Page 2 of Kid Gloves

I want to be very precise about this, because it's going to matter later, when I've decided how to feel about everything: the fence is chest-high, and the man goes over it like it's a suggestion, in the dark, in a gray T-shirt, moving toward my burning barn while the rest of the county sleeps. He's got a fire extinguisher in one hand. Who runs with a fire extinguisher? Who has one ready?

Wade Mercer, apparently. Of course he does. That man has a protocol for grief.

"Anyone inside?" No hello. His voice hits that register that makes livestock and paratroopers sit down.

"No. Puppies are out. All nine." My voice comes out steady, which surprises us both. "Barn's a loss. It's in the roof."

He looks at me (one fast head-to-toe inventory, soot, single boot, puppy teeth still attached to my braid) and something in his jaw does a thing. Then he's moving again, checking the propane tank clearance, killing the power at my meter box like he's been reading my utilities in his spare time, putting the extinguisher on the grass fire creeping toward the fence line, because God forbid my catastrophe cross onto his side and be disorganized over there.

I should help. I am helping — I've got the hose going on the coop, which is how Gary and I end this night both damp and betrayed, but there's a version of me standing outside myself watching Wade Mercer work a disaster like it's a checklist, and that version notices, in a small doomed voice: oh.

I ignore her. She has terrible judgment. Exhibit A: the roof thing in July.

The volunteer department arrives at minute thirteen, lights swinging red and white across the pasture, and after that it's hoses and shouting and the specific helplessness of watching professionals fight for a building you already know is gone. I stand at the fence with a crate full of puppies and narrate to them quietly, because their ears are six weeks old and this is a lot.

"That's water. That's a truck. That man yelling is Deke, he coaches Little League. This is all very normal."

Wade appears beside me. He doesn't do anything as human as pant, but his shirt has given up and his forearm is streaked black. Without a word he takes off the jacket someone handed him (a big canvas thing with IRON CREEK K9 across the back) and puts it around my shoulders, and I discover I've been shaking, which is embarrassing, and that the jacket smells like cedar and dog and something warm underneath, which is worse.

"Thanks," I say.

He nods.

Then he pulls a small notebook out of his back pocket (I swear this on Gran's grave, a notebook, at a fire) and clicks a pen.

"Time you noticed the smoke?"

I stare at him. "Are you... documenting me?"

"Documenting the incident."

"I'm the incident."

"Currently." Not a flicker. "Time?"

And here's the stupid thing, the thing I'll be turning over for weeks: it helps. The barn is a torch and my chest is a dropped jar and this enormous flannel-scented clipboard of a man wants to know facts, and facts are a handrail, so I hold on. Two-oh-five, maybe. Woke up to Brisket screaming — yes, that's a scream, you'll know it when you hear it. Smoke was already through the roof vent. Fire looked like it started at the north end. Feed room. Wiring's original, older than me, Gran always said the barn had two moods, dim and blown fuse.

He writes it all down. At the wiring part, his pen slows by half a beat (I only notice because I'm watching his hands, which is its own problem) and he looks at the north end of the barn for a long second, where the fire went up first and hungriest.

"What?" I say.

"Nothing." He closes the notebook. "Wiring."

By the time the sun does come up — the real one, Gary, you absolute fraud — the barn is a black ribcage with steam coming off it, and Deke is saying the words total loss and lucky and could've been in the house in a kind voice, and the puppies are asleep in a dogpile in the crate like tiny drunks, and I'm still wearing Wade Mercer's jacket because giving it back means admitting how cold I am.

Deke walks the perimeter with me once, helmet under his arm, doing the gentle math firefighters do out loud so you don't have to. "Wind was with you. Ten degrees different and it's in the coop, then the house." He stops at the north corner, where the wall isn't a wall anymore, and nudges a fallen brace with his boot. "Feed room, looks like. Marshal will want to poke at it. Don't move anything, don't let the goats move anything."

"You want to tell them that?"

He looks over at the semicircle of goats, who have been supervising the entire operation like unpaid consultants. "No," he says, with the honesty of a man who coaches Little League. "I do not."

A truck I don't recognize comes up the drive around six, and a woman gets out with a vet kit and the kind of ponytail that means business. I know her by reputation the way you know everyone here by reputation — Callie O'Connor, Iron Creek's staff veterinarian, the one who came down from Colorado and married into the operation next door, or is about to, depending which checkout line you heard it in.

"Wade called," she says, already kneeling at the crate. "Said there were nine puppies who inhaled smoke and one handler who won't sit down."

"I'm fine."

"Uh-huh. That's the version I heard, too." She's got her hands on Biscuit before I can organize a defense, thumb under his jaw, counting something. He tries to eat her stethoscope. She lets him think he's winning. Watching her work loosens a knot behind my sternum I didn't know I was carrying — she handles them like they're dogs, not paperwork, and every one of them passes inspection while she keeps up a stream of low commentary that has the whole litter drunk on attention.