Fire at Sunset: The Firefighters of Darling Bay 4 (5 page)

A man with less experience might mention that on the day in question they’d been dispatched to a thirty-year-old who’d tripped and sprained her ankle in front of her own house. No one had been dying. Caz caught Bonnie’s eye again. Something flipped low in his stomach. He’d call it relief that she wasn’t going to argue with the chief, either. That wasn’t what it was, though. It was something more primal than just simple relief.
 

“We hear you, Chief,” said Caz simply.
 

“Totally,” said Bonnie. “We’re very sorry. It won’t happen again.” She blinked and Caz had to tear his eyes from her mouth, which was puckered into something that was probably concern but actually looked highly kissable, which wasn’t an appropriate thought to have about his partner, ever, especially not at that moment.
 

Chief Barger nodded and looked satisfied. “Good. Raise the money they need, or we’ll have this same conversation at a louder volume next time. Now get out of my office.”

CHAPTER SIX

“Don’t put that there, honey.” Bonnie’s mother Marge flapped her hands. She took the fat white candle out of Bonnie’s hands and set it on a low glass table. “Oh, sugar, you really are a bull in a china shop, aren’t you?”
 

Bonnie couldn’t count the number of times she’d heard that in her life. Her mother
owned
the china shop (okay, it was an antique shop, Daring Trinkets, sandwiched between the pizza shop and the bike rental place), and Bonnie had always been the bull. “I just wanted to help…I thought it would look nice on that…what do you call it? The étagère.” She pointed at the metal shelf next to the register.
 

“I know you thought that, honey, but don’t you see that it’s full of other white things?”
 

Bonnie had, actually, seen exactly that. That’s why she’d thought the candle would fit in. “Yeah.”
 

“That candle would pull the focus away from the orb, don’t you see that? Go sit, sweetie. I’ll handle this customer and then make you a cup of coffee. You look exhausted.”
 

The orb. What was an orb? That round fountain thing? Who needed an orb? It wasn’t even an antique—most of the stuff in here wasn’t. Most of it was crap from China, home decorating stuff her mother picked up in San Francisco on her mega stock sprees. And the tourists loved it. All of it. The more crap her mother piled into the store, the more flew out on the wings of dollar bills. Older men with sad eyes and lots of money bought the chairs some general (might have) sat in, and young women with shining eyes and new, flashy rings bought the knickknacks. Bonnie loved to sit in the plush red armchair at the back of the shop and watch her mother work. Nobody in town could beat Marge at the hard upsell.
Oh, isn’t this teacup sweet? It’s too bad it’s just a single cup. Did you see the Royal Halsey tea set on this shelf here? Isn’t it gorgeous? Totally intact. I know you only want the one cup, but I just have to tell you a story about when my mother gave me my first tea party on the back lawn of her house. It started to rain, and instead of whisking me and my stuffed animals indoors, she held three umbrellas over our heads as I continued my party… that set looked so much like this one. Oh, it just makes me miss her even more. All right, let me ring up that poor little orphan teacup for you.

The entire set would be bought, of course, and the single cup would go back into pride of place, living to lure another sucker the next day.
 

The funny thing was that Bonnie had asked her mother once, “Where is that old tea set now?”
 

“What?”
 

“The tea set Gramma held the umbrellas over?”
 

Marge had laughed. “Oh, honey, that was just a story. I had chronic bronchitis as a kid, she would never have let me be outside in a rainstorm. Besides, remember how she only used plastic plates? She liked things to be unbreakable.”
 

Now, she listened to her mother suggest to a woman holding a small baby that the hand-knitted christening gown would be the thing that made her mother-in-law take her seriously. “Is she overbearing? Oh, yes, my mother-in-law was, too. Let me tell you how I won her over to my side…It was with a gown much like this, in fact.” Bonnie’s mother never even knew her own mother-in-law—she had died years before she married Bonnie’s father.
 

Marge Maddern told a good whopper. And everyone loved her for it, including her daughter. It was comforting to hear them retold—those bedtime, big-fish stories.
 

