Page 3 of Sparks with the Firefighter

Outside, the sun hits like a blowdryer to the face and the saw next door starts up again. Drew and I started our lives over in Lumberjack Lagoon three weeks ago. I could not have named a single street when we got here, but somehow this place already feels more like home than anywhere I've ever lived.

I step into the bay and it's fifteen degrees cooler. The walls are all new concrete and cut lumber. Dust turns in slow circles in the light coming through the open doors. The engine sits in the far bay with its chrome catching the light.

There are forty feet of empty floor between me and my son.

Drew is sitting cross-legged on somebody's turnout coat with the hardware store dog's lead looped twice around his wrist. Correctly. The way I taught him. There's a lemonade cup sweating a ring onto the concrete beside his knee.

He's explaining something with both hands going. His whole body is in it. There’s an enthusiasm in him that I have not seen in the year since the divorce.

There's a man crouched on the concrete in front of him. He’s broad through the shoulders, except he's folded himself down small. His forearms are braced across his knees. His boots are planted and he’s eye level with an eight-year-old.

He isn't scanning the room for me. He isn't rushing Drew, or checking his watch. He's just listening. Nodding along at whatever my kid is telling him like it's the most load-bearing information he's received all week.

The scruffy, golden dog is the only one who notices me. His tail thumps twice against the floor and stops.

I should say something. Announce myself. Reprimand my son for walking out a side door without a word to me, for scaring the daylights out of me, for the granola bar he didn't ask about, for all of it.

I open my mouth ready to parent, but nothing comes out.

Instead I stand there and watch the man rise to his feet. He’s unhurried with one hand on his knee. The light coming through the bay doors glows across his shoulders and frames him in gold. The sight shoots tingles of electricity through me.

He crosses toward a pile of gear. And Drew, who has not gone easy on a single adult in twelve months, gets up and falls into step beside him without missing a beat.

My heart is going like I ran here. I guess I did run here. But that isn’t the reason I can’t catch my breath.

CHAPTER THREE THORAN

"...I do like it. I didn’t have a dad, but my brother is a firefighter too. Just not here, he’s over in a mountain town. Not as cool as Lumberjack Lagoon." I let out a chuckle and the kid follows suit.

"Yeah, probably not. I don't have any brothers. Or sisters." He picks at the reflective tape on my coat sleeve. He’s careful about it, like he's checking whether it'll come up. It won't. "I have a dad, but I hardly see him now. It's basically me and my mom."

"You, your mom, and that dog you stole."

"Didn't steal him." He looks up at me and laughs. It's a big laugh for a kid that size, the kind that uses his whole face. "I saved him from being bored. I'll take him back in a minute." Then, with no transition whatsoever he follows up with, "Dogs have three eyelids. Did you know that?"

I chuckle. "What's the third one for?"

"Dust." He shrugs like the follow-up question was beneath both of us. "And swimming."

"I believe you."

And I do. It's flat and it's certain, no wiggle in it anywhere. The kid speaks with a confidence grown men would sell a truck for.

I'm crouched back down on my own concrete with my forearms hung over my knees. There’s an eight-year-old sitting on my turnout coat like it's a picnic blanket. Somewhere behind me the compressor kicks on and shuts off again. I don't get up to check it. He's a welcome distraction. In fact, I've never in my life been this glad to stop working.

We've got a dozen volunteers on the roster and turnout gear on twelve hooks along the far wall. It’s the only thing in this building that looks like a fire department yet. The coats are hung open. The pants are boot-down and ready to step into with helmets on the shelf above. Mine's on the end.

We ran sixty-one seconds on the last drill, cold start to the rig. That's not good. It'll be down to forty by the time we open. But open might be a while.

The stakes for the apparatus pad are still flagged out back, orange tape snapping in the wind off the lagoon, waiting on concrete we can't pour until Lumberjack Days pays for it.

Hopefully.

"This is heavy," the kid says. He's got a fistful of my coat, hauling at it with both hands now.

"Fifty pounds with the tank."

"Can I—" He starts and I already know where this is heading.