“No.”
“Well, it’s a good thing that Mr. Bailey thought to look for you here. I didn’t know where to look. If it weren’t for him...” She swallowed the awful images that rose in her mind. She’d have searched around the firehouse. She’d have gone back home to see if he were there. She would have called the police. She might not have found him for hours—hours of torturous worry for a mother. “Don’t you do that to me again.” Tears welled up in her eyes and she pulled him back into a hug. “Do you hear me? Never again.”
Chris nodded against her cheek and when she released him, he looked up at Matt.
“You got the cat!” The boy’s face broke into a grin. He wriggled free of his mother’s arms and reached up for the animal. Matt put the cat down and it streaked under a truck and he slowly undid the clasps of his heavy fire jacket.
Chris went after the cat and stopped at the truck. He crouched down next to a big wheel as he peered after the frightened feline.
Rachel wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and shook her head. “That’s ten years off my life right there.”
“I believe it.” Matt’s voice was warm and deep. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Now.”
Matt tossed his jacket over a stump. His sweat-streaked face, the heavy suspenders holding up his fire-retardant pants, the big boots on his feet—they all came together into one reassuring whole. She looked gratefully up at this big, gentle man who had just torn into a burning building to find her son, and she smiled tentatively.
“You really are Chris’s firefighter,” she said.
“Not just his...” Matt held out his hand and she stepped into his muscled arms. He squeezed her close, so close that it almost hurt, and she felt the roughness of his stubble catching against her hair.
“Well, he’s safe and sound,” Matt said quietly.
“Yeah.” She leaned into the musky warmth of his chest. “Thank you, Matt.”
A simple thank-you didn’t encompass all she felt in that moment. The depth of her gratitude couldn’t be captured in words. He’d done more for her in the past hour than she could have expected from any other man, and she looked up at him questioningly.
“You went above and beyond, you know that, right?” she asked.
Matt dropped his arms and gave her a boyish smile. “What could I do?”
She smiled through the mist of grateful tears. “I don’t know how I could possibly thank you for today.”
“No need,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’m just glad he’s safe. That’s enough for me.”
“Would you do me one more favor?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Take us home?”
Matt nodded. “Let’s go.” He looked at his watch. “I’m signing the papers for that job in less than an hour.”
Her own smile wilted on her lips and she nodded quickly. Of course he was. This was the plan all along, wasn’t it?
“Chris!” Rachel called, trying to keep the waver from her voice, and the boy stood up from his crouch by the fire truck’s massive tire. “Come on, sweetheart. We’re going home.”
Chris ran along beside them as if he’d just had an ordinary afternoon. He was a resilient kid—more resilient than she was in this situation. She slid an arm around his shoulders and pulled him against her side.
“We’re going home and we’re staying put for the evening, okay?”
Chris nodded.
Matt opened the door to the truck and her son hopped up into the cab. Rachel followed and pulled the door shut with a bang. Behind them, the fire trucks roared to life and the men were winding up the last of the hose. Matt heaved his fire gear into the back of the truck, then ambled around to the driver’s side. As he settled into the driver’s seat, he shot Rachel a smile over Christopher’s head.
“You kept so calm,” Rachel said as he pulled out to the road.
“Training. It comes in handy.”
She smiled as they eased out onto the gravel road. “It’s harder parenting alone. There is only one set of eyes watching. I miss being able to rely on my husband to watch for him, too.”
Matt nodded but remained silent. His eyes flickered in her direction, then fixed back onto the road.
Stupid, she chastised herself. He’d offered to be more—did he think she was toying with him now?
“I didn’t expect you to react like that,” Rachel said instead.
Like a dad, she thought. Or as close to a dad as Chris had experienced in the past four and a half years. She’d been so cautious to keep men out of Chris’s life who might get his hopes up for something more that she’d forgotten what a relief it was to have a partner in these things—a man to balance out her perspective and to be a shoulder to lean on when she was worn-out.
“Neither did I.” His voice was so low that she almost didn’t catch his words, and she looked over at him, surprised.
“I thought the training took over,” she said.
A smile flickered at the corner of his lips. “A little more than training.”
She’d suspected as much, and the admission brought a smile to her lips and caution in her heart simultaneously. She pressed a kiss against the top of her son’s head and sighed. Was it terrible to wish she could go back to the simpler days before school and fights, and that simmering frustration inside her little boy?
The gravel road turned into a main street, and before long Matt signaled onto the street that led to Rachel’s house. The familiar street brought a comforting warmth to Rachel’s heart, and her eyes trailed over the houses of her neighbors. She glanced up at Matt. So this was it.
Rachel patted Chris’s leg.
“We’re home,” she said softly. “Thank Mr. Bailey.”
Matt eased into their driveway and the truck crunched over the gravel, then stopped.
“Thanks, Mr. Bailey,” Chris said.
He had no idea how much he owed to his big, protective fireman. One day, she’d have to make sure he understood.
