Page 32 of Single Mom for the Firemen

She falls silent for a long moment, the only sound our footsteps on the path below us.

“I know how it feels, to lose someone you thought would be a part of your future,” she murmurs finally. “When Johnny, Callie’s dad, died, I just…I didn’t know how I was meant to go on. I didn’t know if I even could. It all just felt like…like somethingthat must have been happening to someone else, because I couldn’t make sense of it happening to me and my daughter…”

She trails off. I can hear the pain in her voice, and I hate hearing her like that. I wish there was something I could do to lift the weight of this from her shoulders, to give her some kind of respite from whatever she’s still carrying, but I know I can’t.

“It’s so amazing that the three of you were fostered by the same parents, though,” she remarks, instantly trying to turn the conversation around to something a little more positive. “I hear it can be hard, making sure all the siblings end up in the same place…”

I smile slightly, and nod.

“Yeah, Jamie always liked a challenge,” I chuckle. “When she saw the three of us, all dumped into the foster system after our parents died, she really shouldn’t have taken us in. She knew we were too old for her. There were too many of us for that little house, and we’d been through too much shit as it was, but she didn’t let that stop her. Told me that when she saw the three of us together, she knew nobody else would take us, and she had to do the right thing.”

“She sounds like a hell of a woman…”

“She was,” I agree. “So was Theo. They were both…I don’t know, they both just got us. Even when we were struggling, even when it seemed impossible for us to settle, they just kept things steady and made a home for all three of us when we needed it most.”

I swallow hard, blinking away the slight fuzz that pricks at my eyes when I speak about them.

“Can I ask…can I ask what happened?” she murmurs softly.

I shoot a look over at her. “Is this part of an interview?”

Her eyes widen, and she shakes her head at once. “No. God, no, Jake! I would never—I’m just trying to talk to you, that’s all. One person to another.”

I study her face for a long moment, trying to get a read on whether I believe her—but the utter sincerity as she stares back at me tells me I have nothing to worry about. She might be a journalist, but this isn’t some attempt to squeeze information out of me. She just wants to help.

And God knows I probably need it.

I pick up the pace a little so we can keep Callie in sight, and fix my eyes ahead as I start to talk.

“It was the wildfires, ten years ago,” I mutter. “They lived not far from the forest—they always used to bring us up here when we were kids. And when it started…shit, they should have gotten out. Everyone else was evacuated, but I guess they thought they could stick around and help. They dug their heels in and stayed, and all of us were abroad. We were still in the SEALs back then, and we couldn’t force them to somewhere safer, and…”

I can’t finish that sentence. I don’t want to. Even though I know it’s the truth, the thought of admitting it out loud is almost more than I can take. I’m still trying to make sense of it, all these years later—angry at them for not leaving when they did, devastated that we lost them, lost the house that was a home to us for so long.

“We came back as soon as we heard,” I continue, after a long pause. “We went back to the house, the house we lived in with them, and it was in ashes. Nothing left. Nothing left of the legacythey had made, just…everything had been wiped away by the fire.”

“Jesus, Jake, I’m so sorry,” she tells me, her voice laced with fervency. “You…you should never have had to go through something like that. None of you. Not after…”

She shakes her head, the enormity of what I have just said to her clearly more than she can wrap her head around. Once she has taken it in, she asks another question.

“Is that why you came out here?” she wonders aloud. “I mean, out to the woods, to help people?”

I nod. “Yeah,” I admit. “We pooled the money we got from our pensions to build the cabin, and we moved out into the woods to take care of this place. Make sure nothing like what happened to our parents happened to anyone else, not ever again.”

The words emerge with more sharpness than I intended—even all these years into doing this work, I’m still as certain that this is where I belong as ever, maybe even more so. I know Killian and Mason are a little more chill about the whole thing, but they don’t carry the same guilt I do—the guilt that I should have been there to take care of my parents, the guilt that I could have done more to save them.

“That’s amazing,” she murmurs, shaking her head. “Turning that pain into something so positive…there aren’t many people in the world who could do that, you know.”

I glance at her out of the corner of my eye.

“Yeah, well,” I reply. “It’s the least we can do. This place needs protecting. And if nobody else is going to step up to do it, we have to.”

At last, we turn the final corner of the trail that leads down to the back of the cabin. Callie comes to a halt and turns around, waving frantically as though we may not have seen it.

“I can see it, baby!” Vanessa calls back. “You want to go inside and get some juice?”

Callie flashes her a thumbs-up and then rushes toward the house, vanishing inside the back door a moment later. Vanessa comes to a halt at the bottom of the path, right where the yard meets the forest, and gazes up at me for a moment.

“I…thank you for telling me all of that,” she murmurs to me softly. “I know it can’t be easy to put it all into words like that, but…”

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