Coming from anyone else, it might have sounded like advice. The kind of thing you'd read in a self-help book or hear from a therapist. From Riley, it sounded like something she'd learned the hard way. Something she was still learning.
"That easy, huh?"
"I didn't say it was easy." She held my gaze, steady and unflinching, and I saw something there I recognized. Weight. The particular weight of loving someone you couldn't save, couldn't fix, couldn't keep safe, no matter how hard you tried. The weight of showing up anyway, day after day, because the alternative was unthinkable.
"Just said it was necessary."
I thought about Mia. Riley's twelve-year-old sister, the one she was raising alone. The one who waited at home while Riley ran into burning buildings, who did homework at the kitchen table while her sister worked 24-hour shifts, who was growing up too fast because life hadn't given her a choice. I'd seen them together once, at a station family day. Mia looking at Riley like she hung the moon. Riley looking at Mia like she was terrified of dropping her.
I thought about how Riley never talked about their mother. Never explained why she had custody, why a twenty-six-year-old was playing parent to a kid who should still have one. The crew knew bits and pieces. Addiction, maybe. Or just gone. The details didn't matter as much as the result: Riley, carrying a weight that would have broken most people, showing up every shift like it was nothing.
We all had our ghosts. We all had our weights to carry. Some of us just hid them better than others.
"How do you do it?" I asked. The question came out before I could stop it. "Care about someone when you know you could lose them?"
Riley picked up her thermos. Headed for thedoor. She moved like she always did, efficient and unhurried, like she had all the time in the world and none to waste.
She paused with her hand on the frame. Didn't turn around.
"You just do," she said. "Because the alternative is worse."
She left. The door swung shut behind her, and the kitchen settled back into silence. Just me and the hum of the refrigerator and the echo of words I didn't know what to do with.
The alternative is worse.
I thought about Lucy. About the way she looked at me when I brought her tea, like I'd given her something precious. About the way she laughed when we talked about Mateo, surprised by her own joy. About the way she fit against me when I held her, like she'd been waiting her whole life for someone to hold on to.
I thought about the alternative. Going back to the way things were. Passing her in the hallway without speaking. Listening to her cry through the walls and doing nothing. Keeping the promise from a distance, the way I'd been doing for three years, and calling it enough.
Riley was right. The alternative was worse.
The question was whether I was brave enough to admit it.
End of shift. The sun was coming up, painting the mountains gold and pink through the station windows. I should have gone home. Should have showered, slept, done any of the normal things you did after a 24-hour shift.
Instead, I found myself standing in front of the memorial wall again.
Mateo's name was right where it always was. Brass letters on a brass plate, catching the early light. I'd stood here a hundred times over the past three years. Never touched it. Never let myself get that close.
This time, my fingers found the engraving.
The metal was cold under my fingertips. I traced the letters of his name, the way I'd traced the lines of a thousand incident reports, the way I'd traced the route to Lucy's building every day for six months.
"I don't know what I'm doing, brother."
My voice came out rough. Quietly. The kind of voice you use when you're talking to someone who can't answer back.
"I thought I knew what you wanted. I thought keeping the promise meant staying away. Watching from a distance. Making sure she was safe without ever letting her know I was there."
Silence. Of course. The dead can't answer, no matter how much you need them to.
"But I can't do that anymore. I can't be across the hall and pretend I don't hear her crying. I can't make her coffee and not think about how she smiles when Iget it right. I can't sit next to her on the couch and not want?—"
I stopped. Swallowed hard.
"I think you'd understand," I said finally. "I think maybe you'd want this. Want her to be happy. Want me to be happy." A pause. "I hope you would, anyway. Because I don't know how to stop anymore."
No answer. No sign. No voice from beyond telling me I was right or wrong, forgiven or damned.
