Page 85 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

I put my hand flat on the wall next to it and stand there. The clock on the coffee maker changes twice before I can move.

Then I go sit on the porch steps, because a man needs somewhere to fall apart and the steps are as good as anywhere. Elbows on my knees. Head down. Let it come.

And that's when I see it.

A curl of paper under the bench. Glossy. White edge catching the light. Half hidden by the bench leg like it crawled under there to hide.

I pick it up because you pick things up. That's all it is. Housekeeping.

Then I turn it over.

Black background. A gray cone of light. And in the middle of the light, a small dark circle with a smaller circle inside it. A ring, floating in the dark.

My hands know before my head lets me. I stood in a Chicago kitchen once with one of these pinned to the fridge under a pineapple magnet, Claire's hands over my hands, and I have never forgotten the shape of that dark.

My eyes go to the corner. Print stamped in white.

KERRVILLE. A clinic name. A date from three weeks back. Three weeks. While I was standing on this porch with grocery-store flowers getting the door shut soft in my face, she already knew.

And a name.

GREER, N.

The morning goes quiet. Not peaceful quiet. The quiet inside a mask when the radio dies.

Grief hits first. It comes up my throat before I can name it, because the last time I held one of these, everything I loved was still alive. My eyes burn and I let them.

Then fury, fast and hot. She knew. She stood in that doorway with her hand on the frame and told me not to make it harder, and she knew.

Then something else. Something that lifts, right through the middle of all of it, and I don't have any right to it and it comes anyway.

A baby.

Nellie's carrying a baby.

Our baby.

Terror lands on top, big and cold. And underneath it, stubborn as a pilot light, the last one.

Hope.

I'm off that porch before I decide to be.

***

Debbie Sue answers her door in the same clothes she had on at the tape line, hair still smelling like the fire. She hasn't slept either. Behind her the twins are fighting over cereal and Tater's telling them a lie about how firefighters share.

She sees my face. Then she sees my hand.

I don't yell. I want to. I want to take the fence apart with my bare hands. Instead, I hold the photo up between us at eye level, steady as I can make it.

"How long have you known."

Her mouth opens. Closes.

"Owen—"

"How long, Debbie."