“Come on, Soot.”
Thankfully, the dog decided to commit to a visit to the backyard, and Anne took the opportunity to breathe deep and brace herself for the return. When they came back in, her mother had set out two mugs and was boiling water in a pan.
“Don’t worry, Annie-Banannie, I brought plenty of Celestial Seasonings for the both of us.”
Annie-Banannie. God, she had hated that nickname her entire life. Annie-Banana would have been bad enough, but of course that cutesy end had had to be tacked on, a pink bow on a pink box.
The smile her mother sent over her shoulder was cheerful in a determined kind of way. “It’s for nighttime. For rest.”
Anne grabbed a dish towel and bent down, taking each of Soot’s paws in turn, wiping off the mud. “I told you. I don’t drink tea.”
“Oh. Well, I could make you a coffee? I could—”
“No. Thank you. I don’t need anything.”
“Oh. All right.”
Anne lowered her head. “I’ll sit with you.”
“Oh, I would love that. I’ve missed you.”
Yeah, wow, she’d forgotten how three-quarters of Nancy Janice’s statements started with “Oh”—as if she were constantly shocked by conversation, in spite of the fact that she was a chatter. Then again, she’d been a seen-and-not-heard wife to a flamboyant force of nature. It probably was still as surprise, even after all these years, that anybody listened to her.
It wasn’t Anne’s job to step into the void, however. And giving her mother an opening to speak was like setting off an entire can of Febreze in an enclosed space—and thinking you could keep the flower-fresh stench from your nose by batting the air away from your face.
She sat down at her table and told herself she needed to ask what the woman had been up to, but she wasn’t sure she could feign interest in Pilates, bridge, and senior center volunteering.
Especially as she thought about Emilio in that hospital bed, Danny struggling to find his way, and the people who had died in those warehouse fires down by the wharf.
See, this was the problem, There was a vast, uncrossable distance between what her mother worried over and what Anne had on her plate. It was Kleenex to surgical gauze. Sandals to steel-toed work boots. An off-key hum to a scream for help.
Her mother took a green-and-white box out of her corgi-themed purse and put a tea bag in each mug. Then she poured the hot water from the pan and brought her solution to insomnia over.
As she put the tea in front of Anne, her pale eyes were like those of a dog begging to be let in from the cold.
“Just in case you change your mind,” she said softly.
I won’t, Anne wanted to holler. For godsake,, is this the reason Dad cheated on you?
chapter
27
The following morning, Danny pulled his truck into the parking area behind the 617 stationhouse and checked his phone. He was fifteen minutes early, but not because he’d planned it that way and set some kind of an alarm.
You needed to be able to sleep to worry about alarms. And anything even remotely REM-related had been a nonissue.
Lighting a cigarette, he cracked his window and blew a stream of smoke out. Following the storms, the early September sun was back out with a vengeance, the bright sky and utter lack of clouds making him think of someone starting an organic diet after an ugly binge.
He blinked gritty eyes. Drank some coffee. Smoked some more.
Five minutes ’til nine, he doused the butt in his cold Dunkin’ and got out. The chief’s shiny new stationhouse had a dedicated administrative entrance, so at least he didn’t have to enter through the front and face the crew, all of whom would know why he was here.
Anne’s brother was going to love this meeting.
And hey, at least his last act as a firefighter was going to be making someone’s day.
Danny pulled open the glass door and stepped into a waiting room as fancy as any you’d find in a lawyer’s office downtown: leather couches, coffee table, flat-screen TV, even a throw rug that picked up on the gray-and-blue color frickin’ scheme.
Nice to know that Ripkin’s people saw to everything. Not just the donation and the building, but the goddamn curtains and the furniture.
It even smelled nice.
Given how fancy everything was, he always expected some executive assistant to come out and demand his ID and fingerprints before he could get in to see the big man.
Nope. He just walked over to the fishbowl. The chief’s office was three sides of see-through, and the man was sitting at an old beat-up desk, paperwork everywhere, the phone in danger of falling off the far edge, a dead plant off to the side on shelves that were mostly empty.
Ashburn was like an isolated contaminant in all the otherwise perfectly orderly and new.
Tom looked up. “Come on in.”
Or something to that effect. The office was soundproof.
Danny walked around and pushed his way inside. “Morning.”
“Sit down.”
Why bother. He wasn’t going to be in here long. But Danny followed the order, parking it in a creaky wooden chair.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “So this was quick.”
Anne’s brother eased back and steepled his fingertips like he was a school principal with a delinquent. The man looked exhausted, dark circles under his eyes adding age to his face, that salt-and-pepper hair pulling an assist on the almost-fifty vibe. The poor bastard was just in his mid-thirties, though.
“Dr. McAuliffe got back to me yesterday.”
“Where do I sign?”
“What?”
Danny sat forward and motioned over the paperwork. “On my release papers. I already know I wasn’t on service long enough to vest my pension, but I want my COBRA.”
The chief didn’t respond. Then again, no doubt this was like a good meal, something to be savored.
“I want you back on shift. But you’re on probation.”
Danny shook his head like he had to reset his ears. “What?”
“You heard me. Because of Emilio being out, I’ve shuffled the crew at four-nine-nine around, and you need to finish today’s shift out, off tomorrow and Sunday.”
The chief picked up a piece of paper, his eyes scanning back and forth. Then he looked up. “Why are you still in here? You’re late for roll call at the four-nine-nine.”
Danny was aware of a shaft of anxiety hitting him in the chest. “I don’t get it.”
“I think I’m being clear enough.”
“Why aren’t you firing me?”
“You really want to argue this point?”
Danny shook his head. “I’m confused.”
“That’s because you think it’s personal between you and me. It’s not. The therapist’s report stated that she felt you were suffering from severe trauma and undiagnosed depression. She’s advocating for a three-month suspension and mandatory follow-up. She also believes you have a problem with alcohol and is recommending that you address this.”
“So why are you putting me back on shift.”
“If I waited for a clean bill of mental health for all my firefighters, I’d have engines with no engineers, lines with no one to hold them, ladders with nobody to climb.”
Danny clasped his hands together because he had a case of the shakes he didn’t want to share. “Thank you.”
The chief’s eyes went back and forth on the paper, but in the same position as he read the same line over and over again. After a moment, he said gruffly, “Payback. We’re equal now.”
“I wasn’t aware we had a debt to discharge.” That was a lie. There was Anne. “A recent one, at any rate.”
“Chavez.” Tom glanced up. “If you hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t have . . . anyway. Yeah.”
In the back of his mind, Danny did the math on switching one unstable man for another, but he was not going to argue. Something was finally breaking his way.
“There’s a condition.”
Here it comes. “Which is.”
“Not one violation of any procedure or policy. Everything will be by the book, and yes, I’m putting this in your personnel file. I am not fucking around. I will fire you and to hell with the personnel shortage.”