Now I am standing outside the fire station at quarter to seven with a tote bag digging into my shoulder, wondering whether this is thoughtful or deeply weird.
The doors are open.
Inside, the building glows warm against the dark. It has stopped raining, finally, but the yard still shines with yesterday’s weather. The air smells cold and wet and faintly metallic, like the night has been rinsed and left out to dry.
I step into the bay.
Kev is already there, leaning against the side of the appliance with a mug in his hand. “Please tell me that’s snacks.”
“It’s board games.”
He stares at me.
I stare back.
“Right,” he says. “Could have been snacks.”
“I brought intellectual enrichment.”
“That sounds like a hate crime.”
Mish appears behind him, tying her hair back. “What sort of board games?”
“Monopoly, Scrabble, Cluedo, cards and something with a cow on the box.”
Her eyes narrow. “Monopoly is banned.”
“It is?”
“Kev gets emotional.”
“I do not get emotional,” Kev says.
“You tried to mortgage everything, accused Dan of economic cruelty and didn’t speak to Josh for half an hour.”
“Josh knew what it did.”
I look between them. “So… no Monopoly?”
“Hard no,” Mish says.
The knot in my chest loosens a fraction.
Not gone.
Not even close.
But looser.
I put the bag down near the kitchen door and see Pippa through the glass panel of the office, speaking to Rob with a clipboard in one hand. She is in uniform, hair neat, face composed. She looks exactly like she did last night before the call-out.
No.
That is not true.
She looks like herself.
Which means I know now that exactly like herself can contain a thousand things I did not used to see.
