Travis yipped in return, and my heart softened.Jude’s voice shifted again, quieter, deeper.“All joking aside, I can’t wait to see you tonight, Kendall.I missed you.”
Tears pricked my eyes.It felt like we were finally walking into something that had always been waiting for us.
ChapterTwenty-Two
Jude
I was rushing when my phone began vibrating in my pocket, and I tapped to answer it without even looking at the screen.
“Hey, hey!”my brother said.
“Lincoln?”
My brother’s chuckle reverberated through the line, and I felt that sound like the reverberation of a bell in my heart.Linc and I had always been close.
“What’s up, man?”I asked, stopping in the hallway where I’d been working.
“Not much.”
“You’re calling me,” I pointed out dryly, eliciting another soft laugh from Lincoln.
“Okay, so I am.How are things?”
“Generally, or more specifically?”I began walking again, poking my head through the doorways of one room after another and clocking that all had the outlet covers on.Talk about tedious.
“Okay, more specifically, how are things at Heartfire Falls?”he asked.
“They’re good.I’m not saying this to pressure you, but you’d love how it looks.”
“Yeah?”Linc prompted.
“Yeah, for sure.It looks awesome, and we already have a waitlist.But then, what else is new?”
Lincoln was quiet for a beat before replying, “Well, I’m coming home.”
“When?”
“I’m hoping soon.I promised the crew here in Fairbanks I’d finish out the season.Once that’s over, I’ll be there.”
“Have you talked to Mom or anybody else in the family?I can’t be your only option for sharing news.”
I could hear the grin in his voice.“Excellent point.I’m going to call everybody.Mom’s next on my list.I figured I’d start with you so I could check the temperature.”
“Temperature?Look, man…” I paused, and emotion rushed through me briefly.That was the thing about grief, it came in bursts sometimes.The piercing pain came and went fast.Between our father dying a year before the fire and then Bree dying from the fire, it had been a lot.For all of us.
While I struggled with my feelings about being the unfortunate one to go looking for our dad and finding him collapsed from an unexpected and massive heart attack while I was in high school, Lincoln had carried Bree out of the fire.We both bore scars.Tothis day, he felt like he should have moved faster, that somehow it would’ve made a difference.He’d gone back into the burning resort to find her.Our family didn’t speak of it, though.It was a void in conversation.No one wanted to hurt him or upset him.If he hadn’t gone back in, we wouldn’t have Tommy.
Initially, after the fire, we’d all been in varying degrees of shock.We’d stayed temporarily downtown before we rushed to fix up the space above the barn and crammed ourselves in there.At the time of the fire, only Bree and Haven had graduated from high school.After the rest of us finished school, we started scattering.I kept thinking things would change for Lincoln.
All of us had been volunteer firefighters as kids because our dad had been a firefighter.Volunteering in middle school meant mostly cleaning the local fire station.We were all trained hotshots, but Lincoln was the only one who made it a full-time gig.He stayed away from Heartfire Falls, only coming back to visit a few times a year.If he actually came home to stay, it would mean the world to our mom.
On the list of things I didn’t want to screw up, I didn’t want to pressure my brother.He and I had managed to stay close, and I treaded that line carefully.He was mostly mad at the world and himself, even though that didn’t make a lick of sense.It had felt like being home was almost a physical pain for him.
“I need to know when you’re gonna call Mom.Not because I’m pressuring you, but because that way I’ll know when the coast is clear,” I explained.
My brother’s soft laugh filtered through the call.“I’m doing better,” was all he said to that.
“What does better mean, and what are you talking about?”
