“I get that,” I said, and I really did. I wasn’t sure I agreed with it, but I got it.

“I’ve never told anyone the whole story like that,” Owen said then. “I can’t tell you how strange it feels.” He let out a big breath.

“You were a kid, you know. Kids do stupid stuff all the time. It was an accident.”

“That may be true. But my uncle Ryan is still dead. My dad’s only brother. Because of me.”

I wondered if maybe he was emphasizing the wrong parts of the story. “That’s just such a burden for a kid to carry.”

“I’m not a kid anymore.”

“For anyone to carry.”

He nodded. “Anyway, that’s why I can’t quit the fire department. That’s why I have to win that spot—even though I know you deserve it more. If the captain gives it to me, I have to take it. This is my dad’s dream. And I have to make sure he gets it.”

“Maybe your dad’s dream is just for you to be happy.”

The rookie looked at me like I was so wrong it was almost cute. “Nope. Firefighter first, happy second.”

“You are talking to a person who has watched you turn pale, faint, or throw up on every medical call. Sometimes all three.”

He let out a long breath. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“Well, first of all, I’d find yourself a therapist.”

“Did that already,” he said, like he’d already checked it off the list. “Third grade. I didn’t speak at all for almost a year after the fire, and they made me see a grief expert twice a week.”

“Did you talk about what happened?”

“Parts of what happened.”

“The important parts?”

He shook his head.

“I think,” I said then, “you should start thinking about forgiveness.”

He raised his eyebrows like I was crazy. “Are you saying you think I need to tell my dad?”

“Have you thought about it?”

The rookie shook his head, like, Nuh-uh. Nope. No way.

I shrugged. “I don’t know that you need to tell him, necessarily.”

He frowned. “But you think I need him to forgive me?”

I shook my head. “No. I think you need to forgive yourself.”

He was quiet, as if that thought had never occurred to him. Then he said, “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“It just so happens I could help you with that. My mother has been educating me on the joys and challenges of forgiveness.”

He couldn’t tell if I was joking.

“It’s easier than it sounds,” I said. “It’s more a shift in thinking than anything else. You have to think about the person you’re angry at—in this case, your eight-year-old self—and try to be compassionate with him. Empathy soothes anger, you know,” I said, suddenly feeling very wise. “Then you have to work to find some good things that came out of what happened, even despite all the bad. And then you have to decide to let it go.”

“That’s good advice,” he said.

“I am full of good advice.”

“Doesn’t really change anything about our situation, though, does it?”

“Not at the moment,” I said. “No.”

“You still want this job, and I still need this job.”

I kept doing that: forgetting who he was. I nodded, like, That’s right. “We’re still enemies.”

He frowned at the word choice. “Friendly rivals,” he corrected.

“To-the-death combatants,” I said.

“Sparring partners.”

“Look,” I said, “no matter what we were before, now we’re enemies. We’re competing for the same position.”

“You really love that job, huh?”

“What’s not to love?”

“I don’t know,” he said, looking out the window. “The blood? The guts? The diarrhea?”

“The heroism? The camaraderie? The saving people’s lives?”

“Sure,” he said. “There’s that.”

I looked him over. “I’ve seen worse rookies,” I said.

He gave a nod, like, Maybe. “I’m throwing up less often now,” he said. “But you’re the one they’re going to keep.”

I honked out a laugh. “You’re the one they’re going to keep.”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “The captain’s not going to choose me.”

“I think he is.”

He shook his head. “Why would he do that?”

“Because.” I shrugged. “Because you come from a long line of brave heroes. Because the captain knows your dad. Because you are fun and friendly and easy to get along with. Because you look like a firefighter—like a Norman Rockwell painting of a firefighter, actually, crossed with a GQ cover. And because the captain doesn’t think women should be in the fire service.”

“He can’t think that.”

“He does. He told my old captain, back in Austin. They only took me because they were desperate.”

“That was before he’d seen you in action. There’s no way he still thinks that now.”

“Wanna bet?”

“He knows you’re good. He knows you’re better than half the guys in there.”

“Half of them?” I said. “All of them.”

“You could dead-lift Case under the table.”

“Anybody could dead-lift Case under the table.”

“You deserve that job,” Owen said.

“I do,” I agreed. “But you’re the one who’s going to get it.”

Twenty-one

A FEW DAYS later, just before dawn, the stalker threw a brick through my mother’s kitchen window.

That really happened.

It was a shift morning. Still dark out. My alarm hadn’t even gone off yet. The shattering sound woke me up, and I sprinted down two flights of stairs in my bare feet only to stop short at the kitchen threshold when I saw glass pieces glittering all over the counter and the floor.

Diana was right behind me.

The sound of it had been shockingly loud. So loud, in fact, that it woke Josie next door. She showed up in her robe not long after, after I’d found some flip-flops and started sweeping up the mess. Diana watched from the doorway, and Josie watched from the back door.

My mom’s kitchen window, in her historic little home, had not been safety glass. I found razor-sharp shards in every nook and cranny, even one impaled in a loaf of banana bread on the far counter. I swept three times, dry-mopped twice, and then wet-mopped, and I’m sure it took me a while, but I don’t remember time passing. Anger, I think, burned away all sense of time from that memory—and all details other than the way my hands started aching from their death-clamp on the broom handle.

Only when I’d gone over every surface did I let Diana and Josie step in.

“I don’t think it’s ever been this clean in here,” Diana said.

“It was my stalker,” I said, pointing at the brick on the counter.

Josie peered over. “At this hour?” She frowned.