Make it Hot (5 page)

A
fter her last appointment of the day, Samantha made it home to her apartment in Elmwood Park in record time.

The town she lived in, Elmwood Park, had started out many years ago as a sort of suburb of Paterson, like South Paterson and West Paterson. In fact, the town used to be called East Paterson until they changed the name to remove all associations with the inner city. Still, it was a little safer for a single woman living on her own. Also, her apartment complex was nice and welcoming.

And she never felt happier to see the red-and-white brick, colonial-style apartment units than she was today. She pulled into her parking spot, thinking about what she could quickly make for dinner. Her phone was ringing as she walked through the door, and she rushed to answer it.

It better not be a telemarketer,
she thought as she made the dash across the living room/dining room to the phone hanging on the back wall of her galley kitchen.

“Hey, Sammie. It’s your mother.” Veronica Dash’s soft voice wafted through the phone lines, and Samantha tried to discern what kind of mood she was in.

Was it her sober and depressed mother on the line, her two-glasses-of-gin shy of passing out and depressed mother or her angry, bitter, lashing-out and drunk mother?

“Hi, Mom. How’s it going?”

“When are you coming home? Why can’t you get a job here in Chicago? What kind of daughter leaves her mother all alone?” The slight slur in her voice canceled out still sober.

Samantha started walking with the cordless phone, kicking off her shoes and making herself comfortable on the huge plush brown sofa-sectional that took up the majority of the small living room/dining room. There was no telling how long she would be on the phone with her mother this evening.

She could hear the sound of clanging glass and knew Veronica must have been fixing herself another drink.

“Mom, I have a job here that I love, and I like it here. You could always move out here. A change of scenery might be good for you.” She had made the offer many times before, and she knew her mother would turn it down.

Samantha loved Chicago and would always consider herself a Chi-town girl. But when she left home to attend graduate school and earn her MS in Occupational Therapy at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, she ended up staying on for the DPT—Doctor of Physical Therapy—program. By the time she finished her studies, she’d come to love the North Jersey area, and she had come to love the newfound peace in her life and not having to watch her mother drink herself to death.

Finally, she had a legitimate reason to leave the continuous sadness looming in her childhood home. As much as it shamed her to admit it, she was sort of glad her mother didn’t want to move to New Jersey.

“I’m all alone, and I don’t want to leave my home. It’s all I have left of him. It’s the
only
thing I have left. If you were any kind of a daughter, you wouldn’t have left me. How could you leave here? We’re a family here.”

“You have me. The house is just a place, Mom. You have me, also. Daddy was murdered but you still have me…” Samantha wished she could call back the words as soon as they left her mouth.

“I don’t have you. You’re not here. You’re no help. You’re selfish. You’re trying to punish me because you think it will make me stop drinking. Just like when you stopped visiting. Cutting me off…Selfish!”

Samantha closed her eyes. She didn’t say anything because her mother was right. She had tried to use the threat of not visiting as a ploy to get her mother to go to rehab in the past. It hadn’t worked.

“They murdered him. They took him away from me. Why? Why did he stop at that corner store to pick up cough medicine for you? It’s your fault. It’s your fault my husband is dead.” Veronica’s angry words caused Samantha to go still.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t heard the words before. It was more that she was shocked that they still had the ability to wound.

Samantha spoke so she could barely hear her own words. “It wasn’t my fault. It was the criminal’s fault, the one who was robbing the store when Daddy walked in.”

In the past, Samantha might have been spiteful enough to add that she wasn’t the one who called her husband and asked him to pick up a bottle of Robitussin while he was on duty. But the grown-up woman knew it was no more her fault than it was her mother’s.

“Mom, maybe you shouldn’t have another drink tonight. I know thinking about Daddy makes you sad—”

“You never loved your father, Samantha. You always resented the fact that he had a job to do protecting the city and the fact that he didn’t make it home in time and he missed a couple of your little birthday parties, but he was a cop and he had a job to do. He couldn’t just be home with you all the time, and they killed him. They took him away from me.” A tortured sob escaped Veronica’s mouth, and the sound of it pierced Samantha’s heart.

