Standing Outside the Fire

by Jillian Neal

“And it’s driving you crazy that you’re not with her,” his father stated.

  “A little. But she wanted to do it on her own. I respect that. I just don’t like not being with her. I never have.”

  Barrett and Wes shared a quick grin. “We noticed that a few times over the last twenty years. You know, if you wanted to run into town for me, your mama’s determined to plant a garden again this year. They got some tomato plants in down at the feed store. You could swing by the good reverend’s house on your way.”

  “You just trying to get me to do your honey-do list for you, Dad?” Jamie teased.

  “I figured I could kill two birds, so to speak.”

  “The cows have eaten every garden Mama’s ever planted,” Wes reminded them.

  Barrett chuckled, “Your mother doesn’t give up easily. That’s why all of us turned out as well as we did.”

  Jamie shook his head. “I’m not gonna go check on Charlie. I don’t want to be that guy. Ed was like that, and I sure as fuck don’t want to do anything that might remind her of him. But I do think I’ll head into town. I need to go talk to the chief.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t quit the station yet,” his father urged. “Give Charlie a little time. She’ll come around.”

  “I’m not so sure she will. I want to put a ring on her hand sooner than later. I have to pick, and I pick her.”

  “Patience never was your virtue,” Barrett sighed.

  Jamie headed back to his truck and mentally rehearsed what he planned to say to the chief.

  As he was heading into town, a late-model Sebring flew past him going the opposite direction. There were only a handful of people in all of Holder County who drove sedans at all, and there was definitely only one who drove one that old and that ugly. Ed had to have been doing eighty in the thirty-five zone with cattle crossing signs everywhere.

  Jamie brought his cell phone to his ear. His father was right, he didn’t want Ed leaving on a stretcher after a fight, but he also wasn’t above getting a little revenge for what he’d said to Charlie.

  He called his buddy Nate Wilcox’s direct line at the sheriff’s office. “Hey, man. Nice job with Charlie Tilson. I always figured it’d be you two.”

  “Thanks. Listen though. I just passed a Sebring doing at least eighty out on Country Road 5290 heading toward Odell. Do you have any patrol cars out in the trap today? Guy’s gonna get someone killed.” There was a speed trap about a mile past the last entrance to Holder Ranch. Everyone who lived in town knew all about it.

  “Eighty, huh? Let me see who’s out there today.” Jamie heard him typing on a keyboard. “Yeah, I’ve got a patrol car just a mile past the last entrance to your ranch. If he’s heading into town, he’s gonna fly right past him. I’ll let ‘em know to be on the lookout.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “No problem. And if we bring Ed Weaver in, do you want us to give you a call?”

  “Was I that obvious?”

  “I’ll keep my mouth shut about who tipped us off.”

  “You’re a good man. I owe you one.”

  “Never a bad thing for a hose jockey to owe me a favor.” Nate chuckled.

  “Careful now. Next time you call us out because Chester Regis is three sheets to the wind and has his truck down in a ditch, we’ll turn the hose on you.” There’d been an odd ache in Jamie’s chest ever since he’d left the barn that morning. It continued to expand to incorporate vital organs the longer he talked to Nate. He was gonna miss this. Miss all of his friends at the sheriff’s and fire departments. Miss every single thing, even the endless nights that resulted in heart-piercing pain for what victims went through. He hated this, but the right thing and the easy thing almost never walked the same road. He knew he was doing the right thing. Charlie was worth it.

  He parked his truck in the lot and let the ache consume him for a minute. He stared at the old brick building that had been his second home for decades. Trying to shake that off, he headed inside.

  Brady Mitchell and Kane Kincaid were polishing the ladder truck—Jamie’s ladder truck. He walked through the gathered water under the engine from the wash it had just received. “Nice job, gentlemen. What’d I do to deserve this?”

  Brady laughed. “Look who dragged his face out from between Charlie Tilson’s thighs to come pay us mere mortals a visit. Your tongue get tired or something?” He tossed the rag he’d been holding in a nearby bucket and offered Jamie his hand. “We missed you. Chief’s a bear when you’re not around.”

