “Hold still.” Lisa Beth’s voice. “You slid down the ladder and hit your head. Then you blacked out. You’re stretched out on the ground near a shade tree.”

  “C-can I walk?”

  “The three of us tried to break your fall, so I think you’re gonna be okay. No broken limbs. You didn’t even crack the skin on your skull.”

  She braced her hands on the ground to sit up and pain shot out from every nerve ending. “I can’t believe I’m okay. I hurt all over.”

  “You aren’t gonna be dancing the tango any time soon.”

  She closed her eyes. “I want Riley.”

  Lisa Beth stilled. “Yeah, it’s normal that you would.” After a minute, she sat back and crossed her legs. “I don’t know what he did, but I’ll tell you, honey, he’s a changed man this last month.” She waited. “He even brought his dad to the firehouse one day.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Tears clouded her eyes. “Shit! Don’t let the guys see me so emotional.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it.”

  When she finally could sit up, Lisa Beth helped her, gave her water and some ibuprofen. They stayed in the shade for a bit and watched the action. Flames shot out of the house, through the roof, windows, everywhere.

  “It’s fully involved,” Jane observed.

  “Yeah, somebody missed something.” Lisa Beth waited. “You saved our lives, you know.”

  “Oh, well…”

  “So I’m gonna pay you back with a little advice. I had a relationship once with a guy I was crazy about. He screwed up and I forced myself to hate him. But in the ten years since we split, I never found anybody else I could care about as much. If there’s a chance of making this work with Riley, who’s a lot better man that this one ever was, go for it.”

  The words made their way into her heart.

  When the fire was finally out, the two ladder guys approached them. “Hey, Phillips, how you doin’?” one of them asked.

  “Should we call the ambulance? Go to the hospital?” the other suggested. “She might have a concussion.”

  She looked at Lisa Beth. “No, I want to go home.”

  # #

  Riley bounded into the house, out of his mind with worry. Jane had been hurt. Hell, Jane could have been killed. If it wasn’t for that sharp mind of hers and good sense, all of the Ladder 5 crew would be dead. The notion chilled his bones. He couldn’t think of anything but getting to her when Lisa Beth called to tell him what happened.

  “Janie,” he yelled out so he didn’t scare her. “Janie, it’s me, Riley.” The kitchen and family room were empty, so he headed to the bedroom.

  He found her resting against pillows, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, her hair damp. Doggy was cuddled into her side, her head against Jane’s breast.

  “Hey,” she said. Her voice was hoarse.

  He rushed to her side. Her cheek was bruised and her hands covered with gauze. But otherwise she looked remarkably normal after falling down a ladder. Dropping to his knees, he ran his hand over her hair before he remembered he didn’t have the right to do that anymore.

  She took his hand away from her head and…Jesus Christ, held it.

  “I was so worried,” he told her.

  “I knew you would be.”

  “So it’s okay that I came home?”

  “Always.”

  What did that mean?

  He breathed in deeply. “Want to tell me about the call?”

  “Yeah, later. But there’s something I want you to know first.”

  “What, honey?”

  “I named the dog.”

  “Oh.” Why was she bringing this up now?

  “It’s Beeja.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you know what that means?”

  “No.”

  “I know this is corny, but I don’t care. The name means new beginnings. I want one with you, Rye.”

  He met her forehead with his. “Oh, baby, me, too. Can you ever forgive me?”

  “I think I did as I was falling down the ladder.”

  It killed him to say it but he’d learned a few things in the last, brutal weeks. “Maybe that’s not the best time to decide your future.”

  “It isn’t just that. I miss you so much. You’ve changed. I can tell and everybody says so. And from what I hear, you’re on the way to forgiving your father.”

  “I’m not done yet,” he said eagerly.

  “No? I forgive you anyway.”

  “You mean it?”

  “I do, love.”

  He couldn’t help it. He buried his face in her lap and cried. She held him until he could contain his emotions. Finally he was able to straighten up. “Don’t tell anybody about this,” he said to break the tension.

  “I won’t.” She touched his jaw, cupped her other hand at his neck. “I’d really like to make love, but I’m so freakin’ sore, I can’t.”

  “I could run you a bath.”

  “That would be nice. But before you do, climb on the bed and just hold me.”

  “Anything you want, babe.” He circled the bed, rearranged Beeja, and lay against the pillows. He let Jane come to him as gently as she could, though she still moaned.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No more sorries, Rye. Let’s just be together.”

  “Forever,” he whispered and kissed her head.

  “Hmm,” she said in a sluggish voice. “Forever.”