“Mom, I loved Daddy very much. You really shouldn’t have another drink tonight. It’s making you sad. Try to remember the happy times. He was a good man, a good father and a good husband—”

“Your father would be so disappointed in you, Sammie. So disappointed. You’re selfish, and he’d be disappointed. You’re supposed to be here, taking care of me now that he’s gone. He always took such good care of me. He loved his Roni. He loved me so much.” Her words slurred together and they tapered off.

Samantha heard a small crash and assumed it was her mother’s phone hitting the floor. Worried Veronica had fallen, too, she was about to hang up and call Chicago’s emergency services when her mother picked up the phone.

“I’m tired now, Sammie. I’ll talk to you later.”

The dial tone sounded so abrupt. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the arm of the sofa. She felt drained.

She never understood how a woman could love a man so much losing him would literally make her stop living her own life, but she had watched it with her own eyes.

Joel entered the sports bar and looked around for his brothers. He’d promised he would meet them there, but a part of him wanted to back out. He loved his brothers, and he cherished the time he spent with them, but after the accident, it was just too hard to be around them. Their lives were still exciting, and they were living up to the Hightower creed of honor and service.

Jason and Lawrence were police detectives with the Paterson police department and his oldest brother, Patrick, had just been promoted to captain in the fire department. Joel had hoped to one day make captain himself. He had to keep working hard to make sure his dream came true and he would be able to fight fires again. He couldn’t allow himself to think about what he’d do if it wasn’t a possibility.

He walked over to their booth and tried to shake off the negative feelings. He thought of Little Miss Spitfire and smiled.

Samantha was right about one thing; he was lucky to be alive. He would heal and go back to the job he loved. He had to.

His brothers stood, and they all hugged in greeting.

His youngest brother, Jason, seemed to practically glow with happiness. His smile was almost contagious. Jason, a cold-case detective, used to give their older brother, Patrick, a run for his money when it came to sulkiness.
Marriage must really agree with Jason.
He had reunited with his high-school sweetheart, former video dancer, Penny Keys. Their love was solid.

Joel was happy for them. The accident had made him angry and bitter, but not so bitter he couldn’t be genuinely happy for Jason and Penny.

Lawrence, a narcotics detective, gave him a quick hug and then leaned back into his seat in the booth. Of all the Hightower brothers, Lawrence was the most educated and also the most street savvy. His master’s degree in criminology could have easily been a diploma from the school of hard knocks if he had taken a different path, or perhaps if he hadn’t had the Hightower name to live up to. When they were boys, Lawrence was the only one of their parents’ sons who seemed poised to rebuke the legacy. He flirted with the wild side, but ended up on the right side of the tracks. His bad-boy streak probably helped him a lot in his job.

Patrick’s quick hug and pound was atypical for the eldest Hightower son. Patrick hadn’t been the same since he found his wife in the bed with another man. The breakup of his marriage and an ugly divorce had left Patrick cold. He had never been the most affectionate person, but now he was even more guarded. No doubt from fear of being hurt again. He held his feelings back constantly.

“So, how’s everything, man?” Jason asked with a grin on his face.

Joel smiled. “Everything’s cool. I can’t complain.” He shrugged. “I’m alive.”

Both Patrick and Lawrence gave him a funny look. Even Jason stared at him.

“What? What are you all looking at me like I’m crazy for? I’m good. It’s all good.” Joel slid into the booth. He noticed they were still giving him those weird, scared glances, and he regretted even trying to be his normal joking, upbeat self. “What? I was joking, sheesh.”

“Well, it’s not funny, man.” Jason’s happy-go-lucky expression soured.

“Yeah, and I don’t buy that joke crap, by the way. Are you okay? How’s everything, really, man? And don’t give us that bull about it all being good. You almost died, and it took a lot just to have you walking again. You might not be able to go back to the fire department, and that was your life. How’re you, really, man?” Lawrence cut right to the chase.

