Page 45 of Until We Come Home

Across the bay, the photographer claps his hands, shouting for the engine company, while the stylist finally gives up on fixing James's collar with an exasperated sigh.

Rebecca blows out a breath. "Alright, time to get this circus over with. They want us up first."

Mia tilts her head toward her, eyes full of mischief. "So, are you going shirtless too, Bec? Giving the people what they want?"

"Hardly," Rebecca says, adjusting her cuffs. "I'm going for more of a Rosie the Riveter, badass commander energy."

She rolls her sleeve up over her shoulder and flexes her impressive forearm at us, and Mia and I both laugh. Then Callum yells my name from over by the rig, and the photographer’s assistant is already pointing at my shirt and making a lifting motion, and Mia leans back against the bumper with her coffee and her sunglasses and the flask in her pocket, settling in to enjoy every second of this.

“Go on,” she says. “Give the people what they want.”

Saturday night, I’m on Front Street with Walt, one of the local fire marshals, a Dark River native who’s been running safety on these kinds of setups for nearly thirty years. He’s a broad, bearded guy with a worn clipboard tucked under one arm and a radio on one hip and a flashlight on the other like an old-school gunslinger.

We walk the line of flame bars together while the streetlights hum overhead. There are six of them stretched out along the curb between the hardware store and the bakery—heavy steel pipes connected to propane lines that run back to a bank of tanks on a cart behind the building, where Walt’s assistant will be operating the control board.

Tonight, for the big night sequence in Lark’s album film, they’re going to shoot six-foot columns of fire into the dark on cue while Mia and the rest of the troupe move in front of them, with the dark inlet as the backdrop. It’s a cool setup, and I volunteered to handle safety supervision since the department needed a firefighter on scene. So here I am, back on shift in Dark River for the night.

Walt runs through his checklist line by line, and I follow along, double-checking the pressure valves and making sure nobody’s wandered into the clearance zones.

"You're thorough," he says, giving an appreciative nod as he checks off another box. “I’ve always liked that about you, Mateo.”

"Well, I like my fires where they're supposed to be," I say.

"Most of the volunteer guys I get in these little towns stand by the truck and eat donuts," Walt says, making a note on his clipboard. "You're walking my lines like you're about to write me up."

"I might," I say. "Depends how good the donuts are."

He lets out a booming laugh that echoes off the quiet storefronts, then signs off on my safety sheet while I sign his. Half the town has turned out, packed in behind the barricades at both ends of the street and spilling along the sidewalks, watching the crew set up the production lights. In a town this small, this is pretty much like the Oscars rolling into Front Street.

Not to mention the fact that Lark is universally loved around here, so having a legit celebrity be from their town is a big deal. She’s got that whole bartender-turned-follow-your-dreams-singer thing that people can’t help rooting for.

I spot the whole Midnight family sprinkled through the crowd. Calvin’s in there with Henry riding tall on his shoulders, chatting with the owner of the hardware store, and right next to them Theo and Emma are deep in conversation with Dominic and Brooke. I saw Maren earlier in the trailer with Lark.

The ladies from the book club are here too, and they even brought folding chairs, so they’re set up on the sidewalk like it’s the Fourth of July parade. I head back toward our rig and see Jack sitting on the running board, giving me a quick nod as I approach.

He flew in this morning to support Lark, fresh off another massive victory on the European circuit. Ferrari’s having an incredible run with him at the wheel, though you’d never guess it watching him sit on a bumper in Dark River, dressed in a faded hoodie and sipping a bottled water.

Lark’s tucked away in the wardrobe trailer behind us. She’ll be singing to playback for the final sequence, but the dancers are going first so the director can capture the full group movement.

“Everything set with the propane?” Jack asks as I settle onto the metal step beside him.

“Checked and double-checked,” I say. “No one’s going up in flames, and the downtown should remain standing.”

“Sounds like a win to me,” he says, taking a sip. “You still good for the lake trip later this week?”

“Swapped shifts at the station, so I’m all cleared,” I say. “Calvin made it sound like a lot of fun.”

“We spent every summer on the water growing up, but it’s been years since all five of us had the exact same weekend open. It’s going to be great. Plus, having an EMT around is always handy, I think.”

I laugh at that. “Yeah, especially with you around.”

“Hey, I’m a fully matured adult these days,” Jack insists, his brown eyes glinting with mischief, and that sets us both off.

Jack’s always good company, the kind of guy who makes you forget he spends half his life driving multi-million dollar race cars or getting mobbed by fans at international airports. I’m about to say something back when the trailer door opens behind the rig and Mia steps down onto the street.

I haven’t seen her since this afternoon, when she was eating a granola bar over the hood of the Jeep. Now she’s in a short, flowing dress made of some pale, silvery fabric that catches the production lights like liquid moonlight, the loose skirt swinging around the tops of her thighs when she moves.

She looks like an otherworldly goddess, something that slipped out of the sky and landed on Front Street by mistake. She glides toward the camera track where she pauses to talk with the director and run through a few warm-up stretches, her slim frame moving with a grace that doesn’t even seem humanly possible.