The Fireman's Homecoming

by Allie Pleiter

  His father’s face burned red with anger. “I was never with Maria when she was married to Mort. For years, we never went near each other, never even shook hands. Not even when Mort went off to the Middle East. Then she came to me, Clark, desperate for help, sure Mort would throw her out for the mistake she’d made.”

  “And that’s exactly what you wanted, isn’t it? You ran off her lover so he’d be out of the picture, and then you insisted she tell Mort, hoping you’d be right there to rescue her when he tossed her aside.” It stung so badly, reminding him of the nights Clark had offered to run away with Lyla. What a mess he’d made of his life before God had finally shaken him to his senses.

  “I admit some part of me hoped that would happen. Paying off Danny Baker wasn’t the smartest thing I ever did, but I didn’t have a lot of options.”

  Clark felt his world tumble a little farther down the cliff. “You what? You paid Melba’s biological father to disappear?” He glared at his father, not even recognizing the man sitting at the table. The whole thing sounded so underhanded, so opposite of every value his father claimed to hold. “What else don’t I know? Come clean now, Pop, ’cause I’m not sure I can handle another round of this.”

  “He was a cad, a low-life fireman I never liked. Took advantage of Maria one night when she got word Mort had been wounded in the Gulf. She was like that, Maria was. Strong one minute, falling apart at the next. She came to me in hysterics when she realized she was pregnant and that Danny was most likely the father.”

  Anger was boiling up in Clark’s gut, making him want to take a swing at the whole world. “She came to you.” He said it like an accusation, not a fact.

  Pop shot him a dangerous look. “Take a minute, if you can, to think about what that felt like. To have a woman you’ve loved your entire life come and ask you to help her get out of a jam like that. To know she let herself be taken in by a jerk like that but yet she’d refused you. And even after everything that had happened, the thing that truly scared her was losing the love of the man she’d chosen over you in the first place. Give me a little credit for helping her when she punched me in the gut.”

  Clark was not interested in giving Pop one ounce of credit. “You were married to Mom at the time! I’m supposed to think this was noble?”

  “I’m not proud of it, but you of all people know life isn’t neat and perfect. How many times have I bailed you out of a hole you’d dug yourself into?”

  “This isn’t about me. Don’t make this about me.” The wind knocked out of him when Clark remembered to ask, “You said Mom knew. Knew what? How you felt about Maria? What you’d done? What you offered to do?”

  “Never the details. She knew something had happened, but to her credit she never asked. I don’t think she wanted to know.”

  “Imagine not wanting to know your husband paid off some lowlife to disappear and was ready to run off with another man’s pregnant wife.” Clark made sure every word cut sharp and harsh. “It boggles the mind.”

  “That’s enough!” Pop fired back, pushing himself up out of the chair to walk away and kill the heat under the saucepan with an angry snap of the stove dial. “I’m sorry you found out. I’m sorry I no longer measure up for you. Grow up and see this for what it is...a terrible mistake made by wounded folks in a tight spot.” He turned to look at Clark, suddenly looking like an old, hollow man. “The world is full of things we all regret and can’t fix, Clark. It’s the whole point of grace.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dinner had been a mess. Melba had been an angry ball of confusion all afternoon, snapping at Dad for no reason at all and every reason under the sun. Dad didn’t know why she was upset, but he was responding to the tension all the same. He had insisted he didn’t like chicken cacciatore when Melba—and even Barney—knew it was his favorite dish. Despite the bickering over dinner and everything else, she couldn’t bring herself to talk to Dad about the letter, despite her threats to Clark. It was all still too tangled in her brain.

  How much did he know? Had Mom told him just because G had demanded it for his help, or because she thought the truth was important between a husband and a wife? Worse yet, did Dad know the full story of G’s involvement, or just that his wife had made a terrible mistake?

