Page 25 of Cabin Fever With My First Flame

I check the timer on the dryer and note that there’s half an hour left on the cycle before I go trudging up the stairs. I make my way to the kitchen, where Finn has a steaming cup of coffee waiting for me. “You really are a hero,” I whisper, taking the mug from his hands. “Thank you.”

He chuckles. “You don’t have to whisper. The kids most likely won’t be up for another couple of hours, and Micah moved to my room so that we didn’t have to tiptoe around. Ava is out like a light and still asleep on the recliner.”

I smile and blow on the coffee. “She can sleep through a hurricane.”

Finn leans casually against the counter. “Did you get a lot of those?”

“Hurricanes? A few, but most of them were storms by the time they hit our area. Hurricane Sandy was the worst, but we evacuated for that one. We lived far enough inland that the flooding didn’t affect our home. The restaurant, on the other hand, took almost a month to clean up and most of our savings to get operational. It was another year before we were back in the black.”

“What was the name of your restaurant?” Finn asks.

“Eclecticity.”

Deep lines form between Finn’s eyes as he digests the name, no pun intended. “Interesting name for a restaurant. Although I wouldn’t know what kind of food you served with a name like that.”

“That’s the point, but Daniel thought it was a dumb name, too, and we fought for months over it. I had just graduated from culinary school and loved to make all kinds of ethnic foods. As you know, Mexican food is my favorite, but l also love therich spices of Indian food. Then there’s Southern comfort food, Asian fusion, Italian, and French. The list goes on and on and I couldn’t decide. I wanted to do them all, and so I did.”

“How?” Finn asks, genuinely curious how I could accomplish such a feat.

“Every month, we featured a new cuisine. Man, you should have seen the spice pantry. If a spice existed, we had it.”

Finn pours himself a glass of milk and unwraps the plate of chocolate chip cookies. There’s significantly less on the plate than when I gave it to him yesterday. “That name makes perfect sense with your menu. I think it’s great. Are you planning on doing something like that in Lake George?”

I grab one of the cookies and dunk it in my coffee. “Probably not. Running a restaurant of that magnitude took up so much of my time and energy. Even though I loved it, I love my girls more. I want to be able to spend time with them before it’s too late. I have my food truck for festivals and concert venues, but I was thinking of opening up a small bakery once I get the proceeds from the sale of the house.”

Finn dunks a cookie in his glass of milk, and his eyes roll back in his head as he savors the treat. “Best bweakfast evah!” he says with his mouth full. He finishes chewing and swallows before asking me, “If you started a bakery—which is an amazing idea, by the way—what would you call it?”

“You’re going to think it’s silly,” I say with downcast eyes. Daniel never liked my creative spin on anything but usually gave up the fight since he wasn’t the one making the dishes or doing the actual work in the kitchen. He managed the books because he excelled at numbers.

Finn sets down his glass and lifts my chin so that I can see his earnest expression. “It’s okay to be silly. It’s your shop. It’s your choice. Please tell me. I promise I won’t laugh.”

I mumble, “Baileys and Buttercream.”

“That’s a perfect name for a bakery, Bailey. Can I assume that buttercream icing will be a staple? I beg you to make it a staple because if you do, you have at least one customer for life,” Finn asks, his eyes sparkling with delight. I perfected my buttercream icing years ago because that was Finn’s favorite, and he has always wanted it on his birthday cakes. Even my pastry arts teacher raved about it.

“It might be,” I tease. “Enough about me. I want to hear about your adventures. I bet smoke jumping was exciting and dangerous.”

“It wasn’t like I moved to California and went right into jumping out of airplanes. I served as a firefighter for Lake Tahoe for ten years before I was trained as a smoke jumper. I’ve broken my leg twice when the winds shifted and have ended up landing in a tree on more than one occasion.”

I gasp. “Oh, no! Was that the worst injury you ever had?”

He shakes his head and pulls up his pant leg. “You’ll almost never see me wear shorts because of this.” Underneath his sweatpants is a mass of scar tissue from a severe burn. “It took several skin grafts to make it look this sexy.”

I reach out and touch it lightly. “Does it still hurt?”

He chuckles. “It hurt like the dickens when it happened six years ago, but I don’t feel anything there now. You could poke me with a needle, and I wouldn’t feel it.”

“What happened?” I ask.

Finn’s face falls. “We were fighting a fire at an abandoned lodge. A couple of kids thought it would be cool to camp out in the vacant building, but their campfire got out of control. They were trapped, and our team went in to rescue them. Jenny’s husband and the boys’ father, Josiah, was with me when a beam collapsed and fell on us both. I was able to get out from underneath the beam, but Josiah was knocked out cold. I had a choice to make. Save the kids or save Josiah. I couldn’t do both.”

I set my coffee cup down and wrap my arms around his waist, letting his tears fall on me as he embraces me back. He continues his story. “I thought that Jenny and the kids would hate me and blame me for his death once they found out. But they didn’t. Jenny said that Josiah would have done the same thing if the roles had been reversed. Josiah knew the risks. They all did. Jenny lost her husband, and the boys lost their father, and I got a constant reminder of my failure.”

I run my finger down Finn’s cheek and kiss the corner of his mouth. “You didn’t fail, Finn. I didn’t know Josiah, but if he loved firefighting as much as you do, then he died doing what he loved. Two lives were saved because of his actions and yours. Maybe those kids will go on to do something that will save countless more lives. You never know what God’s plan is.”

Finn releases me, so I let my arms drop down by my side. “Thanks, Bailey. When I said that Micah, Isaac, and Jonah had seen loss, now you know what I meant. Then Jenny died last year after getting really sick. I have contemplated giving up being a firefighter so that they don’t have to endure any more loss.”

Micah walks in at that moment and heads straight for the coffee pot. He reaches for a mug and sets it on the counter before turning and facing Finn. “Loss is a part of life, Finn. If you give up what you love most, then a piece of you will die inside. You won’t be Finn anymore, but rather a shell of the man we know, love, and respect.”

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