They were what she needed to hear. Bonnie had a sinking feeling that wouldn’t go away. Her heart felt like it was located somewhere below her bellybutton. The chief had yelled at them for being
children.
They were so stupid.
She
was so stupid, it wasn’t just Caz. They’d both known better. Who argued like that, in front of everyone? She was so disappointed in herself, and that was the hardest part.
 

Bonnie yawned and rubbed her eyes, trying to push back both the embarrassment of her actions and the sadness of the last call of the shift. She’d gotten off duty at eight that morning after a busy night—they’d had four calls after midnight, back to back. Two had been simple difficulty breathing, one had been a fall, but one had been a forty-year-old guy who just woke up dead. Well, his girlfriend had woken up, anyway. Shelley told them she’d kissed his cheek when her alarm went off and found his skin cold. Judging by lividity and body temp, he’d probably died shortly after they’d gone to bed the night before. “All night?” Shelley kept gasping. “He was dead all night? And I was right next to him? I could have saved him. That means I killed him. I
killed
him.” Her eyes had been so wide and panicked. “I killed the man I loved.”
 

She’d done nothing of the sort. The man had epilepsy, and even though he’d been on his meds, he’d probably had a massive seizure and just stopped breathing. “It wasn’t your fault,” Bonnie had said over and over. “It was good you were with him. That’s what matters. You were with him.”
 

“I wasn’t,” Shelley gasped. “I was
asleep
. When he needed me most. I slept through losing him. We’re getting married in a week. How can I—?”
 

Caz had been primary on that run—there had been no arguing about that for the rest of their tour. They’d taken turns, no discussion. Once they’d decided they wouldn’t transport the patient’s body to the hospital and the cops got on scene and called the coroner, technically there was no need for the ambulance to stay on scene, but in unspoken agreement, they sat with Shelley, Caz on one side of her, Bonnie on the other. Bonnie handed her tissues and rubbed her back. When the woman fell sideways, sobbing so hard she could barely breathe, Caz caught her, wrapping his arms around her. Their eyes had met over her head, and Caz had such a
look.
It was as if he were feeling Shelley’s pain with her, as if he’d feel it for her if he could.
 

Bonnie had wanted to touch his arm then. It was such a surprising feeling she’d stayed still and dropped her eyes to the woman mourning between them.
 

Bonnie knew Shelley wouldn’t remember a minute of it later. She’d never know they were there, and if they ran into her at the grocery store, she’d smile vaguely at them, unsure why their faces made her feel like crying. That was the way it should be. Bonnie and Caz were there for support, until Shelley’s mother arrived. When she did, they left quietly.
 

They didn’t talk in the rig on the way back to the station. After they pulled in and finished cleanup, Caz had simply said, “We need to talk about the fundraiser.”
 

“I know,” she said.
 

“Next shift.”
 

“Yeah.” Their eyes hadn’t met again. They hadn’t said goodbye. They’d just walked away from each other.
 

Bonnie had gone straight from the station to her mother’s house. Marge hadn’t looked surprised to find her daughter on the sofa when she wandered through the house.
 

“Bad night?” was all her mother had said.
 

“I guess.”
 

Marge said simply, “Your father’s sleeping. Want to come with me to the store?”
 

“Of course I do.”
 

“Coffee. Then we’ll go.”
 

Two hours after Darling Trinkets opened, Bonnie was almost ready to head home for a real nap. She waited until her mother finished telling a customer a story about how that exact brand of electric candle had prompted a marriage proposal once, and then said, “Hey, Mom. I’m gonna split.”
 

“Dinner tonight?”
 

Bonnie wanted to. That was the embarrassing part. She was thirty-one. She had plenty of friends, both in the department and out. Mike, a systems analyst she’d been dating off and on for six months, wanted to go to the movies tonight. Then he would want to make out and maybe more, and all Bonnie could think of when she pictured his face was
yawn.
What she really wanted to do was spend the day with her mother at the store and then lounge on her parents’ back patio and watch her father char burgers into lumps of coal while he made the same dumb jokes that he’d been making her entire life.
What’s brown and sticky, daughter?
A pause.
A stick!