  “That’s because you’re all fuckups and he knows I can keep you in line.”

  Kane joined them. His dark eyes were alit with mischief, as usual. “You never answered his question,” he harassed. “Your dick better be chafed ‘cause that’s the only acceptable excuse as to why you’re here and not in bed with Charlie. Don’t y’all have to make up for lost time or some shit like that?”

  Jamie flipped him off, a sign of love between two firefighters. “If your dick’s getting chafed, Kincaid, you ain’t doing your job right. Might want to go back to the five-knuckle shuffle until you learn your way around women.”

  There was a rhythm to their joined laughter. A steady pulse of humor combined with a readiness, an assuredness that they could handle whatever the day brought them. Jamie was worried that pulse was what kept him sane. “Hey, is Chief inside?”

  “Yeah, he’s in the kitchen trying to convince Yeager that the coffee he makes tastes better than burned fuel. Yeager ain’t buying his cold-hearted lies. Kid’s got potential.”

  “Who the hell let Chief make coffee?” Jamie scoffed.

  “You ain’t around,” Brady stated as if that was the obvious reason.

  Diesel fuel laced with the faint smell of smoke ushered Jamie past the turn-out gear locker. He paused for a moment to inhale the memory. An American flag the approximate size of his barn hung on the concrete brick wall, with a random collection of memorabilia and firetruck license plates all older than Jamie.

  Following the scent of frying bacon, he found Jared and the Chief in the small firehouse kitchen. “You convince him to try your motor swill coffee yet?” he teased. “Think of it like an induction ceremony, Yeager. Or maybe a hazing.”

  Jared laughed. “I’m not drinking that.” He pointed to the high-end coffee maker Jamie had purchased for the station. “Pretty sure we could clean the battery leads on the engines with it, though.”

  “You’re on dish duty, Yeager,” the Chief sniped.

  “When am I not?” He sighed and took his spot at the old kitchen table.

  Chief continued on with his commands. “Sit, Holder. I made enough sandwiches for you too. You better not be here to tell me you fucked it up with Charlie Tilson.”

  Brady and Kane both scrubbed their hands and took their seats at the table as well. Jamie knew he shouldn’t accept the invite. He was only putting off the inevitable, and that was only going to make what he’d come there to do a thousand times more difficult. But one more meal with the guys was too much to turn down.

  He settled at the table. “I didn’t fuck it up,” he informed them. “But I doubt you’re gonna like how I made it work.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Charlie stood nearly paralyzed after her encounter as she heard the front door slam shut. Her hand hurt badly, but not nearly as badly as her soul. How could she possibly have been about to marry that?

  Bile-soaked shame singed a path from her stomach to her tongue. She was going to vomit.

  “Here,” Becca offered her something, but Charlie couldn’t concentrate enough to understand what it was. Her sister took Charlie’s right hand in her own and wrapped it in the cloth-covered ice pack. “I’ve slapped a couple guys before. Hurts like he… uh Hades.” She offered their father a quick apologetic glance.

  “Are you all right, sweetheart?” He approached them both cautiously.

  “I’m…not sure.”

  “Come sit down in here. There’s quite a bit I need to tell you.”
He gently guided her to the living room sofa. Still horrified at what might’ve been, Charlie took in the room in pieces, like some kind of Picasso artwork where things might fit, but she couldn’t make out how.

  Becca settled beside her. “He is why you have to stop doing things because you’re afraid,” she whispered.

  Charlie knew that now. She didn’t need the lecture anymore, but she also didn’t blame her sister for reiterating the point. How many mistakes had she made because she acted out of fear? Twenty years of not being with Jamie was definitely the biggest, most unforgivable loss.

  Her father gave an audible breath. “I owe you an apology.”

  Those words cleared a little of the wreckage from her mind. “For which thing?” she managed.

