Page 113 of Where I Should’ve Been

My foyer is dismally dark, the normal laughter of jokes and banter created with love replaced by a smoke so thick I can’t even see my hand six inches in front of my face. My lungs feel heavy but not with soot—with the real, raw reality that my limitations as a human are on the precipice of being challenged. I overpower the feeling with urgency. I can and will do whatever I have to do, no matter the cost.

There is no other option I’m willing to consider. In this moment, I can do anything. Because I have to.

Fear coats my movements, forcing me to rely on my training and muscle memory fully. I can hear my own breath in my ears, feel the thud of my heart in my chest, and see the film reel of a life in this house as it’s eaten by the lick of unbearably hot flames.

Palming the wall, I walk along it blindly with nothing to guide me but the experience of walking it a thousand times before and the determination to see if she’s all right—to see if they’re all right. To get them to safety as quickly as possible.

“Where are you?” I yell, my voice muffled unbearably. “Are you in here?”

Ash and water mix with still-hot embers as they rain down on me, the crew outside fighting to knock down the flames enough to keep the structure standing. Beams above me burn near clean through, and the walls feel hollow to the touch. I use my elbows and fists to knock through barriers, but it gets harder and harder with every step I take forward blindly.

This should be a hall—open and free from debris—to the back of the house, but it’s nothing more than an obstacle course now, burned and beaten by a fire that’s been unattended for just a little too long.

When I left for my shift at the firehouse this morning, all was well. Now, my whole world is on the verge of hell.

Words don’t seem clear or crisp right now, so I revert to anguish, screaming loudly instead. I listen intently, the sound of my breathing and the harsh crack of failing wood fading into the background.

It’s subtle, but there’s a cry back—one of desperation and pain that chills me to the bone in spite of the temperatures over five hundred degrees all around me.

The call wasn’t wrong. They’re inside.

Some part of me believed they weren’t; some part of me ignored the description of the dispatcher when she said people may be trapped.

Fuck.

I move more quickly, ignoring the creak and crackle of succumbing wood and pushing myself to my knees to go farther when structural collapse denies me at my full height. I have to get to them. I have to.

Randy’s muffled yell rings out behind me, but I ignore it, pushing forward anyway.

I can save them, and I will.

Tad Hanson can do anything when he has to. There’s no other option.

“Abigail!” I yell, choking on the lack of air my rapidly shallowing breaths are bringing to my respirator. Panic doesn’t help—ever. And yet, I can’t seem to turn off the personal connection that it’s not just anyone in here. I can’t seem to compartmentalize that it’s my wife and my daughter and that they need me to be the one who can save them. “Lucy!”

“Tad,” my brother Randy says, his voice muffled by his own air mask and gear. “Let me by!”

I don’t listen, pushing forward instead and contorting my body to fit through a tight space formed by two fallen beams. The alarm on my air tank already rings its warning of approaching depletion, but I ignore it.

Even upon arrival, I could see the house was lost. The flames licked twice as high as the roof, and both walls on the sides had started to give in, and now, as each moment passes, it claims more of the beloved structure my late father-in-law built with his own hands.

But my wife and daughter are inside. I won’t leave without them.

I can’t.

I’ll keep going until I can’t anymore—even if it kills me.

45

Tad

“Dammit!” I scream, slamming my phone down onto the floor of the truck as I fishtail around the corner of Maple, not even pausing for the stop sign before making my turn.

Breezy’s still not answering her phone, and Bennett isn’t picking up either. Randy’s the only one who answered, and I hung up on him as soon as I got the message across—my place is on fucking fire, and Breezy is probably inside.

Sheriff Pete slides around the corner behind me, his lights and sirens going as I floor it until the speedometer hits sixty-five. Trees pass in a blur, and the distance between me and the tail end of the fire truck in front of me closes at a dangerously fast clip.

I cut off the turn, just missing the culvert and ditch as I pull into my driveway alongside the fire truck and come to a stop a millisecond too late, the front end of my truck blowing a hole in Randy’s newly repaired fence.