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That was where I knew her voice. The voice I listened for on every shift was hers.

"This is perfect. You already know each other." She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the costume rack backstage. "Let me find you a prince costume."

She held one up against my chest. It reached my ribcage. She tried a second. Same problem.

Erin stepped back and looked at me, looked at the costume, looked at me again.

"Go get your gear from your car."

"What?"

"Your turnout gear. You keep a spare set in your trunk, don't you, you weirdo? I don't have a prince costume that's going to fit you, so you're going on as a firefighter who rescues the princess." She was already pushing me toward the exit. "Honestly, it's better than the original."

I came back from the car in my turnout gear, helmet under my arm, feeling like a man walking into the wrong building wearing the right uniform.

Janine was in the wings, script in hand, mouthing lines to herself. She looked up when she heard my boots on the floor.

"Have I mentioned that I'm Captain Holloway, fire captain of Engine 19?"

"You have."

"Apparently, my duties now include saving princesses from cardboard castles that I'm sure have a lot of code violations. Are you playing the princess?"

She laughed. The sound cut through the backstage noise, and I wasn't ready for it. I picked up the copy of the script she'd been holding and flipped through it. Three acts, simple enough.

I stopped on Act 3.

"Have you read the third act?"

"I have."

"There's a kiss."

"It's a stage kiss." She met my eyes. "We don't have to make it anything uncomfortable. Just a quick one. The kids won't even notice."

"Right." I handed the script back.

"Uncle Alex!" Holly crashed into my legs from somewhere behind the cardboard castle, already in costume.

"Hey, Hol." I put my hand on her head. "Look at you. You got so big."

"Are you playing the firefighter prince?"

"That's what they're telling me."

She grinned up at me with Erin's exact face and disappeared back into the chaos.

Erin's voice came from somewhere behind the curtain. "Two minutes!"

I'd come backstage to convince Erin to put Sawyer on that stage instead of me. I'd forgotten to ask.

The play was a disaster in the best possible sense.

A five-year-old dragon forgot his line and announced he needed to use the bathroom. A tree lost one of her pool-noodle branches during the second scene and tried to reattach it while delivering her line, which came out half-muffled because she was holding the branch in her teeth. The cardboard castle swayed every time someone walked past it. The audience loved every second.

Janine was good. Better than I expected from someone who'd had fifteen minutes with a four-page script. She stood in the tower and delivered her lines. When the tower "caught fire," which was just an orange sheet waved by two first-graders, she played scared in a way that made the children in the audience lean forward without making them actually frightened.

I walked onto the stage in my gear and the audience cheered. The firefighter climbs the tower, rescues the princess. I found Janine at the top of the cardboard castle, took her hand, and walked her to center stage. The script said one line: "You're safe now." The audience said "Awww."