  Her father nodded his acceptance of that. “Several things, but I’d like to start with Jamie. You remind me so much of your mother.”

  “Why do you always say that like it’s a bad thing?” Her whispered question was half-haunted with memories.

  Her father wrapped his arm around her and pulled her closer. “It’s a wonderful thing. She was everything to me. You know that. But it also frightened me.”

  “Why?” Becca asked on Charlie’s behalf.

  “There’s a lot about your mother’s and my relationship that we never told you girls. But I think you have the right to know. I haven’t always been very good about admitting my flaws, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I met your mother when I was serving as the brand-new youth minister at the Pilot Methodist Church out toward Prosper, Texas. I was still in seminary, but I needed the money so I took the job they offered me. First time I saw her, I swear I fell in love with her. That red hair and those freckles did me in. She was only sixteen at that time. She was in my youth group. I knew it was sinful, that I was giving in to the temptation of lust, but I asked her to date me in secret.”

  Charlie was enthralled. “Why did you never tell us this? It’s so romantic…kind of. We wanted to know, and you kept it from us.”

  “I was ashamed. I asked your mother never to tell you girls. I used to meet her out near the back gates of this old horse farm, right on the banks of the lake. She’d,” he choked, and Charlie took his hand in her good one.

  “Keep going. Please. Even if it’s hard.”

  Her father nodded. “I intend to. Just give me a minute. I can still see it all like it was yesterday. Memories can be cruel, Charlie.”

  “They can be, but they can also be healing.”

  “If you say so. She used to come running right into my arms late in the afternoon when school got out. She’d make up some lie to tell her parents about where she was going to be, and we’d stay out on that lake shore until she had to leave to make it back for curfew. I couldn’t even see her home safely without losing my job.” He shook his head. “I hated it, but I loved her. I told myself it was the only way. Until…we got caught.”

  Charlie squeezed her father’s hand. She could feel his agony through the palms that had raised her. “I take it that didn’t go well.”

  He shook his head. “She’d told her mother that she was going to the library that afternoon and then to see a movie with some friends from church.”

  Becca piped in, “At least the friends from church part was kind of true.”

  Louann rubbed her temples. “Becca honey, what are we going to do with you?”

  Their father gave Becca a slight headshake and continued on with his story. “Her parents decided to have supper in town that night at the diner across the street from the library. They went in to see if your mother and her friends might like to join them before their movie. Of course, they weren’t in the library. This was long before the days of cell phones, so her mother searched for her. She wasn’t in the movie theater either. There were only three cinemas back then, so it was a quick search. They tried calling the police, but she hadn’t been missing long enough. Small Texas town. Police weren’t too worried. Said to let them know if she didn’t make it home by curfew. But your mother’s parents were very strict, and they were not only worried, but angry. They phoned the church, and the pastor there—my boss—called the parishioners to search for her. And…they found us.”

  Charlie tried to memorize every detail of the story. She never wanted to forget a single word. “Did you get fired?”

  “That very night,” her father’s voice held echoes of his pain. “Her parents came down hard on her. She wasn’t allowed out of their sight other than for school. Her seventeenth birthday was the next week. I managed to slip a birthday card in the mail to her from a different address. Tried to disguise my handwriting. It must’ve worked because I’d put a train ticket in that card to Oklahoma City where I planned to transfer the rest of my studies to. The train left the night of her birthday. She managed to sneak out one more time. That was the last time she ever saw her parents or any of her friends. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”

  “Are you telling me that her parents never forgave her?” Charlie leapt. She’d never known her maternal grandparents. She’d ask about them occasionally, but her mother never said much.

  “Never.” The pain in her father’s eyes was unbearable.

  “That’s ridiculous. She loved you. Why couldn’t they see that?”

  Her father’s eyes closed. “They saw only what they wanted to. The very same way I was about Ed and about Jamie. You see, sweetheart, the way you always run to Jamie…it reminded me so much of the way your mother ran into my arms those afternoons after school. I knew you loved him before you ever did. I could see it. You looked at him the very same way she used to look at me. It terrified me.”

