Consumed (Firefighters #1)(92)

If you were sometimes the head of things and sometimes not, that was somebody who could take or leave the authority and adulation.

But when it was always you? Well, that was some shit you worked at, wasn’t it.

“He was larger than life,” Danny said quietly. “Your father was the standard everyone lived up to.”

Anne looked down at her prosthesis and wondered about the nature of anger. She wouldn’t have identified herself as a hostile person, just someone who was direct and got what she wanted and needed out situations.

Refocusing on the images of her father, standing so proud and tall among others of his generation of firefighters, she thought about how pissed off she had been about everything—and for how long.

She thought about that fire that had changed her life, and her determination to send Emilio up those stairs. Then she pictured him in that emergency room, alive by a stroke of luck and nothing else.

She didn’t mean to turn to Danny and reach for him, but she did.

As his arms came around her, she turned her head and stared at all the pictures, not just the ones that her father was in.

“He saved a lot of lives, you know,” Danny murmured.

He ruined a lot of them, too, she thought.





chapter




42



The next morning, Anne woke up at six a.m. Or, rather, she got out of bed at that time. She hadn’t done a lot of sleeping. After getting dressed, she went downstairs to the kitchen with Soot. While he went out to do his business, she opened her cupboards.

Instead of viewing the rearrangement as an intrusion, she looked at the order. The canned goods had been grouped together by whether they held soup or vegetables. The crackers were by the soups. The boxes of pasta were next to the sauce jars.

She opened the drawers under the countertops. Her silverware was next to the dishwasher—which would make it easier to empty. The plates had likewise been relocated above the dishwasher for the same reason. Pot holders were by the stove instead of across the way next to the refrigerator.

Closing everything up, she stepped back. Then she let Soot back in, sat at the table, and stared out to her living room. The sofa was now on the far wall—so you didn’t need to walk around it to enter the kitchen. The armchair was by the fireplace and the lamp on its table had been pulled in tight.

If you wanted to read a book or do needlepoint, the illumination would come over your shoulder.

Perfectly.

Anne was still sitting there when her mom came downstairs. As Nancy Janice rounded the corner, she stopped. Her face was made up. Her hair was done. But she was still in her nightclothes, the matching gown and bathrobe pink with yellow flowers. She even had slippers that matched.

The pleasant expression that was so ubiquitous that it seemed like an actual feature—like the woman’s nose or chin—was lost instantly.

“Good morning, Anne. This is a surprise.”

As the woman entered the kitchen, the actually number of steps taken or yards traveled was small. The distance traveled was greater than miles. And Anne recognized the lines in that face. The slight stoop to the shoulders. The gray hairs coming at the temples as the hair color was growing out.

Time was passing, leaving its mark, taking its taxes and penalties in the form of fading beauty and function.

She thought of those pictures in that hallway at the stationhouse. That funeral. The childhood house that had been a place to start off from for her and her brother . . . but which had been, for their parents, a goal reached.

“I didn’t touch anything.” Her mom put out her hands. “I swear, Anne. I haven’t touched anything in this house.”

Sunlight glinted off the gold wedding band on her mother’s left hand.

“Can I ask you something?” Anne said in a low voice.

Her mother came over and sat down. “Anything. Please.”

As if there had been a wait of years for such an approach.

“Why do you still wear that?”

Her mother stiffened, those eyes dropping away. And then she put her hand under the table, out of sight.

“Why, Mom?” Anne shook her head, aware she was asking about so much more than just the wedding ring. “Why.”

Just as she became convinced there’d be no reply, Nancy Janice said, “Marriage is a private affair between two people, consecrated by the church.”

“If you have children, it’s not just two people.”

“Your father was a good man. An imperfect but good man.”

“I know what he did, Mom. I’ll spare you saying it out loud. But I know.”

The crumbling that occurred was on the inside. Even as the composure was retained, it was but the facade of a building, the walls and ceilings of which had fallen from their nails and screws.

“All I have ever done was try to make things better than they were. For you. For your brother. I have done what I could to . . . make things work. There were no resources for me. I didn’t graduate high school when I got married. He didn’t want me to get a job. I have no skills. Without his pension now? I don’t know where I would go. Where I would be. What I would do.”

Anne looked past her mother to the rearranged living room. To the armchair with its perfectly placed lamp.

“I am nothing,” her mother whispered. “That’s what he always told me. I am . . . nothing.”