“Thank you, Matt,” she said as she climbed out of the truck. There was so much more to say, but she didn’t know how to put it into words right now.
“Don’t mention it.” His tone was low and he looked at her for a long moment. “Take care.”
He would go sign the papers. He would move to South Maitland. His life would go on, and so would hers. This was for the best, but why did it have to hurt so badly?
Matt didn’t speak again, but he raised two fingers in a salute. Rachel raised her hand and blinked back tears. She held those tears back as his truck backed out of her drive and disappeared down the street.
Chapter Twelve
Matt slammed the heels of his hands into the steering wheel and pressed his lips together into a tight line. So this was it—he was going to sign the papers that guaranteed him a fresh start. His dream job, far enough away from this town for him to try to forget.
I could stay.
But could he? Perhaps for another year or so, but not indefinitely. He wasn’t a naive young man, and he knew better than to expect that a beautiful woman could fix his problems.
They warned against that in the therapy the fire department provided. He’d gone to exactly one session. He was there long enough for the therapist to nod thoughtfully and say, “Mr. Bailey, you can’t do this forever. You’ll crack. And when you do, you’ll take it out on your wife and children. So you’d best deal with this now. It’s better than ruining what you love most, isn’t it?”
But at that time in his life, he had neither wife nor child, and he highly doubted that a few chats about his feelings were going to change anything. Natalie was dead. It was a fact, not a feeling. So he’d thanked the therapist for her time and left, and never did go back. He could deal with this alone, he’d thoug
ht. He could fix the torn parts inside him if he just had enough time and a little bit of privacy.
Well, South Maitland was his attempt to fix it. A fresh start. A new town. A new community to protect and settle into. Haggerston would never forget Natalie Martin, nor should it. Natalie deserved to be remembered, but he couldn’t stay for the constant reminders of his own failure.
God, I really wanted something with Rachel, he prayed silently. I could have walked away from Haggerston and never looked back, except now she’s here, with Chris.
Maybe it was better to move on before he got more attached. It had only been a few weeks. People didn’t feel this strongly after such a short period of time, did they?
He shoved that ache further down into his gut and signaled a left turn. The tires spun on the gravel as he made the corner just a bit too fast, dust billowing up behind as he sped up again.
Peace Hills Christian Church rose out of the prairie grass like a relic. This would be his last visit to the Peace Hills Cemetery, and he thought that before he signed those papers he owed Natalie something—a goodbye, at least. An apology for not being able to handle a longer vigil in that town.
He eased into the small parking lot in front of the church and parked. He sat in silence in the vehicle for a few moments, then heaved a sigh and got out.
A hot summer wind rolled across the plains and blasted him along with the bare gray church. He headed around the side of the building toward that familiar little grave by the corner, ensconced in the scent of heavy, nodding bunches of lilacs.
Her grave marker was half in the shade and half in the sun, a wilted bouquet of flowers sitting on the sunny side. He squatted down onto his haunches, his gaze moving over the etched marble.
“Is that you, Matt Bailey?”
The voice startled him and his head snapped in the direction the voice had come from.
“Mrs. Martin.”
The middle-aged woman stood by the church, her hands covered in floral-patterned gardening gloves. Her chin-length graying hair was pulled back in a ponytail, wisps of which fell free around her face. She pushed some hair away from her forehead with her wrist.
“Wendy,” she said. “We’ve known each other too long for formalities, Matt.”
Matt nodded, giving her a tight smile. “Wendy. I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have come here.”
“Why not?” She stepped closer and looked up at him, her eyes, lined from life and the sun, moving over his face probingly. “You’ve come before.”
“I didn’t realize you’d seen me.”
“You looked like you needed some privacy,” she said. “I come here to keep up the graveyard quite often. I feel the same way I did when I’d clean Natalie’s room.”
Matt smiled and shrugged. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“You aren’t intruding. Why do you keep saying that?” She nodded in the direction of a bench in the shade of the church building. “Do you want to come sit?”
Matt looked from the grave to the bench, casting around for some excuse to get out of the little visit, but considering that he’d be leaving town, he thought perhaps he owed something to Wendy Martin, too. He nodded and followed her toward the bench.
“I know you and I have a bit of history,” Wendy said quietly. “I’ve done my best to show you how sorry I am for that.”
“I’m not upset with you, Wendy. Don’t worry about that.”
“I don’t blame you. I was just so—”
“You don’t need to explain again. I know. It’s okay.” He looked across the freshly mown grass toward the rows of graves. A large cross rose in the center, the grave of a wealthy parishioner, it seemed, already forgotten by everyone but direct family.
“The fact is, I let you down,” he said quietly. “I’ve wondered repeatedly how many seconds I wasted, how much faster I should have been to have gotten her out in time.”
Wendy was silent for a stretch, and she shook her head. “I’m grateful for what you did.”
“I failed her.”
