“Molly’s been making me sit and read in the evenings,” Tucker said.“Helps me be still.”
A silence settled over them that was different from the one before.Warmer.Not comfortable.They were a long way from comfortable, but familiar.Three brothers carrying a weight that had been distributed unevenly for decades, finally sharing it together.
Cooper reached over and put his hand on Gray’s shoulder.Squeezed once.Let go.
Tucker looked at both of them and said, with absolute sincerity, “I’m glad you’re both here.”
Gray nodded.His throat was tight.He drank his coffee because that was what Lawton men did when they couldn’t speak.
They sat there for a long time, the three of them, in a fire station that had once held eight men who never came home.Outside, the wind moved across the Montana front range, and the stars came out the way they always did: indifferent to the small, enormous things that happened beneath them.
16
Bonnie showed up at the station on Friday evening with a casserole, a bottle of wine, and the determined look of a woman who’d made a decision.
Gray was at the round table in the training room, surrounded by the usual chaos of textbooks and notes.He’d been trying to study, but his mind kept circling back to the three-brother conversation and the complicated mess of feelings it had left behind.He looked up when Bonnie walked in and immediately registered that something was different about her.
Not her clothes.She was still in her work outfit, the navy sweater and gray slacks she wore to the office.Not her hair, though it was down today, the way he liked it best, falling past her shoulders in a way that made his thoughts scatter.
It was her face that was different.The careful composure she’d worn like armor since the day he met her was gone.In its place was something open and vulnerable and resolved.
“I brought dinner,” she said.“The kids are at Jenna’s for a sleepover.I told them I had work to catch up on.”
“You lied to your children?”
“I told them a version of the truth that didn’t require a two-hour explanation.”
She set the casserole on the table and the wine beside it.He found two coffee mugs in the kitchen because the fire station didn’t have wine glasses, and she smiled as she poured the wine into them.
They ate at the round table.The casserole was tasty, and she told him Jenna had made it.Apparently, the WoWS had a rotating casserole delivery schedule for anyone in the group having a hard week.
“Who’s having a hard week?”he asked.
“Me.I’m having a hard month, actually.”
He smiled.She smiled back.The wine warmed his throat and his stomach and the station was quiet.For a few minutes the world outside—the investigation, the mayor, the evidence—receded to a manageable distance.
She set down her mug.Folded her hands on the table.Looked at him the way she had the first time she walked into this building, steeling herself for something she knew would hurt.
“I need to tell you something,” she said.“About Brent.”
Gray set down his fork.Gave her his full attention.“Okay.”
She didn’t ease into it.Bonnie Watson, when she finally decided to do something, did not waste time on preambles.
“Brent had an affair.I found out about it the day before the fire.I kicked him out of the house.”
The words pinged like pebbles dropped into still water.
“He didn’t have anywhere to go so he went to the firehouse and slept there.The next day was his day off.He should have been at home with his beeper turned off.He wasn’t supposed to respond to a fire that day.”
She spoke in the clipped, precise cadence of reciting facts she’d rehearsed a thousand times in her head but never spoken aloud.Her hands, still folded on the table, were white-knuckled.
“Because he was already at the station when the alarm came in, he went with the crew anyway.”
She looked down at her hands.“He wasn’t supposed to be in that barn.”
Gray sat very still.