  Because of You by JoAnn A. Grote

  JoAnn Grote is an award-winning author who has written forty books, including inspirational romance for adults and fiction and nonfiction for children ages eight through twelve. JoAnn’s books Minnesota and Minnesota My
steries have been honored with placement on Christian bookseller bestseller lists, as have numerous collections that include her novellas. A Prairie Christmas Collection, which included JoAnn’s novella Image of Love, was #3 on Family Fiction magazine’s 2011 Collections of the Year list. JoAnn worked at an historical restoration for five years, and especially enjoys weaving fictional characters’ lives with historical events.

  In 1998 I wrote the children’s book The Flu Epidemic, a story set during the Spanish flu epidemic that killed more people than The Great War almost a hundred years ago. While researching the epidemic, the adult heroine in “Because of You” appeared in my mind, walking down a dark staircase in a boarding house in St. Paul, MN to the room where a young man she didn’t know lay between life and death. I’ve wanted to write this couple’s story ever since, to explore their experience and discover where it led them. When editor Lou Aronica mentioned the possibility of a collection of stories with the theme “I never thought I’d see you again,” I instantly saw the couple who showed up in my imagination fifteen years ago –– and knew where each ended up after the war of the flu epidemic crossed their life paths.

  Minnesota, 1975

  Bettie looked about her with a sinking heart as she was wheeled into the nursing home’s common living room by the cheerful young candy striper in a pink-and-white striped apron. Gold draperies, pale blue wing chairs and a matching couch gave the appearance of an elegantly appointed living room, but the white tile floor eliminated the sense of warmth. Vases of plastic greenery and carnations added color but no friendly scent.

  The room would never match the hominess of her small living room, even though furnished with older furniture, worn from use. A sigh escaped her as the candy striper parked the wheelchair beside an end table stacked with magazines, primarily the housekeeping variety. As the aide walked away, Bettie reached for a copy of National Geographic. Why read about housekeeping while in a nursing home?

  A shuffle mixed with the soft padding sound of a cane caught her attention. A tall man, bent from the years, with thick white hair and a deeply wrinkled face that appeared permanently tanned, came toward her. Black suspenders over a white, long-sleeved shirt were clipped to his brown trousers. She envied him the independence of his cane. Would she ever recover to the point she could use a cane instead of a wheelchair?

  His faded blue eyes caught her gaze. “Mind if I sit here?” He waved the cane slightly in the direction of the camel-back sofa on the other side of the end table.

  “Go ahead.” She patted the arm of the wheel chair. “I brought my own place to sit.”

  He chuckled as he lowered himself with stiff movements to the sofa. “I haven’t seen you before. What brought you here?”

  “I fell on the ice and broke a hip. The doctor doesn’t want me to go home, at least not until the hip heals further.” He had to let her return to her own home eventually, didn’t he? She knew that the house she loved wasn’t a practical place for an eighty-two-year old woman with a broken hip, but she longed for it.

  The man folded his large, gnarled hands over the top of his cane. “Broken hips are nasty things; land a lot of people in here. What’s your name?”

  “Bettie.”

  A smile spread across his liver-spotted face. “Let me tell you about my favorite woman named Bettie.” He settled against the back of the sofa, hands still clasped over the head of the cane. Bettie recognized the contented look of a favorite memory that softened the deep lines in his face. “It was 1918, right after the end of the Big War, World War I.”

  She nodded. It didn’t matter how many wars followed, to those who lived through it, World War I, the war to end all wars, was the Big War.

  “I was a farm boy, raised on the Minnesota prairie. I moved to St. Paul, the big city, in the fall of 1918. Found myself a room in a boarding house, an old, two-story clapboard building near downtown. Wind came right through those old walls and windows; couldn’t keep my room warm for love or money.

  “That’s where I met Bettie. She was rooming in the boarding house, too, one floor below me. She was a pretty young thing. We never spoke to each other directly, not more than a nod or hello when we passed on the stairs. But she was at dinner every night, along with the rest of the boarders — half-a-dozen of us, maybe, two girls and the rest guys, all about the same age. I saved money by only eating one meal a day, so usually I was starving by dinner time.

  “I came home from work the last Saturday in November, a couple days after Thanksgiving, excited to be alive. Guess all the boarders felt that way, because we lingered around the table after the meal ended, talking together longer than usual.”

  # #

  November 30, 1918

  Carl took the last bite of apple pie and leaned back in his chair, filled with good food and satisfaction. With sugar no longer rationed since the war ended, the landlord treated them to desserts more often. It was obvious from the way the other boarders devoured their pie that they appreciated the luxury as much as he did.

