Things You Save in a Fire(62)

“Of course.”

“And one day, one of us—and I’m not even sure, honestly, who it was—decided we should set a matchbox on fire and toss it through the window of one of the empty warehouses.”

I felt a tightness in my chest. This was not going to end well.

“I was eight,” Owen went on. “My details are really fuzzy, but we slid open the drawer of a matchbox, and then we tilted the matches up out of it and closed it again just enough to hold the matchsticks out, in a spray. And then we lit them. And then one of us tossed the whole thing through a broken window, and we took off running.”

This was starting to ring some bells for me. This story sounded familiar.

“What were we thinking? What were we expecting? What were our goals? I think we hoped the building would shoot up like a Fourth of July firework.

“We’d played in that warehouse before, lots of times,” he went on. “The ground floor was empty, for the most part. I’ve thought about it so often, and I can’t imagine how the matches didn’t just burn themselves out on the concrete floor.”

“But they didn’t.”

He shook his head. “They didn’t. Turns out, it was an old paper factory.”

I turned to look at him.

Oh God. I knew that fire. Everybody knew that fire.

I turned to him and met his eyes. As soon as I did, he knew I knew.

I lowered my voice—for no reason. “We’re talking about the Boston Paper Company fire?”

He nodded.

“You started the Boston Paper Company fire?” I asked.

He nodded again, then went on. “Walking home at sunset, we saw it. There was fire coming out of every window, black smoke everywhere, and a funnel-shaped tornado of fire rising from the roof. Every company in the city was called to that fire. The streets were closed off. They had to turn off the electricity to ten city blocks. It was unstoppable. The upper stories were all filled with reams of paper—dry, brittle paper. We watched it burn. We could feel the heat. It sounded like a freight train—so loud, I could feel the roar on my skin.”

“I remember. It was too hot for water. It had to burn itself out.”

He nodded. “And when the walls finally collapsed, they took the surrounding buildings down with them.”

“A firefighter was killed by one of the falling walls.”

The rookie nodded. “But not just any firefighter,” he said. “My uncle.”

A long sigh seeped out of me. Not just any firefighter. His uncle.

He ran a hand through his hair. “An eyewitness said she’d seen two boys running from the warehouse—not three, two. The other boys were brothers, and their mother watched them staring endlessly at the coverage and somehow, in that way moms have, she just knew. She got them to confess, but they never ratted me out. Nobody looked for a third kid. The official story was ‘two boys.’ The media circus was so insane, they wound up moving away—down to Florida, I think.”

“And you never told anybody you’d been there.”

He shook his head.

“That’s why it took you so long to join up. Even with your dad pushing.”

He tapped on the steering wheel. “It was like that day sealed me into an impossible fate. To spend the rest of my life avoiding everything about fires—and to be duty-bound to join the fire service.”

“Why are you duty-bound to join?”

A little shrug. “My dad wants me to.”

“It’s your apology,” I said.

“It’s the shittiest apology ever, but it’s all I’ve got.”

I studied him a second. “You just want to bake cookies.”

“Pretty much.”

“But you can’t. Or you think you can’t.”

“I brought my dad indescribable grief.”

“Are you atoning for the fire?”

He gave the tiniest shrug. “He’s still grieving, in a way, my dad. Even now. If there’s anything I can do, I have to do it.”

“I get that,” I said, and I really did. I wasn’t sure I agreed with it, but I got it.

“I’ve never told anyone the whole story like that,” Owen said then. “I can’t tell you how strange it feels.” He let out a big breath.

“You were a kid, you know. Kids do stupid stuff all the time. It was an accident.”

“That may be true. But my uncle Ryan is still dead. My dad’s only brother. Because of me.”

I wondered if maybe he was emphasizing the wrong parts of the story. “That’s just such a burden for a kid to carry.”

“I’m not a kid anymore.”

“For anyone to carry.”

He nodded. “Anyway, that’s why I can’t quit the fire department. That’s why I have to win that spot—even though I know you deserve it more. If the captain gives it to me, I have to take it. This is my dad’s dream. And I have to make sure he gets it.”

“Maybe your dad’s dream is just for you to be happy.”

The rookie looked at me like I was so wrong it was almost cute. “Nope. Firefighter first, happy second.”

“You are talking to a person who has watched you turn pale, faint, or throw up on every medical call. Sometimes all three.”