Joel flinched. “Well, when you put it that way, I guess it’s not all good. Damn, man, you ever heard of holding back? Good thing you aren’t in crisis negotiation. You’d have a person jumping from the ledge or all the hostages would be dead by the time you were done.”

Jason and Patrick laughed, while Lawrence ran his had across his head in reflection.

Joel could tell that Lawrence had a lot he wanted to say for weeks now. Things must really be bad if his normally cool brother let it blow the way he did. Whatever Lawrence had held back for the past few weeks, clearly he had no intention holding on now.

Joel sincerely hoped Lawrence would back off. He didn’t know how much more of his brothers’ inquiries—no matter how well intentioned they seemed to be—he could take.

“Seriously, Joel, we’re worried about you. You’ve been pretty silent these past few months. And we’ve been trying to give you time to talk about stuff when you got ready, but your therapy is almost over, and you still haven’t talked about the fact that—”

Nope, Lawrence was letting it all hang out, so Joel had to cut him off.

Joel slammed his hand on the table in an effort to let his brother know he’d had enough. “The fact that I might never fight fires again? The fact that my back will more than likely never be the same and I’ll be battling back pain the rest of my life?” He was holding his jaw so tight every single word he said came out stressed.

He should have canceled. He wasn’t ready for this.

“Could it simply be that I don’t want to dwell on the negative?” Again he bit out his words with a barely contained rage. The nerve of them trying to pull some kind of intervention on him! Didn’t they realize he was doing the best he could given the circumstances?

“That’s all fine and well, but you can’t just keep stuff like that all bottled in, bro, and there’s a big difference between not dwelling on the negative and being in denial,” Patrick offered.

Joel gritted his teeth to keep from cursing.
This is bull.
Patrick was the last person who needed to be calling anyone out for keeping things inside.

And so what if he was keeping things inside? Did any of them know what it was like to feel like half the man he used to be? Did any of them have the one thing they had always wanted to be, ever since they were a kid and got their first little fire truck Matchbox car cruelly snatched away from them? Were either one of them faced with the real possibility that he would never be the man he was again because the self-identity that he had crafted and nurtured over the years was gone?

No. They didn’t. So as far as he was concerned, they couldn’t tell him jack.

“We know how much firefighting means to you. That’s why we’re concerned,” Lawrence offered.

“You don’t know anything about it, and if you’re lucky, you’ll never have to know,” Joel snapped.

“I know how I’d feel if I couldn’t fight fires anymore,” Patrick stated solemnly. “I’d feel like a big chunk of myself was missing. I might even be dumb enough to question my worth, but hopefully you three would step in and help me see that I’m so much more than my job and I have a lot more to offer the world even if I can’t fight fires anymore.”

“That’s easy for you to say,
Captain!
” Joel’s words came out snidely and he didn’t like the sound of his voice. He just knew he wasn’t ready for this. Why couldn’t they see that and just leave it alone?

“We’re just worried about you, man. So what’s going on?” Jason chimed in.

“How is your back?” Lawrence asked.

“Are you going to at least explore the option of taking a position with Dad at Hightower Security?” Patrick wore an oddly hopeful expression.

Joel inhaled so deeply his nostrils flared. An angry hiss of breath escaped his lips. Their little intervention became increasingly more annoying because he realized even though he didn’t have all the answers to their questions, what he did have he wasn’t so sure he wanted to face yet. He counted to ten and then counted again.

He stood and glared at each of his brothers. “I can’t do this tonight.” Those were the only words he trusted himself to say, as angry as he was, he didn’t want to say anything that couldn’t be taken back or apologized for later.

His brothers all glanced at one another, and he could see the wheels spinning in their heads as they tried to think of ways to keep him there.

“Hey, look, bro, we’ll back off. Sit back down. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. We just wanted to see you,” Lawrence offered.

“Yeah, who knows when Jason here will have another free night away from Penny. Pulling him away from the old ball and chain is like pulling teeth.” Patrick let out a nervous chuckle.