Smoke And Ashes

“Thanks!” Kevin rushed off, heading toward his white truck that was emblazoned with the golden words Fire Inspector.

Heather pasted a smile on her face as she closed the door. Everything would be okay. “You ready for some fun, Lindsay?”

“I need to do my homework. It’s due tomorrow.”

“Homework? You only have a few weeks of school left.”

Lindsay shrugged as she sat down in her regular spot on the couch. She took out her worksheets. “It shouldn’t take long.”

“You need me to go over it with you?” Heather silently wished she could help.

“Nah, I got it. Thanks, though.”

Her hope deflated. “Okay. I’ll be in the kitchen. Let me know if you change your mind. When you’re done we can make those bracelets.”

“Okay,” Lindsay said, sounding preoccupied.

Heather walked back into the lifeless kitchen, picked up her cell phone and unlocked the screen. She tapped in David’s phone number and when the phone rang her stomach twisted with nerves. He would pick up, wouldn’t he?

It rang again.

“Why are you calling?” he answered.

“No ‘hello’?” Heather asked, trying to keep her anger from seeping into her voice. “I thought maybe by now—”

“By now what? That I’d want to come back to the house?” David growled. “Listen, Heather. We can’t keep doing this. Did you get my note?”

Her fingers moved to the letter in her pocket. “I did, but I was hoping—”

“What?” he interrupted. “That I didn’t mean it?”

“David, we can work this out. We just need to go to counseling. I would do it for you.” She pulled the note from her pocket and flattened it on the island.

“If we went to counseling that would imply that there’s something to save. At this point, Heather, just seeing you makes me sick.”

Her knees gave out under the weight of his words and she fell onto a barstool. “I’m sorry, David. I didn’t mean—”

“Sorry doesn’t cut it, Heather. I told you that you weren’t allowed to talk to Andrew anymore. I see the way you look at him. And the way he looks at you. You’re having an affair.” David paused. “Don’t you care how it makes me look that you’re sleeping with another doctor?”

When she’d seen Andrew at the Easter fundraiser for the American Heart Association, he’d been overly friendly—maybe even approaching flirtatious with her—but it had been nothing more than banter. If David hadn’t kept bringing up the incident, she would have forgotten it by now, but David wouldn’t let it go, no matter how much she pleaded.

“I’m not. I never—”

“If you’re not having an affair, then why did I see you talking to him outside the hospital the other day?”

She stared at the wrinkles in his note. “He stopped me. He just wanted to ask about you. I told him you didn’t want me to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Was he trying to find out the next time it was safe to come into our house and screw you?”

Hot, unwelcome tears rolled down her cheeks. “It was nothing like that. He just wanted to know if you’re okay.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. I didn’t tell him anything.”

“Do you think I’m stupid? That I don’t know when someone’s lying to me?”

“I promise. I never lied. Just come home,” Heather said, her voice like that of a trapped animal. “Tonight’s Brittany’s barbecue. Please, you have to go...”

“First you have an affair, and now you want me to come home? You are nothing, Heather. Why would I want to be seen with a woman like you?”

She crumpled his note in her hand. She wasn’t weak...but it was hard not to be crushed when the world around her was collapsing.

Chapter Two (#ulink_c466ad89-8edf-591d-ad49-643037998804)

The windows of the sage-green house were intact, and a basket full of half-dead pink flowers waved lazily in the breeze as Kevin parked his truck. Aside from the flurry of motion and yellow caution tape, it would have been hard to tell this had been the location of an active fire.

Something about the place reminded him of Heather. Maybe it was the way it seemed so perfect, so put together on the outside, but if he looked a little deeper he saw whispers of turmoil within. Yet, with the house, he could open its doors and uncover its secrets, whereas with Heather there were too many things standing in the way—he could never truly know her.

A fire crew milled around the yard as they mopped up the scene, and the battalion chief, Stephen Hiller, was writing something in his notepad. Kevin killed his engine and the BC turned and gave him an acknowledging tip of the head. Hiller’s face was pinched and his eyes tired, as though he was just waiting for him to arrive so his crew could hand off the chain of custody.

On the porch of the neighboring white row house a little boy, his thumb in his mouth, sat in a turquoise patio chair. The boy smiled and waved at him, his chubby arm wiggling.

Something about how the boy’s eyes lit up reminded Kevin of Colter when he’d been younger. Colter used to love waiting on the porch for him to come home. The second he’d arrived, his son would rush down the steps in a hurry to welcome him.

How things had changed.

For the millionth time, he wished he could turn back the clock, but life was fickle and moments fleeting. If he’d only known then what he knew now, he would have run to Colter and scooped him up in his arms and carried him inside to where baby Lindsay had been. He would have spent every spare moment he had with his wife and his perfect little family. Yet, most nights, he had just pat him on the head as he brushed past him on his way toward the fridge and a cold beer.

Allison had hated his routine, the way he was so wrapped up in his job when he’d come home from work. She had never understood how badly he’d needed a moment to wind down, to relax after a crazy day fighting fires. Then again, he had never really understood what it must have been like for her, waiting for someone to come home, only to have him arrive in body but not in mind.

There was no going back.

The little boy’s mother opened the door and hustled the boy inside. After a moment the curtain in their living room shifted slightly as if the woman was watching.

Hiller walked up to the truck and tapped on the window. “Glad to see you could make it, Jensen.”

“Sorry I’m late. I had to find someone to watch Lindsay.” His thoughts moved back to Heather, the way her hair had haloed her face and her jeans had hugged her perfect hips when she’d answered the door.

Hiller nodded, but it was easy to see from the puckered look on his face that he didn’t really understand—or care.

“We’ve been waiting an hour.”

“I’m here now.”

“Next time be quicker about it. Some of us have work to do.”

“What, do you have a girlfriend waiting?” Kevin joked, but Hiller’s face remained motionless. Kevin coughed, trying to dispel some of the tension. “Anyways... Ya wanna fill me in?”