  Listening to the chatter and laughter, he smiled. People couldn’t help but be excited about life with the war over and the Spanish flu on the wane. Anything seemed possible since the Allies won the War to End All Wars. Even that shy boarder, Bettie, was smiling at black-haired Michael Conrad’s story of the disaster that befell him and his friend, Jack, the night the city celebrated the Armistice two-and-a-half weeks ago — November 11, 1918, a date etched in his brain for life.

  The strings from the white gauze mask he wore at work and in public areas to ward off the flu caught his attention, dangling from his trouser pocket. He pushed them back into hiding. No one in the boarding house had caught the flu, so he didn’t feel exposed here. Besides, a person couldn’t eat while wearing a mask.

  “What about you, Carl?” Michael’s question jerked Carl out of his reverie. “Did you have any adventures during the Armistice celebration?”

  “You might say so.” Carl leaned his forearms on the cloth-covered table. “I visited my brother, Peter, at Fort Snelling. He was with the first group of wounded doughboys to arrive at the Fort, on Armistice Day.”

  All eyes turned toward Carl, accompanied by exclamations of sympathy and surprise. Everyone knew the fort had been turned into a hospital for rehabilitation of wounded veterans.

  “What happened to him?”

  “Mustard gas.”

  The group’s silence bore witness to the seriousness of his revelation.

  “Will he recover?” Bettie’s softly-voiced question surprised him. Carl was certain everyone in the room wanted to ask that question, but it was quiet little Bettie with the courage to come out with it.

  “Yes, but we weren’t sure about that for awhile. The lesions in his throat were so bad when he arrived at the fort that he couldn’t speak, but he’s able to now.” He grinned, and swung his gaze back to the others. “Sounds like a frog with laryngitis, hurts him like crazy, and his lungs will probably always be weak, but he’s alive and he can talk.”

  “When did it happen?” Michael asked.

  “October fourteenth, during some of the toughest fighting the Minnesota’s 151st Rainbow Division encountered in France.”

  Blond-haired Jack, seated beside Michael, cleared his throat. “My cousin fought with them. He didn’t make it back. He wrote to me a lot before he died.” The group listened, engrossed, to his cousin’s war experiences.

  Carl’s interest was as strong as that of the others at first, but eventually he grew tired. He rested his head on his hand and tried to concentrate as others related stories they’d heard about the war, but his head began to throb something fierce and soon he didn’t hear the stories any longer, but only the beat of blood in his head.

  He was dimly aware of people pushing back their chairs, standing and, still chatting, moving out of the dining area toward the hallway where the stairway led up to their rooms.

  Someone stopped beside him. “Are you all right?” He recognized Bettie’s soft voice.

>   “Just…tired.” He could hardly get the words out. His tongue felt thick and it took so much energy to talk. What’s happening to me? Fear slithered through him alongside the sudden fatigue. Gathering his strength, he shoved his chair back. But when he pushed himself to his feet, his knee joints felt loose and he swayed. He lost focus, and toppled toward Bettie.

  “Help!” He heard her cry out as she fell with him to the dining room floor.

  # #

  Carl opened his eyes and let his gaze wander around his room. The shade-less bulb which hung from the ceiling, the room’s only electric illumination, was dark, but moonlight through the two double-hung windows gave enough light for him to recognize the few familiar items: the bell-shaped clock ticking away beside the white porcelain pitcher and bowl on top of the chest of drawers, the gray-and-maroon striped curtain that hid his hanging clothes, and his winter galoshes peeking out from beneath the curtain.

  His gaze rested on the one unfamiliar item — Bettie, asleep on the room’s only chair, a straight-backed walnut affair. Why was she here? A gauze mask hid her lower face. Her chin lolled against the khaki trench coat that lay over her like a blanket, likely a protection against the draft of cold that knifed through the room.

  He glanced at the windows. Both were open about an inch. Enough of that foolishness. He shoved the covers back with an effort and stared. He still wore his sleeveless undershirt and the brown trousers he’d worn to work, but his matching suit coat — the new one with the popular army-style belt — had been removed, as had his collar, shirt and tie. He didn’t remember removing them. He pushed himself to a sitting position and grabbed his head with both hands at the throbbing headache and double vision. He lay down slowly, wanting to sink back into sleep to get away from the pain.

  Bettie stirred, and then straightened out of her sleep-slump in the stiff-backed chair. “You’re awake.”

  “As are you –– both of you.”

  “What do you mean, ‘both of you’?”

  “There are two of you; but only when I move.”

  A frown cut a wrinkle between her brows.

  “What are you doing in my room?”

  “You passed out in the dining room. Michael and I helped you up the stairs after you regained consciousness, but you fell asleep almost as soon as you lay down.”