She almost never reacted to bad calls this way. In the fire service, you weren’t supposed to take things home. And for the most part, Bonnie didn’t. She could run three DOAs and then have dinner, more worried about whether they were almost out of steak sauce than how the new widows were doing. Compartmentalizing was part of the job.
 

But the woman who woke up with her boyfriend not breathing next to her—Shelley—wasn’t leaving her for some reason. The panicked look of terror, which Shelley had worn for the first hour they were there, had given way to emptiness by the time they’d driven away. Shelley’s mother had arrived and had wrapped her arms around her daughter, but instead of falling to the floor in wails—as Bonnie had seen so many times before—Shelley stayed stock still, swaying rigidly as she appeared to hold her mother up. Her eyes had been blank, her gaze bleak.
 

What would it be like, to love so hard you became a shell of a person when you lost that love?
 

“I’m not sure. Mike and I might have plans…” Quickly, just for a second, Bonnie saw Caz’s pale blue eyes in her mind.
 

Her mother smiled. “Ditch that guy and have burgers with us. Cheesy fries on bacon burgers. Your favorite.”

“I can’t do that…”

“You’re not the slightest bit serious about him. A mother knows.”

Well, there was really nothing to say to that. Her mother was right. She
wasn’t
serious. She was just killing time with Mike.
 

“Tell me what happened last night.” Marge dropped into the soft chair next to Bonnie.
 

“Why do you think something happened?”
 

“Because you have that look.”
 

“Which one?” Bonnie tried to put her expression back in order.
 

“Your sad one.”
 

“I’m not
sad
.” Sadness was for other people. Bonnie was cheerful. Chipper. Always positive. That was, literally, her job.
 

Marge just looked at her, her dark eyebrows raised.
 

Fine. “Okay, we lost a guy this morning.”
 

“I’m sorry, honey.”
 

Bonnie felt something burn the backs of her eyes. It was surprising and unwelcome. She might feel things sometimes, but she never
cried
. Crying was what normal people did. Not firefighters, not paramedics. “Yeah.”
 

“How old?”
 

“Forty. We didn’t even work him up. He was cold when we got there.”
 

“Married?”
 

“Girlfriend. Fiancée. They were getting married in a week.”
 

Marge covered her mouth and said softly, “Oh.”
 

“Her face…” Bonnie took a deep, slow breath. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone lose someone they were so in love with. I mean, I’ve seen hundreds of people lose their spouses, and it’s always terrible. But to be so excited…”
 

Her mother nodded. “About the life in front of them, and then to lose that.”
 

“I just can’t imagine.”
 

“That’s the problem with your job. You don’t have to imagine it. The rest of us have to watch fake stuff on TV and cry about it. You actually have to see it, day in, day out. What if you….what if you went to see someone?”

Bonnie felt an ache behind her eyes. “What, like a therapist? No.”
 

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I could help you find someone…”
 

“We have counseling at work if we need it. I don’t need it.”
 

One eyebrow arched—her mother had always been able to convey a whole book with just that one eyebrow. “You’ve used it how many times?”
 

Never. Her mom knew that.
 

“All I’m saying is, think about it. It’s there for a reason.”
 

“Meh.” Bonnie shook herself. “I’m fine. Thanks for listening. That’s all I needed, just a Mom-ear for a minute. I’m going to go home and catch some sleep.”
 

Marge stood. “Come over tonight?”
 

“Can I say maybe?”
 

“I’m sure you have the ability to do so,” her mother said crisply. The doorbell chimed as three new customers piled into the store giving early exclamations of delight over the Darling Bay tea towels (decorated with the town’s iconic pier).
 

“But I think you should say yes.” Her mother kissed her on the cheek, and Bonnie jumped in surprise. Their family wasn’t demonstrative—they weren’t the kind to hug and kiss. They didn’t say
I love you
. So the kiss undid Bonnie a little. Something prickled behind her eyes.