Chapter Twenty-One: After the Family Left
1264 Words
Cole
Natalie held my hand through the entire service.
Not because she wanted, because I had been the last person beside her husband, and touching me was the closest she could come to touching Gavin.
I understood that.
So I let her fingers remain wrapped around mine while Sophie cried against her side and Eli stared at the coffin without blinking.
Every time I looked at them, I saw Gavin falling.
Every time Natalie tightened her grip, I remembered that he had pushed me toward the stairs.
I should have been inside that coffin.
The thought followed me back to the station.
Tables filled the bay, covered with food no one wanted. Photographs of Gavin stood beside his helmet and folded dress uniform. People told stories about him as if collecting enough good memories could erase the rest.
Natalie stayed close to me.
Whenever someone approached, she introduced me to relatives I had already met.
“This is Cole. He was with Gavin.”
The sentence changed their faces.
They looked at me with gratitude.
I wanted them to hate me.
Gratitude was harder to survive.
Sophie eventually fell asleep in Captain Walsh’s wife’s arms. Eli sat beside Gavin’s helmet, turning one of his father’s old challenge coins between his fingers.
Natalie approached me when it was time to leave.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she whispered.
I glanced toward the children.
“You don’t have to know today.”
“Everyone keeps saying they’ll help, but eventually they’ll go back to their own lives.”
“The station won’t.”
Her eyes filled.
“You promise?”
The word hit me harder than it should have.
Gavin had made too many promises.
I had watched him break every one except the last.
“We’ll be there,” I said.
Natalie leaned forward and wrapped her arms around me.
I stood rigid for a second before returning the embrace.
It wasn’t romantic.
There was nothing inappropriate in it.
But guilt still crawled beneath my skin because Harper’s face appeared in my mind.
Her standing outside the church.
Her saying she had nowhere else to go.
I pushed the thought away.
Natalie released me.
“Come by tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
“Eli listens to you.”
“He doesn’t listen to anyone.”
A broken laugh escaped her.
For half a second, she looked like herself again.
Then she gathered her children and left through the side door.
The station slowly emptied after them.
Relatives went home. Neighbors carried away trays of untouched food. Firefighters disappeared upstairs or stood outside pretending they needed fresh air.
I remained beside Gavin’s memorial table.
His helmet sat beneath the station lights.
I could still see the scratches from the warehouse fire two months earlier.
Someone had cleaned the soot from it.
They shouldn’t have.
It looked wrong without the evidence of what he did.
The bay door opened behind me.
Conversation stopped.
I didn’t need to turn around.
Harper had arrived.
She stood near the entrance in the same black dress she had worn outside the church. Her eyes were swollen, and she carried a small bunch of daisies wrapped in brown paper.
Marcus approached her first.
“You came.”
“You said I could.”
He glanced toward me.
I wanted to tell him to send her home.
Instead, I looked at the closed side door Natalie had used five minutes earlier.
“She left,” Marcus said quietly.
Harper nodded.
“I wasn’t going to come in while she was here.”
At least she understood that much.
The remaining firefighters pretended to return to their conversations, but everyone watched her.
Some knew.
Some only suspected.
The truth stayed inside the room without anyone naming it.
Harper walked toward the memorial table.
I moved into her path.
Her eyes lifted to mine.
“I’m not causing trouble.”
“You being here is trouble.”
“She’s gone.”
“That doesn’t make this yours.”
Her fingers tightened around the flowers.
“I only want five minutes.”
“For what?”
“To say goodbye.”
“You already said you loved him. What else is left?”
Pain moved across her face.
I regretted the words immediately.
Not enough to apologize.
She stepped around me and placed the daisies beside Gavin’s helmet.
They looked too ordinary among the formal arrangements.
Gavin would have recognized them.
That thought made me angrier.
Harper touched one finger to the edge of the helmet.
“Was he wearing this?”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“It was another helmet.”
“Where is it?”
“Evidence.”
The word made her flinch.
I shouldn’t have noticed.
She stared at Gavin’s photograph.
Everyone else had chosen images of him with Natalie, the children, or the crew. This one showed him laughing beside the engine, his head turned away from the camera.
Harper looked at it as though she remembered the exact sound.
Harper closed her eyes.
She moved toward the lockers.
I blocked her again.
“Where are you going?”
“To see his locker.”
“No.”
“I’ve been here before.”
“When he was alive.”
Her chin lifted.
“That doesn’t erase every moment I spent with him.”
“No. It just doesn’t give you the right to take anything.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
I didn’t believe her.
Or maybe I didn’t trust myself to watch her touch the things Gavin’s wife would eventually collect.
“His belongings belong to Natalie.”
“I know what belongs to her.”
Something sharp entered her voice.
“Apparently everything did.”
She turned back toward the memorial.
Her anger disappeared as quickly as it had come.
What remained looked worse.
Empty.
For the first time, I wondered what happened to a person when grief had nowhere respectable to go.
Then I remembered Natalie holding Sophie in the first row.
Harper had made her choice.
Being lied to about part of Gavin’s life didn’t erase the part she had known.
“You should leave,” I said.
She looked at the daisies.
“Can they stay?”
I almost told her no.
Instead, I nodded.
Harper walked toward the exit.
She stopped beside the bay door but didn’t look back.
“I know you think I didn’t love him.”
“I think love doesn’t make everything you do because of it acceptable.”
“I know that now.”
Her voice was barely audible.
Then she left.
Marcus came to stand beside me.
“You didn’t have to be that hard on her.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Why?”
I stared at the daisies beside Gavin’s helmet.
Because if Harper was nothing but selfish, I didn’t have to feel sorry for her.
If she was nothing but his mistake, I didn’t have to remember that Gavin had lied to her too.
And if I kept hating her, I wouldn’t have to admit that when she asked whether he had suffered, I had wanted to take the pain out of her face.
“She knew he was married,” I said.
Marcus was quiet for a moment.
“So did he.”
I looked at him.
He walked away before I could answer.
I stayed beside the memorial table long after everyone else had gone upstairs.
The daisies were already beginning to bend.
I should have thrown them away before Natalie returned.
I didn’t.
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