  Melba caught herself on those words as she snapped off the kitchen light and headed for the stairs. “Terrible mistake?” She was that terrible mistake—or at least the consequence of it. It made her feel worthless, even though she knew better. Oh, Lord, she prayed as she hauled herself up the steps, finding them twice as steep as usual tonight, I’m lost here. I don’t know what to do or feel or think.

  Pinocchio followed her up the stairs, jumping up to join her on the bed as she lay back and stared blankly at the yellow canopy. He swatted at a tassel dangling from the bookmark in her Bible, and she reached for the book. “You always were a smart cat.” She ran her hand down his back, managing a smile when he arched into her palm and purred. “Calling Charlotte would take an hour of explanation and this is definitely a God-sized problem.”

  The bookmark was where it always was, in Psalm 139. The artist in Melba loved the poetry of the psalms, the passion and full depth of David’s emotions spilled out on the page. She began to pray her way through it, the way she always did. “You hem me in behind and before, and You lay Your hand upon me.” I need to feel You all around me tonight, Lord. I feel like I’m nowhere, like I’m nobody. It feels impossible to know Your hand’s upon me right now. Hem me in so I don’t do something I can’t take back.

  She wanted to take back the way she’d treated Clark. He’d walked in on her emotional land mine—walked in on several of them, for that matter—and that wasn’t his fault. I’m sorry for that, she confessed to God, and I have no idea how to fix it. Are You trying to show me that I’m too fragile to have a relationship right now?

  She read on: “even the darkness will not be dark to You, the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to You.” No matter how dark all these secrets seemed, they weren’t darkness to God. They weren’t even a surprise. He’d known her entire life who she was and how she’d come into the world. It was no coincidence that the next verses were her favorites: “For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” She was no fluke of circumstance, no horrid misstep’s outcome. God knew exactly who she was. Every detail. Sure, things didn’t line up into ideal circumstances, and it would still take a long while for all this secrecy to settle in her soul, but God loved her not one bit less today than He had yesterday. “The same is true of Dad, isn’t it?” she asked aloud, more to God than to Pinocchio. Wasn’t that more reason to admire her father, to love him for loving her even when biology and morality handed him reasons to dismiss her?

  Melba thought of a scarf she’d knit recently, a complicated pattern called entrelac. The first rows of the pattern made all these squares and triangles that appeared as if they couldn’t possibly fit into one whole. And if she’d stopped where her doubts were strongest—in the pattern’s early stages—they never would have meshed. She had to find the next instruction and follow it. What is that step, Lord? I don’t have a life pattern. I don’t know where to look next.

  She stayed in the best place she knew—wandering through one Psalm after another—until the text-message alert on her cell phone chirped an incoming message.

  Meet me. The message was from Clark.

  Melba rolled over and stared at the cat. “That’s what I get for praying for a next step. One I don’t want to take.”

  I can’t leave, she typed in reply. It wasn’t a no, but it wasn’t a yes, either.

  You don’t have to. I’m in your driveway.

  Feeling way too much like a teenager, Melba walked to the window and pushed aside the drapes to make out the lines of Clark’s dark blue
sports car and a flash of his red hair inside.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d come out,” Clark said when she pulled open the door and ventured out onto the steps. He looked terrible. The energy was gone from his face, and his shoulders slumped under a ratty GFVFD sweatshirt.

  “I wasn’t sure I would, either.” She zipped up the neck on her fleece pullover. The night was crisp, but not uncomfortable. That was good, because she wasn’t about to let him inside. “You look awful.”

  “It hasn’t been the best of days.” He looked at her, and for the first time she saw the control stripped from his eyes. As if the afternoon had peeled off all the “hero” to leave an open wound underneath.

  “Did something happen at the firehouse?”

