Chapter 10
The scene was scarlet and orange against the dark sky, and weirdly, the first thing Jo noticed about the scene was all the snow melting in a perimeter around the building as the heat expanded. Dennison shouted orders, the senior on site until the second engine arrived, and the fire was bad enough that a third rolled up not long after.
The old cinema, long abandoned, was self-destructing in front of their eyes. Only the main part of it, where the screens would have been, was intact enough for Askett to immediately suggest it be searched. Old buildings like that, in gentrification areas, were the kind of places that homeless souls chose to sleep.
“It went up like a bomb,” the guard said, nursing cuts to his cheek where he’d been hit by flying debris. His eyes were wide, and Jo didn’t need training to see shock. “I was walking back, and it just exploded.”
“Sir, is there anyone inside?”
The guard blinked, shook his head, “I don’t know… Sometimes yes… I didn’t think it hurt to let him sleep in there.”
Askett leaped into action. “Dennison, take Glievens and Smith, check out the back, find us a way in.”
Jo ran after Dennison, Smith by her side, adrenaline pumping, their ingress blocked by two solid metal fire exit doors. The chains outside were intact, but that meant nothing. Just because the door was blocked didn’t mean a person looking for somewhere safe to sleep hadn’t got in another way, probably by an ingress destroyed by the initial explosion.
Askett’s voice echoed in her ear. “Dennison?”
Dennison backed away from the chained door and gestured for Jo and Smith to come forward with the bolt cutters. Between them, they had the doors open. They were taking a chance—the fire was right there—but the door was cool to touch, the snow unmelted where it had piled up against the door. An explosion spoke to there being escaped gas or a buildup of some kind of toxic material.
There was no fire yet that far back, and Dennison was first in, Jo and Smith on his heels.
“Stay close,” he ordered as smoke thickened deeper in the structure. The maze of doors and corridors was endless, smoke making it difficult to see, but it was Jo who spotted the prone form of a man. Unmoving, his eyes wide, it was obvious he was dead, not from the fire, but the fact his head was beaten in and the bloody mess of it was all around him. The clothes he was wearing marked him as a street guy—long winter coat, and layers upon layers of material.
Fuck knew what they were walking into.
Dennison reported what he’d found.
“Get out of there, Dennison,” Askett ordered. “Fire is heading your way.”
They backtracked. Dennison scooped up the body of the dead guy, and all three of them made their way through the smoke and out of the open doors. They went straight to the front of the building, Jo watching the flames that leaped up to meet the sky, wincing as the entire structure groaned and swayed, imploding.
She glanced at the crowd that had gathered, likely from the new multi-million-dollar apartment building opposite the burning cinema. She recognized one of the guys; he’d visited the firehouse a while back with Kat’s brother Loki.
Drago? Was that his name? All she could recall was that he was the goalie on the Dragons team. He was front and center of the small group of people, chatting with one of the cops, but when he spotted her, he called her over.
“Hey, sexy,” he said, completely inappropriately, and rather loudly.
She shook her head, and he looked chagrined.
“Sorry,” he mouthed. Mitch was reassuring that the fire wouldn’t spread to their million dollar apartments and he turned to listen.
A new crew arrived almost as fast as the cops did, and the team from the firehouse spent a good few hours getting the fire under control and damping down the area. The crowd dispersed, and she didn’t see anything more of Drago.
The medics checked their dead guy. At first look, he’d died from something heavy being used on his head and face.
The guard looked like he was going to be sick. “Eddie,” he murmured. “Never hurt a fly, just wanted to be warm.” Then he seemed to realize what he’d said in earshot of the police. He was admitting that he’d turned a blind eye to a homeless guy using one of the buildings he was supposed to be guarding, so he shut down, changed his story when it came to the cops, and said he hadn’t known a thing.
Jo felt unaccountably sad that officially the body had no name, and exchanged a look with Dennison, who warned her off with a shake of his head. She clearly had a lot to learn.
Daylight came, and so did mid-morning, and it was lunchtime before they made it back to the firehouse. Exhausted, and feeling introspective and sad, she wasn’t surprised when Dennison cornered her in the bathrooms.
“I passed on the intel to the cops—the name and what the guard said. We’ll let him work it out. But probie, you don’t go gabbing about shit you hear if it isn’t relevant to the fire itself.”
“I don’t get why.” And she didn’t; Eddie deserved a name.
“What if the guard realizes that you spoke out? You want to make enemies?”
She drew herself up tall. “Just because I’m a woman—”
“Fuck that,” Dennison said, and the anger was real. “This has nothing to do with being a woman; it’s about making it personal. This is a team, and by doing that we make sure all intel is from the firehouse, not a team member.”
“Sorry,” she apologized, because the insistent push of fear about being treated differently had somehow moved front and center.
Dennison clapped her on the shoulder. “It’s always bad to lose someone, probie, but at least we gave Eddie his name.”
