Diana chimed in. “Who has that kind of energy?”

It was appalling. And incomprehensible.

Josie decided to make coffee—checking the inside of the pot for glass shards first. “How much anger does this guy have to get up before dawn to go terrorize somebody?”

“Nothing gets me up before eight,” Diana said, lifting up the brick to get a look. Then she added, “Other than terrorism.”

“Careful,” I said.

“There’s a note,” Diana said, turning it over. Sure enough, there was a note rubber-banded around it.

I just stood there, staring. Did I want to read it? I wasn’t sure. Of course, that’s what he wanted us to do—and part of me didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of scaring us more than he already had. What if we ignored him? What if we refused to be terrorized?

I wasn’t sure of the best course of action.

Finally, Diana made the decision for me. She pulled off the rubber band, unfolded the note, and read it out loud. “It says, ‘Just quit you wore.’” She looked up, frowning. “You wore what? What did you wear?”

Josie leaned over to take a look. “I think he means ‘whore.’”

“Oh!” Diana said, checking the note again. “He forgot the H!”

“Not a great speller,” I said.

“Not great at punctuation, either,” Josie said, holding it up as evidence. “There should be a comma after ‘quit.’”

“And probably an exclamation point at the end,” Diana said. “For emphasis.”

Josie took another look at it. “Not going to win any prizes for penmanship, either. That T looks just like an X.”

And then Diana and Josie started laughing, that odd, minor-key laughing that you do sometimes when things are the opposite of funny. But laughing all the same.

“So,” Diana said, still laughing. “Not an English teacher.”

“Or a calligrapher,” Josie added.

“Or a preschool graduate.”

They were cracking themselves up. They had decided to think it was funny. Which I admired.

But I didn’t think anything about this was funny. And it was time for me to go. Past time. I was going to be late for work. For real this time.

* * *

“YOU’RE LATE, HANWELL,” Captain Murphy said, when I showed up in the kitchen. “Again.”

The guys were all there. DeStasio was already starting breakfast.

I didn’t respond to the captain. Instead, I held up the brick. Lifted it up high over my head until all the guys fell quiet and gave me their attention.

This was it. We were done here.

Ignoring it hadn’t worked. Waiting for it to blow over hadn’t worked. It was time for the nuclear option.

Though I wasn’t totally clear what that might be.

I’d figure it out as I went along.

What could I do? Demand that a whole room of dudes be nicer to me? Sit them all down and walk them through how strange and unsettled and fragile I’d been feeling ever since I left Texas? Talk to them about guilt and regret? About missed opportunities? Get vulnerable with them?

Firefighters didn’t do vulnerable.

Life in the fire service revolved around not being vulnerable. It was about being tough, and brave, and strong. Someone needed saving, so you saved them. Something was on fire, so you put it out. Were you scared? It didn’t matter. Did you have feelings about it? Irrelevant. You did your job, and you did it well, and that was all there was to it. People who wanted to wrestle with complicated emotions became therapists, or poets. People who wanted to keep things simple became firefighters.

I wanted to keep things simple. But life wasn’t letting me. Someone at the station, in particular, wasn’t letting me.

I walked up to the head of the table.

“At five o’clock this morning, someone threw a brick through my mother’s kitchen window. Someone from our shift. And I want to know who it was.”

I studied their faces. Everybody looked shocked—except for the rookie, who looked angry, and DeStasio, who looked bored. I’d hoped I might be able to spot the guilty one right away, but I should have known better than to think things could be that easy.

Captain Murphy stepped forward. “You think it was someone from our shift?” His voice made it clear that he thought I was completely bananas.

“I do,” I said.

The accusation offended them.

I let them be offended for a second, and then I said, “I wasn’t going to say anything. I was going to let it blow over. I’m not a complainer. I can take it, of course. I’m not here for myself. But I draw the line at throwing a brick through an old lady’s window. Mess with me all you want—but do not fuck with my mother.”

The guys blinked at me. Language!

“No one was hurt, if you’re wondering,” I said. “But glass went everywhere—and not safety glass, either. And a lovely historic window is destroyed.”

I checked all their faces, one by one. Sympathetic. Concerned. Shocked.

But somebody here was responsible.

“So who was it?” I demanded. “Who the hell thought terrorizing a sweet old lady was a good idea? Who in this crew wants to get rid of me so badly that they’re willing to do that?”

“It’s terrible,” the captain said. “But it wasn’t us.”

“I think it was.”

“Why would you think that?” Case said, sounding hurt.

I was pacing around now. “A few weeks ago, somebody broke into my locker here at the station, and scrawled the word ‘slut’ in Sharpie across the back wall.”

That got their attention.

“I ignored it. I tried to clean it off. I hung an old calendar from my station in Austin over the spot. I didn’t complain. But then, this week, somebody slashed all my tires—four hundred bucks’ worth of tires!—and left a note on my windshield that said, ‘Just quit you bitch.’”

The guys looked around at each other, like, What the hell?

“Fine,” I said. “I ignored it. It’s not the first time I’ve been called a bitch. Whatever.”

I looked around.

“But then, this morning—my mother. My mother, you guys.” I looked around. “This one had a note, too.”

“What did it say?” the captain asked.

I held up the note.

The captain leaned closer and peered at it, reading and frowning. “‘Just quit you wore’? What does that mean? What did you wear?”

“I think he means ‘whore,’ Captain,” Tiny said.

“Can’t spell for shit,” the captain said.

For a second, my throat felt like it was closing up. I held very still to let it pass. I would not cry, or let my voice break or even tremble. All emotions but anger right now were unacceptable. This moment had to be a show of strength and defiance and absolutely nothing else. But I would tell them about my mom. Maybe it would shame them into behaving better, or maybe it wouldn’t—but by the time I finished talking, they would know the truth.

“She’s sick,” I said, surprising even myself with the crackle of emotion in my voice. “That’s why I came here. She lost the sight in one eye after an operation, and her sight’s not great in the other one. She gets headaches. She wears an eye patch. Her depth perception’s all messed up, and she has trouble with the stairs, and she can’t drive at all. That’s why I’m here.”