Page 21 of Single Mom for the Firemen

“It’s so good to see you,” she tells me. “I wasn’t sure you were going to come today. I thought I might have overstepped the line last night, turning up at your house and all…”

“You did,” I reply. No point in playing with her—she’s not stupid. “But that hasn’t put me off coming here to talk to you. Though…it probably should.”

She chuckles. “Come on in, I think I owe you a coffee,” she tells me, waving her hand to get me to follow her. I do as I’m told. Being in this place without the stress of the fire alarm going off or my brothers around gives it a far more peaceful vibe.

“Where’s Callie?” I ask, waiting to spot the girl emerging from downstairs or out in the garden.

“My friend Lara came around to take her out for the afternoon,” she replies with a fond smile. “The two of them haven’t seen each other in a while and, well, I just couldn’t bear to keep them from each other.”

I smile too. I’m glad she’s got friends willing to step in for her, though I can’t help but wonder why she’s out here all on her own.

“Anyway, come sit,” she tells me, once she has the coffee in my hand. “I’ve got so much to ask you…”

She leads me through to the living room, which has a bright window on one side that looks out into the forest. Sunshine streams through, casting the whole place in a warm, comforting glow.

“So,” she begins, picking up a notebook that she’s left sitting on the table, and flipping it open. “I wanted to start with asking you about what happened last night, when you were called out?”

“There was a fire at a campsite,” I reply, figuring at least I can tell her that much. “Couple of kids showing off, and their tent caught fire. Nothing more to it than that.”

“Right, right,” she murmurs as she scribbles down a note on the paper before her. “And you get a lot of calls like this, around this time of year?”

“It’s going to get worse as the summer draws on,” I reply. “I always hope that this will be the year that people start getting their shit together and actually acting as though this place is something they should give a damn about, but every time, I’m let down.”

I reach for my coffee and wince slightly as I stretch the skin over the back of my right arm. It’s where I was singed last night—not badly, and I hardly noticed it till I got home. My suit wasn’t done up right in the rush—probably why the hose wouldn’t work when I needed it to—and when the fire briefly spread to the trees beside us, it didn’t take long for it to burn me.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, tilting her head to the side. And then her eyes widen when she sees the mark on my arm.

“Oh my God!” she gasps, leaping to her feet and rushing over to me. She drops down on her knees and inspects the wound, and then stands up again.

“You need someone to bandage that. Did that happen last night? You should have gone to the hospital…”

She continues to speak to me as she leaves the room, and I shake my head.

“It’s not that bad,” I call back. “I’ve had worse.”

“Well,” she announces as she arrives back in the room with an emergency medical pack in one hand. “I’m not going to let you walk out of here like the walking dead. Stick your arm out, I’m going to wash it…”

She stoops down next to me again, and I can tell there’s no way she’s going to let me leave unless she feels like she’s done something to help me. I wonder if this has anything to do with making up for appearing at our house in the middle of the night. The closest I’ll get to a direct apology.

She smooths a disinfectant wipe along the purplish-red streak on my arm—it stings, and I suck in a sharp breath.

“Oh, it’s not that bad,” she protests, glancing up at me. “I’ve seen worse.”

“You’re the one fussing over it. I said it was fine.”

“Yeah, and it will be, by the time you walk out of this place,” she agrees. She reaches for a bandage and carefully wraps it tight around my arm, tying it in a knot on one side to keep it in place.

“There,” she remarks, sitting back on her heels. She lets her hand linger on my arm for a second longer than she needs to, and then draws back, as though she was barely aware of what she was doing.

“Thank you,” I murmur as I inspect her work. “You’ve done a pretty good job. You a nurse or something?”

She laughs as she goes to replace the medical kit.

“No, I’m just the mother to a particularly adventurous five-year-old,” she replies, coming back in to sit down next to me. There’s something about being this close to her that feels almost…dangerous, like something I should be careful with.

“You really just walk around with burns like that?” she asks me softly, and to my surprise, she sounds genuinely sad.

I shrug. “We’re used to it.”

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