Page 26 of Return By Fire

“After the stories Kara told me, I just thought you had a thing for flamingoes.”

He’s indignant. “Since I was a Lumberjack? Wait, do you know what that is?”

“Of course I’ve heard all about the ‘Jacks’ from Kara—with Maris’s colorful commentary. There was one particular occasion where your friend Jennings was speculated on at a crucial moment.” I prod his memory.

“Oh god. That’s right. Kevin’s delivery.” The abject horror in Jed’s voice has me chuckling.

“Listen, it could have been me.”

“It should have been you since you were the one telling her to push.”

Recalling the feeling of holding Kevin in those precious moments, I relent, “Kara could have ordered someone to snatch my head from my body and I’d have given it willingly.”

“It was that beautiful?”

“Both of them were—are,” I correct myself.

I hear a creak and groan of a chair as Jed settles in. “What was it like for her? Was Kara in a lot of pain?”

“Truth?”

“Please.”

“She’d do it again in a heartbeat if the right man came along,” I share, shaking my head to clear it. “Kevin is her whole world.”

“And yours?”

“In a different way.”

“What about your parents?” Jed asks curiously. “I know neither of you speak to them, but I’m surprised they haven’t approached her since Kevin’s, what? Almost eleven.”

I freeze, not from cold but from the pervasive iciness that invades my blood at the mention of our parents. “They died a few years ago, Jed.”

Silence.

“We—my station—got called to their place,” I start. My nails dig into my pants. “You know the worst part?”

“What?” His voice has lost all that lovely laughter that was warming me as I sit in the cool Florida night.

“I didn’t feel a damn thing. I’d already lost them twice by that point—first when they cut me out of their lives for coming out and second when they cut Kara off after she came back from Alaska.”

“Burning was too good for them,” is Jed’s immediate response. It does something to me. I’m not certain what.

Not yet.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“That place is disgusting,” I snap at my local Realtor, Ivy.

“What you want is beachfront, what you can afford isn’t,” she explains to me as if she doesn’t have to say anymore. Maybe she doesn’t.

I slide into her SUV and contemplate the cityscape as we leave downtown Jacksonville. The seven bridges that hover over the St. John’s River and lead into the heart of the city offer some incredible boating opportunities, I muse. But still, “There wasn’t a floor. It just had packed dirt.”

“If I recall from the listing, the floor was original from Ireland. The owner took it with them.”

“You have to be kidding.” Knowing she’s not.

Ivy twists her head as we pass beneath the bridge connecting Wolfson’s Hospital to Nemours Children’s Clinic. “I wish I was. I’m not above admitting I showed that to you as a Hail Mary.”

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