  “Can we just not talk about it?” He sat down on the step at her feet, leaning his back against the railing. “I can’t stand how we left it this afternoon.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know what to do or what to say. I don’t know how to help or even if I should. All I know is that I want to help untangle all of this for you.” He looked up at her. “And I know that makes no sense but none of this makes sense anyways.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Melba sat down on the step opposite him. “It’s like Dad and all of this have stomped on every sore spot I own. I hate secrets. You can’t possibly know how much I hate secrets.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why so much?”

  Melba pulled in a deep breath. “You know my mom died of cancer two years ago. She’d been sick for a couple of years before that. It was an aggressive cancer. She actually got more time than anyone expected—although I didn’t find that out until later. I made all this noise after design school about wanting to travel the world. It’s actually why I got into the textile business—lots of importing to do. I made lots of plans, always dreaming about something on a round-the-world scale. Turns out, Mom and Dad kept her cancer from me for as long as they could, thinking they’d keep me from traveling if they told me.”

  “Did you? Travel, I mean?”

  “That’s just it...I didn’t go, but not because of some kind of imagined parental guilt trip.” She felt her chest tighten, just thinking about the night she learned her mom was terminal. “You know how you are just starting out, so sure you’ve got all the time in the world. I just fiddled away that time, not doing anything, really.” She squinted her eyes shut. “I would have spent those years so differently if I’d known they were mom’s last.” She opened her eyes again, grateful to see a gush of emotion in Clark’s eyes. He understood regret, he got the cost of wasted years. “I know we couldn’t have gone around the world, but we could have had some adventures together. By the time they couldn’t hide it from me anymore, she was too sick to do anything.”

  He didn’t say anything at first, but she could tell he empathized with her pain. When was the last time she’d met a man who was such a good listener? What a gift he was. “How did you find out?” he asked after a long moment.

  “I was home for a long weekend visit and I ran out of aspirin. Rather than bother them downstairs, I just went into their bathroom and started rooting through the drawers.” She fiddled with the zipper pull on her jacket, the vivid image sending ice down her spine as if it had been last week instead of years ago. “When you see a dozen prescription bottles and some of them say ‘post-radiation,’ it doesn’t take a master’s degree to figure out why your mom’s been losing so much weight lately.”

  “That had to be rough.”

  “We had such a fight that night,” Melba said, peeking in at the warm glow of the living room curtains. “It’s the only time I’ve ever seen my dad cry...before the funeral, that is.” She felt the anger rise again. “I made them both promise me that night not to keep anything from me ever again. How could they do that? How could they stand there—both of them—and promise me that, knowing there was still such a big secret between us?” She looked at Clark. “You don’t do that to people you love. You just don’t.”

  * * *

  He was so bad for her. He was everything she hated in relationships all wrapped up into one smitten guy. Sure, that sounded like something out of a romantic comedy, but his life was feeling like some kind of surreal movie anyway. He couldn’t stay away. He couldn’t tell her, but he couldn’t not be near her. It was wrong, hurtful even, but he seemed powerless after the way Pop had tangled his thoughts and his past. The need to be near Melba—to find some sense of balance in her brown eyes and know she wasn’t tumbling off the edge of some cliff like he felt he was—hummed through him when he’d gone home after arguing with Pop. He’d showered, stumbled around the house for half an hour, and then, even though he knew a dozen reasons why he shouldn’t, Clark had simply given in and driven here.

  “All that, piled on top of all this. That’s too much pain. I’m worried about you.” I’m worried about me, too. Clark knew of men who feared becoming like their fathers. That made sense. Coming undone because you’ve discovered your father is just like you? Or at least, just like the messed-up man you used to be? Maybe still are? That made no sense at all.

  “I’m angry one minute, just sort of hollowed out the next.” Melba’s voice caught as she leaned against the opposite railing on her dad’s house steps. They had so much in common. Only she didn’t know that yet. It was a cruel paradox—he felt so close to her but could hurt her so deeply.

  Tell her. No, don’t. You need to. She needs more time. He watched her twist one of her rings and yearned to thread his fingers through hers and hold her hand. The war in his conscience was shredding him to pieces, and all Clark wanted to do was hold her and kiss her until the feel of her silenced the shouting in his head.