  “Why?” Her voice faltered. “Why wouldn’t you want me to have what you and Mom had?”

  Tears pricked her father’s eyes. “I do want you to have that. I want both of you girls to have that. But honey, remember, if I’d never sent your mother that ticket, she’d be alive. I was the mistake that not only took her family away from her, but ultimately I took her life as well.”

  Charlie’s nostrils flared and the rock-like enclosure in her throat continued to expand. The longing for her mother and the heartbreak for her dad consumed her. “That isn’t true. That…isn’t how life works.”

  Her father kept speaking like she’d said nothing at all. “I know it was wrong of me to keep you girls from talking about her, but I was so worried that you’d make the same mistakes we did. When you came home from your first day of school here telling me about Jamie, I saw every gruesome detail of my life repeating itself over with you. I couldn’t have that. I had to protect you.” He shook his head. “The Holder family…they bear a tremendous amount of responsibility in this town. I know that. But the way those boys are able to take off that mantle and…cut loose—it seemed they always got away with whatever they were doing. I don’t know. I resented it. I resented the relationship you had with Jamie. You went to him instead of coming to me. I have spent the rest so many years resenting the Holders, blaming them for winning the hands they gambled on when the one and only time I’d knowingly done something wrong, I’d lost everything.”

  Charlie threw her arms around her father. “You didn’t lose everything,” she choked. “You never lost us. But please, stop pushing me away.”

  “I’m sorry I did that. It was never my intention. I was only ever trying to keep you from following someone down a path you couldn’t come back from. The way your mother did. I didn’t want you to live her mistakes. I was so afraid you’d die by them.”

  “Daddy,” Charlie placed both hands on either side of her father’s face. “You listen to me. You were never a mistake, and neither is Jamie. That isn’t how life works. We all make a thousand decisions every single day that affect everything else. Mama met you that night at the train station because she loved you. She was a little young, but that doesn’t change the fact that she did. It is not your fault that she died. It’s not any of our fault. She went with you so she could live the life she wanted. And she did that. Th
at’s all that matters. She would never have chosen not to have the years she had with you and with us even if it meant she would’ve lived longer. I know she wouldn’t have. You don’t give up love because you’re scared. You don’t gamble on some completely uncertain future just because you’re scared of what happened in the past.” Realization struck in Charlie’s head like lightning. It sizzled through her brain. “Oh my god. I have to talk to Jamie. He can’t quit. He can’t give up something he loves just because I’m scared. I’m sorry, Daddy. I love you so much. Thank you for telling me all of this. I want to hear every single story you remember about Mama, but right now I have to stop Jamie from quitting the fire station.”

  Chapter Forty

  They’d just taken the first bites of their grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches when the sirens split the station and the radios started crackling. Wasn’t that always the way? Jamie wasn’t certain how to proceed. He’d come in with the intention of quitting, but he couldn’t abandon his brothers in the middle of a call.

  But when he heard the dispatch, his blood ran ice cold. “Prairie Dispatch to Station One. Holder County dispatching Station One. Please respond to a multiple alarm structure fire at the Pecan Crescent Nursing Home. Repeat—multiple alarm structure fire at 2122 Pecan Crescent Drive at Rural Route 3119. All units please respond.”

  The tones began to chime. Each one drilled into Jamie’s head as he raced for his gear. The fire tones immediately followed the medical one. “First Responders go ahead,” scratched from the radio in his hand. Charlie was surely at the nursing home now. Breakfast was long since over. She was there. They’d just dispatched all medical units from the surrounding area. And… he refused the next thoughts.

  Yeager was suited up in record time. “My grandma’s out there. I checked the whole place myself. How the hell did it catch fire? They have every recommended NFPA regulation. It’s damn near fireproof.”

  “Nothing’s fireproof. Let’s go,” Jamie growled as he grabbed his helmet and mask.