Page 100 of Until We Come Home

CIVIL DANGER NOTICE: Level 2 Evacuation, BE SET. Residents of the North Bluff area should prepare to leave at a moment’s notice. Fire activity in your area may require immediate evacuation.

I read it twice, then once more, hoping the words might rearrange themselves into better news.

“Alright,” Maren says, pulling Henry into her arms and swaying, her voice composed despite her pale face. “Okay. Level two isn’t a mandatory order yet. It means gather your things, not run.”

“I’ll grab the emergency bag,” Calvin says, pulling up the fire map on his phone, jaw tight. “Maybe we head to Theo’s to be on the safe side.”

He pinches and drags the map, and I see the red perimeter marking the active burn. It’s grown a lot since midday.

“Yeah, Theo’s,” Maren says, kissing Henry’s forehead. “Let’s load the car and head out. If it turns out to be nothing, we’ll come back tomorrow and laugh about being silly.”

“I’m a huge fan of being silly,” I say, drawing a faint smile from her, though mostly I’m doing my best to hide the panic knotting in my chest.

The next thirty minutes are a blur. Calvin drags a heavy plastic bin out of the garage, labeled EMERGENCY PREP in his neat handwriting. Henry’s supplies, snacks, his favorite stuffed animal, pet food, family documents. I sprint down to the cabin and throw my things into a bag.

Outside, the sky over the ridge has turned a color I’ve never seen in person, a heavy, bruised amber that casts an eerie glow over the yard. Fine gray ash drifts past the porch railing like warm snow. The smell of woodsmoke hangs thick in the air.

Being from California, I’m no stranger to fire season. But I’ve been lucky enough never to be anywhere near one. The smoke, sure, plenty of summers where the air turned hazy and brown and everyone wore masks to the grocery store. But an evacuation notice is a first for me. Not something I ever expected in a little coastal town in Washington, of all places.

The drive across town passes in near silence. Henry chatters to his plush toy in his car seat, oblivious, while Laila pants between the front seats. Dark River feels like a town holding its breath. I pull out my phone and text Mateo, despite promising myself I wouldn’t distract him.

Mia: We’re heading to Theo’s to be on the safe side, so that’s where I’ll be. No need to reply to this, I just wanted you to know. I love you and BE CAREFUL!

I watch the message sit there, delivered, my thumb hovering over the screen. Then the status flips to read, a typing bubble appears, and relief floods through me.

Mateo: Good call. Theo’s is safer. Station 7 just arrived on scene. I’m with the crew.

I stare at the text until the screen dims. I’m with the crew. The words bring a strange mix of comfort and dread. I know the team so well at this point that they feel like family, and there’s no one I’d trust more to be up there with him. They’re the best at what they do, and they always have each other’s backs.

But now it feels like even more people to worry about.

James, only just back on the job after his arm healed. Ollie, still so young and so eager. Callum and his terrible jokes. Rebecca and all our long talks over coffee at the station. Barnes, with his wife Mary at home, worrying, I’m sure, the same way I am. I swallow hard.

Theo’s place sits on the far side of Dark River, right on the shoreline, a big shingled house with a lawn running down to the water. It’s the safest direction from the burn, opposite the mountain with the whole bay as a barrier, and the moment we pull up, the knot in my shoulders eases a little.

The air is clearer over here. The horizon is still hazy, but the water stretches out flat and gray, a boundary the flames couldn’t possibly cross.

Emma meets us at the door and pulls everyone into a hug.

“Come in, come in,” she says, ushering us inside while Gus, their scruffy terrier mix, goes berserk greeting Laila. “Theo’s been at the stove since noon. He stress-cooks whenever things get wild. Pretty sure there’s enough food in that kitchen to feed a whole station.”

“That might literally be the goal,” Theo calls out over the stove. “Hey, Mia. Grab a dish.”

The kitchen smells amazing, garlic and simmered spices, and Theo is standing over a huge stockpot with a wooden spoon in one hand and the fire map open on his phone in the other. A pan of cornbread rests on the counter beside a second stockpot.

Chloe comes bounding down the stairs in a race jacket and nearly knocks me over with a hug, while her sister follows close behind with a tablet. For an hour or so, everything feels almost normal.

We sit around the long table sharing bowls of food while the sky outside shifts from amber to deep rust. Chloe talks my ear off about her latest kart race, gesturing with her spoon as she describes pulling past a competitor on the inside turn. Calvin cuts up food for Henry. Emma and Maren talk quietly at the end of the table, glancing at their phones. Theo keeps getting up to check his stockpots.

I keep eyeing my phone, too. I promise myself I won’t look, and then I do anyway. Still nothing new from Mateo. Not that I expected it—he’s on the line, which is the whole point.

“He’s going to be fine,” Maren tells me, noticing my fifth glance at the screen. She reaches over to pat my arm. “He’s one of the best, right? The way the other firefighters talk about him, you’d think he was some kind of legend.”

“That’s what terrifies me,” I admit, laying the phone face down. “He has a habit of running straight into the thick of things.”

She nods, since there isn’t much else to say, and we carry on with the evening, playing cards, checking updates, helping Theo clean up, wrangling the kids through baths and bedtime. Once the kids are asleep upstairs, Theo turns on the local news, and any lingering sense of normal disappears.

The fire is on every channel, all of them live, aerial shots of the mountain above Dark River glowing like a furnace against the night sky. Bright lines of flame creep along the ridges, and a massive plume of smoke rises before bending hard toward the coast on the wind.