The tones dropped on Friday afternoon. Kitchen fire, east side of town.
I was in the engine before the address finished broadcasting, muscle memory taking over. Turnout gear, helmet, and gloves. The familiar weight settled onto my shoulders like armor.Around me, the crew moved in synchronized chaos. Cal barking orders, Murphy setting up equipment, the engine rumbling to life beneath us.
The call turned out to be minor. An elderly woman named Mrs. Chen had forgotten a pot on the stove. By the time we arrived, the smoke had already started to clear. No structural damage. No injuries. Just a frightened woman in a housecoat, standing on her front lawn with tears streaming down her face.
“I'm so sorry,” she kept saying as Kowalski checked her vitals. “I'm so sorry to waste your time.”
“You didn't waste anything.” I helped her back inside once Kowalski cleared her. “That's what we're here for.”
The kitchen was small, cluttered with the accumulated possessions of a long life. Photos covered the refrigerator. Grandchildren in school portraits, gap-toothed smiles frozen behind alphabet magnets. Holiday gatherings around a table too big for one person. A wedding photo, faded with age, showing a young couple who had no idea what was coming.
“My husband,” Mrs. Chen said, following my gaze. “He passed three years ago.”
“I'm sorry.”
“He did all the cooking.” She laughed, but it came out broken. “Forty-two years of marriage, and I never learned to make more than toast. Now I try to cook for myself, and I can't even remember to turn off the stove.”
Something tightened in my chest, sharp and unexpected, before I pushed it aside.
I helped her open the windows to air out the room.
“I used to cook for six,” she said quietly. “Sunday dinners. The whole family around the table. Now it's just me, and I can't even manage that.”
I stayed longer than I needed to. Made sure she had someone to call. Wrote down the number for the senior center that didmeal deliveries, the one my mother had used before she passed. Mrs. Chen thanked me three times, pressing a tin of stale cookies into my hands that I didn't have the heart to refuse.
On the drive back to the station, I stared out the window and thought about my father. About all the ways people leave and all the ways we learn to live with absence. My mother had been the same after Dad died. Forgetting to eat. Burning toast. Standing in rooms like she'd forgotten why she'd walked into them.
Grief makes you forget the simplest things. How to turn off stoves. How to sleep through the night. How to tell the difference between being alone and being lonely.
I pressed my forehead against the cool glass and let the engine's rumble fill the silence.
I pulled into the B&B's gravel driveway just after nine, later than usual. I'd sat in my truck for twenty minutes before leaving, arguing with myself about whether to come at all. Grace had enough on her plate without managing my mood. But staying home meant sitting in the silence, and I wasn't ready for that either.
The smell of cinnamon rolls hit me before I was through the kitchen door. Grace was at the stove, apron tied over a blue dress, hair pinned up in that messy way that meant she'd been cooking since before dawn.
“You're late,” she said without turning around.
“Rough week.”
“You know where everything is.” She glanced over her shoulder. Something flickered across her face too fast for me to catch. “We have a full house. Marcus is here.”
My stomach dropped.
I poured myself a cup of coffee and walked into the dining room like a man approaching a crime scene.
Marcus sat at the head of the table. Of course, he did. Tailored suit, expensive watch. That particular confidence that came from never having to wonder if you belonged somewhere. Beside him sat a woman I didn't recognize. Blonde, polished, the kind of beautiful that required money and maintenance.
Marcus glanced up when I walked in. “Owen, hey.” The kind of acknowledgment you give someone whose name you barely remember. “This is Emma Blake, a colleague. Emma, Owen's a friend of Grace's.”
Not a friend of ours. A friend of Grace's.
“Nice to meet you.” Emma's smile was polite, her attention already drifting back to her laptop.
Grace came in with a fresh plate of pastries. Marcus didn't look up from his phone.
“Just set them there,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the table.
Grace set the plate down carefully. I watched her hesitate, just for a second. Like she was waiting for something. A thank you. A glance. Anything.