“That’s all I wanted, sir.”
Dennison looked so damn serious. “Get a shower, go home for Christmas, you did well.”
Even after two showers, Jo could still smell smoke on herself, and wouldn’t her mom love that?
“You okay?” Mitch asked as he sprayed deodorant liberally. Like her, he probably wanted to cover up the smell of fire that pervaded his skin.
“Yeah,” Jo said, and pulled on her BFD sweatshirt. “That was intense.”
“Good work tonight, prospect,” Mitch said with a wide grin and a wink. “We’re over at Bert’s for beer. You coming?”
“Can’t tonight; I need to go now to get back for Christmas.”
There was a text from Alex on her cell. He wasn’t playing tonight, but she knew his parents were at his place.
Actually, she knew a lot about Alex and what he did, because he told her, from texting her to say his coffee machine was broken, which was cruel and unusual punishment according to him, right up to a play by play of a game they’d played in Florida. He texted her good night, he texted her good morning, he told her about places he wanted to take her, and about Fly, who said the new menu was hanging in there alongside the old favorites. She texted him back, told him about things that happened at the firehouse, about pulling a double shift, and exhaustion.
Going home now, she’d texted. Ready for Christmas Xx. The x’s were a promise, because right then she’d like nothing more than to be kissing Alex. Anything but going home.
The text she’d just received simply said, Drive safe, and there were the requisite kisses at the end.
Just a shame that was the only kind of kissing she was getting from him.
Rose was waiting for her at the front door, coming out as soon as she parked on the gravel drive.
“Mom is in one of her moods,” Rose warned, wrapping her arms around her chest. “Pissed at you.”
Fuck, that was the last thing Jo needed. “Already? I’m not even inside.”
“She saw the news.”
Jo lifted out her bag and straightened her spine. The best way to deal with her mom was to fake confidence and hope to hell it worked.
“Josephine,” her mom exclaimed from where she stood dramatically clinging to the banister at the bottom of the wide, curving stairs. She was always good at standing just so, with the perfect expression. Hell, she’d have made a wonderful tragic actress if she’d ever chosen to work at anything but being the perfect society wife. “You’re safe,” she added, and pressed a trembling hand to her chest.
Jo wanted to launch into a speech about how she was part of a highly-trained team. She didn’t. Instead, she crossed to Iris Glievens and kind of half-embraced her. It was impossible to pull her into a full hug, because her mom didn’t do that kind of thing; she liked to air-kiss, but there was no way Jo was doing that.
“Did you not shower?” Iris asked, and added another dramatic flutter of her hands. “Why must you put yourself in danger? Don’t you know it would destroy me to lose another person in my life?”
And that was the rub. Jo’s irritation at her mom vanished, because Dad hadn’t been gone that long, and Iris was in mourning.
“I was perfectly safe, Mom,” Jo reassured her.
“Rosemary and I saw the news.”
Jo decided to change the subject. “Am I in my old room?”
Rose nodded and took the cue, picking up Jo’s bag. “The Hetheringtons are here at eight,” she reminded her.
Jo went with the pantomime. “I need a bath.”
Iris seemed undecided between laboring the whole my-daughter-is-going-to-die thing and wanting her to smarten up for dinner.
“Go—wear something beautiful. Keith will be so happy to see you.”
“Keith is coming?” Keith was the son of friends of the family, and he was a complete prick.
Oh, joy.
“He’s home this Christmas. Isn’t that wonderful?” Iris gave her first real smile. “He was asking about you.”
“Why would he do that?” Jo asked, “He’s married with twins.”
“Such tragedy,” Iris murmured, and wouldn’t quite look her in the eye. “He had to get a divorce.”
Jo didn’t want to hear any more. How any woman put up with Keith, she didn’t know.
“I need that bath,” she said, walking past her mom.
“Tonight is important to us, Josephine, our first real event; please try as hard as I am and wear something nice,” Iris pleaded as they went by.
“I will, Mom.”
Only when she and Rose were safely in Jo’s old room did the full story come out, Rose telling it with limited detail. “I heard he was fucking around on her—Keith, I mean—so Esme filed, and he’s wearing his heartbroken expression like people will believe it wasn’t his fault. He’s on about wanting sole custody of the twins, but he’s fucked, because Esme has things on video, and her dad is worth millions more than Keith’s is.”
Jo listened. She’d almost forgotten how money worked out there: who had more, who’d lost what, and what each step meant in social mobility. In the city, working as she did, she’d lost so much of the shit she’d had to learn as a kid. She stripped to her underwear and went into the bathroom. It was as ostentatious as her bedroom, and even though she often experienced a stab of guilt that she should be more grateful, she hated the overwhelming feeling of everything pressing down on her every time she stepped into that house. She started the water—it took some time to fill the huge bath—and went back into her bedroom. Rose was still there; they hadn’t seen each other in a while, so they had a lot to catch up on.