  He managed to squelch the impulse to touch her for all of one minute, then reached over and offered his open hand to her. Clark physically felt his heart drop when she did not respond. Then, just as he was about to withdraw it, she laid her hand in his open palm. “I’m sorry I yelled for you to leave.” She said it quietly. “This isn’t your fault.”

  Ouch. Clark pushed out a sigh. “I can’t figure out whose fault it is, or if it even matters.” That wasn’t completely true. He knew whose fault at least some of it was and—to him, at least—it mattered a whole lot. Pop would have rewritten all their histories in a heartbeat if Maria had said yes to his offer to run away together, and that felt despicable to him. He started to think, What kind of man tempts a woman out of her marriage? only to realize he’d done the same thing to Lyla. That made him just as despicable. And really, what was more despicable than what he was doing now, not telling Melba what he knew?

  Melba lifted her face to the starlit night. The burgundy color of her jacket did something glowing to her skin under the moonlight; gave her a creamy, spicy quality that made his head spin. He followed her gaze up to the broad wash of stars filling the night sky. Detroit’s smoggy sky never let him see the stars, even when he went up on the station roof. Here, they were always dazzling. She wrapped her free hand around tucked-up knees. “I keep asking God where He is in all this.”

  Her voice wavered some more, and Clark felt the desire to pull her close surge up stronger than ever. Instead, he offered her hand a slight squeeze and asked, “And?”

  She returned her eyes to him. “And the answer I get is ‘right here,’ only I can’t much feel it. Not where I need to.”

  “I’m right here,” he blurted out as that “rescue me” look undid his heart and ran off with every sensible thought. Hearing himself, Clark banged his head on the railing behind him. “Wow, that was incredibly stupid, wasn’t it? I’m not God. For crying out loud, Melba, I’m the last thing you need.”

  Melba shifted across the steps to settle in beside him, and he felt something enormous slide from his shoulders when she laid her head there. “But you are right here. Maybe—” she curled in under his shoulder and Clark lost his heart right there “—maybe you’re just
what I need.”

  He’d take the scent of her hair to his grave. He’d fallen so hard so fast, this could never be anything but disaster. Oh, God, don’t let me hurt her, Clark prayed, knowing he’d do just about anything to keep her, even stupid and wrong things. Were it not for her, he probably would have driven away from Pop’s right onto the highway and kept going. Clark couldn’t stop himself from leaving several soft kisses in her curls. I can’t tell her. Not yet, he pleaded with God, desperately aware of his weakness. You have to fix this—I don’t know how.

  Melba turned her face toward him, sliding her arms around his neck and stealing any control he had left. She kissed him with an abandon some part of him knew wasn’t her true nature. She was reacting, reeling from what the day had thrown at her. The firefighter in him knew this, recognized it for what it was, but the man in him gladly drowned in it. Welcomed it, reveled in it. She was exquisite, filling some part of him he hadn’t even realized had gone empty. It’d be so easy to lose himself in her right now. After all, why bother doing the right thing when no one else seemed to put forth the effort?

  The right thing? Had he lost his ability to even know what that was?

  “Hey,” he gasped, pulling her hand from his neck. “What I think you need is for me to go.” The lure of her clinging to him was about to pull him under.

  “Yeah,” she said, pulling back, a little of the old Melba coming back to her features. “Yeah.”

  It hurt—it physically hurt—to slide himself from her arms. “But hold that thought,” he said, allowing himself a wry smirk. “That was a mighty fine kiss. And I don’t know what that is you put in your hair, but the smell of that stuff reduces a man to a puddle of bad ideas.” His father’s words came back to him, hitting him like a bucket of ice. She was never smart about those kinds of things, impulsive and emotional. He’d come a whole lot closer to disaster than he’d realized. “Believe me, I should go right now.”