She frowned slightly. “Here is what I know. My daughter was in the middle of a fire, alone, frightened and in pain. She could have died there all by herself, but instead she saw a fireman coming to her rescue. She was confused and afraid and tried to run away, but he scooped her up anyway, and her last conscious memory was of being rescued. My daughter did not die alone, Matt, and that is because of you. For that I will always be grateful.”
Matt nodded slowly. He’d done his best, but it just hadn’t been enough. If Natalie’s mother could forgive him, could he forgive himself? He wasn’t sure.
“There’s going to be a park opened in Natalie’s name,” Wendy said. “Will you be there for the opening?”
Matt clenched his teeth and shook his head. “No.”
“I thought you might want to—”
“No.” His tone grew stronger. “Wendy, I know you’re grieving, but I have to stop. I hope you find comfort, but it doesn’t do much for me, all these vigils and memorials.”
Wendy blinked; then slow recognition rose in her eyes. “You’ve done all those public appearances for me, haven’t you?”
“Of course,” he replied gruffly.
“It wasn’t for you, then.”
“Me?” He shot her a quizzical look. “How could it have been for me? I stood in front of this town as a reminder that I didn’t do the job I’m here to do. I was the one who wasn’t fast enough.”
“Oh, Matthew...” Wendy’s eyes filled with tears and she put a maternal hand over his. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for, ma’am.”
“But I do,” she said softly. “Everyone understands what I lost. I lost my little girl, and that was the worst hell I could possibly imagine. Everyone understood that.”
He frowned, uncertain about what she was getting at.
“You, though,” she continued softly. “You lost Natalie that day, too. She might not have been your daughter, but you still lost her. And you’ve had to grieve, too.”
He didn’t answer. Instead he watched a bumblebee lumbering above the head of a yellow daisy. It buzzed quietly, hovering heavily before landing on tiny feet on the ruffled center.
“Have you been able to grieve for her, Matt?” Wendy asked hesitantly.
“It’s hard to grieve in the public eye,” he replied quietly. “You can probably understand that.”
“Come.” Wendy held out motherly arms.
Matt’s eyes widened in alarm. “Pardon me?”
“Come here,” she commanded. “This is like at funerals, where we hug each other and cry together. You had a huge loss, too. And I’m sorry for everything that you lost.”
Matt bent cautiously and Wendy wrapped her arms around his neck, gently patting his back the way she might soothe a small child.
“It’ll get better, Matthew,” she said softly into his ear. “I promise. It’ll hurt less and it’ll get better.”
Matt nodded, tears rising in his throat. He swallowed them back and braced himself, fighting against the deep sadness that threatened to sweep over him. Wendy released him and rose from their seat on the bench.
“I’m going to go home now,” she said quietly. “You take all the time you need with Natalie.”
Wendy bent to pick up her bucket of gardening tools, then walked resolutely away, leaving Matt alone in the small graveyard. He stared toward the tiny grave in the far corner, and all the sadness he’d shoved down over the past three years pushed defiantly upward past that cap he’d placed deep inside himself. Haggerston needed him to be their steely hero, and he’d obliged, but the therapist had been right. He couldn’t be their hero forever—something had to give.
Tears broke through his guard and he dropped his head into his hands, unable to control t
he sobs that shook his broad shoulders. He cried for Natalie, a girl who should have been able to grow up. He cried for her parents, who had to face the death of their own child, and he cried for his own loss, too. He’d lost more than a little girl who’d looked to him for rescue; he’d also lost his naive confidence in his own abilities. Sometimes, even when he did everything right, he wasn’t going to be enough.
When his tears were finally spent, he found himself lighter than he’d felt in the past three years. He didn’t feel alone as he sat on that bench. He could feel God hovering close, closer than he’d ever felt in his lifetime. He looked for a few moments at the little grave, now completely covered in shade, and he wiped his face with his palms, sucking in a deep breath of lilac-scented air.
“Goodbye, Natalie,” he said quietly as he pushed himself to his feet. “Rest in peace.”
This was the closure he needed. He wouldn’t come back.
Chapter Thirteen
Rachel pulled the last handful of books out of the box and slid them onto the bookshelf in the living room. As she unpacked the last of her book collection, she felt as though her home was finally complete, but something was missing this time, and her heart felt empty.
She pulled the next box closer and cut the tape. Bending back the flaps, she lifted Chris’s baby book reverently out of the box and smoothed her hand over the pale blue cover. The first pictures were of Chris in her arms—a tiny infant, bundled up in a white blanket. One little hand poked out, and the round dome of his bald head. In the photo, Rachel was looking down at him with a look a sheer wonder on her face.
I had no idea what to expect, she thought with a hint of melancholy.
The next few photos showed her late husband holding Chris, beaming proudly. As she turned the pages, Chris got older. He had his first bath. He met the grandparents in that cross-eyed, confused way that newborns had. He got propped up with teddy bears and slurped at bottles that he learned to hold by himself. He sat up. He crawled. He sprouted his first tooth. Every moment was documented with love and intricate attention to all his little milestones. She pulled the Polaroid picture of Matt holding the newfound Chris in his arms from her pocket.
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