Rose went straight for the jugular. “Tell me about your hockey player.”
“He’s not my hockey player,” Jo insisted.
“So this text means nothing?” Rose asked innocently, and handed over Jo’s iPhone, which clearly showed the first part of a new message from Alex. The message was innocuous—Text me when you get there x—but Rose was grinning like an idiot. “There’s an x.”
“We’re just texting.”
“But you had a date, right? He took you to that restaurant. And I liked him.”
“You warned him off.”
Rose crossed her legs and rested back on the pillow nest she’d made on Jo’s bed. “I was being a good sister, but he didn’t back down. I loved that. And he was respectful; I liked that too, same as Dad would have.”
Jo wished Rose hadn’t brought Dad into the conversation; it was the second Christmas they’d been without him, although last year he’d still been alive, or as alive as you could be in a coma. Last Christmas they’d been in shock. This Christmas, for some reason, Mom was set on pulling their family back into the social schedule.
“How many people are here tonight?”
Rose sighed. “I lost count at twenty-nine.”
“Tell me about college,” Jo demanded and, stripping the rest of the way, she climbed into the bath, lowering herself into the mess of bubbles and heat.
Bliss.
“I want to talk about your hockey player.”
“Tell me about college,” Jo repeated, but added a smile.
It’s good,” Rose said. “I’m not staying at the company, I’ve made a decision about grad school—physics.”
“Gah,” Jo said, and slid beneath the water. Rose had inherited their dad’s freaky brain, and would no doubt become a doctor in something amazing to do with physics. There were days when Jo envied the ease with which her sister approached education, then she remembered how she’d hated science her entire school career and felt blessed that her love for art was one of the things she’d inherited from Mom. Not a big call for doctors of physics working as firefighters. She popped back up out of the water, seeing that Rose had moved and was on the bathroom floor, her back against the cabinet.
“What did Mom say?”
“I haven’t told her,” Rose admitted. “I have a place at MIT, but is it wrong that Massachusetts is way too close and I want to enter Stanford?”
“I had it easier; you were still at home, still her baby,” Jo said, smoothing back her wet hair and squeezing shampoo onto her hand. “She’ll hate that you’re leaving, but she’ll have to get used to it.”
“She suggested yesterday that there was always the company to come back to if I wanted it, but when she said it, she sounded so sad.”
“She always hoped one of us would carry it on, even if Dad knew we wouldn’t.”
“There’s been noise that the management team there would be happy to buy Mom out.”
“Really?”
“She hasn’t said anything, but yeah, it’s out there.”
Jo lathered up the shampoo, not sure she wanted to hear the reply. Rose was destined for very different things than being a figurehead at an engineering company that was already running independently under a solid management team.
The times they had done this, sat here talking, as kids growing up, were too numerous to mention. They’d discussed so many important things, from boys to lipstick colors, but this was possibly the deepest discussion Jo had ever had, naked and covered in soap.
“I want the choice to make my own decisions about this, like you did.”
“You have that choice, Ro,” she said, going back to the childhood nickname she’d had for her little sister. “You can do anything you want.”
“But Mom… She looks so…sad all the time. What will she do if I’m not here?”
“I’ll visit Mom more.”
Rose sighed dramatically. “We really need to talk about Mom. She’s in this huge house, with all this money, a company she wants no part of…you think we should talk to her about selling?”
Jo rinsed off the shampoo as she considered what to say.
“That would be like cutting off her left arm. She’s shown no interest in wanting to move on or back toward her sisters.”
“Aunty Vi called me and said that Mom had spoken to her about maybe moving closer to them.”
“Really?” That was a first. Her mom actually allowing that she could live anywhere other than in her mansion in Appletree Point.
“But she’s looking to me to maybe carry on what Dad did. So can you tell me how to handle this one? Because I don’t know what to do.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Jo said. “And you should go to grad school.”
Rose looked hopeful. “You’ll really talk to her?”
God help me, Jo thought to herself, but she wasn’t going to leave Rose in a situation like that. “Promise.”
Rose shuffled a bit and opened the large cupboard holding all kinds of shampoos and conditioners. They’d shared the bathroom since they were little, two doors, one to her bedroom, one to Rose’s, and the cupboard had been a space of magic.
“Try this.” Rose tossed a bottle at Jo, who fluffed catching it and cursed as the bottle hit the water, sending a fountain of soap up at her face. When she’d wiped herself off, she looked at the label. Her favorite conditioner from when she was small. The label said “no tears”, and it was specially formulated for kids. Rose was grinning at her, holding out her hand to catch the return throw.
But suddenly, remembering the gorgeous smell of strawberries, Jo squeezed half a bottle into her hand and worked it into her hair, sitting back in the bath with the conditioned weight in a messy pile on top of her head.
Rose moved to lie next to the bath, her head on her hands. “Keith will love that you smell of strawberries,” she teased.
Splashing water at Rose was very satisfying.