Page 28 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

"You want to talk about leaving?" Her voice stays low. Pleasant, even. Anybody two booths over would think we're discussing the weather. "Fine. Left at twenty-two, gone twelve years. Didn't have to dig for that one, Peterson. Debbie had it out before my second glass of wine, and Millie gave me the extended cut at the auction. This whole town's got your file." She leans in. "And now you're back five minutes, bossing my ER like a substitute teacher, because if Owen Peterson isn't personally in charge, the sky falls. You can't order the whole world into being okay. God knows you try. Who appointed you? Who asked?"

Direct hit. Somewhere below the waterline.

"You don't know one thing about why I left," I say.

"And you don't know one thing about why I do." She leans back. "Funny how that works."

June arrives with the food into a silence you could pour concrete in. She looks at Nellie. Looks at me. Sets the plates down like she's defusing something and backs away without a word, which for June is a medical event.

We eat. Or we move food around, the two of us performing lunch for a full house.

A woman works her way down from the register, eight months gone if she's a day, one hand riding under her belly. She turns sideways past our table.

My fork stops. Everything stops. Three seconds of gray static, and I'm not in the diner anymore. Then I am, and I put my eyes back on my plate and make my hand move.

Nellie's watching me. Cooler than before. She thinks I quit on this lunch somewhere between the tea and the silence.

I let her think it.

"This was Debbie's money," Nellie says finally. "The Dallas lady wanted you. I should've let her have you."

"You could've said no."

"To Debbie Sue?" She laughs. It's not the good laugh. "Sure. Right after I teach Millie to mind her own business. Four hundred dollars to sit in a diner and get character-assessed by a man wearing flannel in July. There's not enough money in Texas."

"It's a work shirt."

"It's ninety-five degrees, Peterson. Nobody's working." She points her straw at me. "And it's got a fold line down the front. Straight out of the package. You dressed up."

"That's how they come from the store."

"Sure it is." She picks up her iced tea. "You know what your problem is?"

"I've got a feeling I'm fixin' to hear it."

"Your problem is you think caring about people means controlling them. Amos's discharge plan. Your probies. Me, apparently, a woman you've known three weeks—"

"My problem?" And I'm leaning in now, voice dropping the way it does on a fireground, and I can't stop it. "My problem is a know-it-all with a stethoscope who's got a smart answer for everything except one honest question. Thirteen weeks and gone, over and over. That's not a feature, that's a fire escape. What are you running from, Greer?"

The tea leaves her glass before I register her arm moving.

It's cold. It's very cold, and there's a lot of it, and it is entirely in my lap.

The Willow Mug goes silent as a held breath. Hank's newspaper freezes mid-turn.

Nellie stands, chair scraping back, purse on her shoulder, cheeks blazing, and she's got her mouth open for the exit line—

Glass shatters outside.

Not diner glass. Street glass, followed by the crunch of metal folding wrong, and then a sound that overrides every other sound in the world.

A kid. Screaming.

I'm through the door before the bell finishes ringing. I don't remember standing up. I don't remember anything between the table and the sunlight. That's how it works when it's real. The body goes and the brain catches up.

Half a block down Main, a pickup sits stopped at the crosswalk and a sedan has climbed up its back bumper. Steam already curling off the sedan's crumpled hood. Driver's door hanging open, a woman stumbling out, both hands pressed to her mouth, and in the back seat—

The kid. Six, maybe seven. Screaming his lungs raw and holding his arm against his chest.