32. Jack
32
JACK
THE PERFECT STORM
A urora got out without burns, but smoke inhalation was just as bad. The sight of her on the stretcher as the paramedic started an IV was burned into my memory. The crimson color of the drug that combated cyanide poisoning was something I had seen administered far too many times. Residential fires were a special kind of bitch.
She had been taken to the hospital after I had pulled her out of the house. Her airway had swollen from the smoke. Luckily , they were able to get it under control without intubating her.
I felt like a piece of shit over the fact that she had to go to the emergency department in the ambulance by herself, but it was all hands on deck to get the blaze under control.
Chief had called in for a replacement for me so that I could drive down to the hospital in Morehead to help her get discharged and come home. As soon as we got back to the station, I jumped in my truck and put the pedal to the metal.
Hospitals were the least efficient monstrosities known to man. Time meant absolutely nothing. Usually , it drove me batshit crazy, but not this time. I wanted her to be observed as long as possible. I wanted every test done. I wanted second and third opinions. I wanted every workup possible. I wanted no stone left unturned.
I only caved when Aurora looked at me with weary eyes.
. . . And when the nurses threatened to have me thrown out.
Emotional and physical exhaustion plagued us both when we finally made it home. I had coaxed her into drinking a protein shake before she crashed in my bed, then laid with her until the sun came up. When the first rays of daylight peeked over the horizon, I threw on boots and pants to trudge through the wreckage next door.
The Old Whitlock place was reduced to a willowy skeleton. Everything we had poured blood and sweat into over the summer turned to charcoal. I was hoping to find something salvageable from Aurora’s wardrobe, but it was all gone.
One thing survived, though. That damn plotting notebook. I was starting to think it was a phoenix, surviving the fire each time.
Or maybe Aurora was.
When she felt up to it, we’d comb through the disaster together. Insurance would be out to assess the site, and she and her mom would have to begin the process of getting whatever pennies the company would offer.
That damn offer gnawed at me.
Money had been on the table. Start -over money that I couldn’t offer her. I had made her feel like shit about it. Now , it was gone and it wasn’t coming back. Sure , the property—the land—could be sold, but it would take time to get it cleared and find a buyer.
I crept into the house and set the notebook on the kitchen table. I wish I could have saved her laptop, but she could use mine for the time being. She was out of a phone too. When we were waiting for the discharge paperwork, she had used mine to call her mom and text Whitney and Willow .
I slipped into the house with silent steps and headed into the shower to rinse off. I didn’t want her to be upset by the charred smell of the house clinging to my skin. When I stepped out with water droplets still speckling my skin, she was stirring restlessly in her sleep.
“Don’t get up,” I whispered as I brushed Aurora’s hair away from her face. “ Just relax.”
Her eyes were disoriented and heavy with sleep, but she tried to sit up and look at the clock anyway.
“Roar, what’d I tell you? Go back to sleep, baby. I’m getting in with you.” I unwrapped the towel from around my waist and pitched it into the hamper.
"When did you come in?” she murmured as she settled back against the pillow.
“‘Bout thirty minutes ago. I rinsed off,” I said as I pawed through my drawers until I found a pair of boxers and pulled them on. I checked the tabletop humidifier that lived on Aurora’s side to make sure it didn’t need to be topped off with water before crawling in beside her. “ How do you feel?”
“Can’t sleep,” she murmured as she curled into my chest.
Alarm bells rang in my head. “ You having trouble breathing?”
She shook her head. “ I feel like I’m gonna throw up.”
“Yeah,” I said sympathetically as I wrapped my arms around her and rubbed her back. “ Nausea is a side-effect of the Cyanokit . It’s what the paramedics gave you before they took you to the hospital.”
“What’s it do?” she murmured.
“Combats cyanide poisoning,” I said as I gently stroked her hair, smoothing it down. “ A lot of the materials that burn in a residential structure fire release carbon and nitrogen. Under high heat, they create cyanide.”
Aurora sniffed, then sniffed again.
“Baby . . .” I turned her over to face me and wiped her tears away. “ Talk to me.”
“I don’t know how you found me,” she cried. Her body shook as sobs racked her frame.
“Hey . . . Hey , hey. Just breathe. I’ve got you,” I soothed as I held her closer. “ You’re okay. That’s what’s important. We’re gonna figure out the rest. It was a freak accident.”
“I don’t even know how it happened so fast . . .”
I sighed as I worked the grotesque algorithm around in my brain the way I had when I went next door to see what was left. “ The 911 call said they saw lightning strike at least three times. From the way the chimney fell, I think a bolt went straight down it and set the soot on fire. It’s like dropping a stick of dynamite down into the house. If I had to guess, another strike caused the wiring in the walls to catch fire and start burning from the inside, and the last one lit up the roof. It was an old house to begin with. Pair that with all the oil-based paint and wood stain we had stored up . . . It was a powder keg.”
Crying made her break into a coughing fit. I kept my hand on her back as she sat up and reached for the water I had put on the bedside table.
“I was stupid,” she whispered in a hoarse voice when she set the glass back on the table.
"No, you weren’t. You did what you could and got lucky that the renters on the other side saw the lightning strikes and called it in. It was . . .” I sighed. “ Shit . You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn’t your fault.”
I tried to tamp down the memory of hearing dispatch rattle off the address to the Old Whitlock Place . The overwhelming fear I felt when I called her over and over again from the engine during the short drive from the station. The absolute terror when she didn’t answer and I realized Aurora wasn’t at my house. The life-altering pain I felt when I knew that she was, likely, trapped. The way I nearly crumbled when I found her curled up on the floor of a hell house.
“It was the perfect storm.” I pulled her into my arms again. “ But you know what, sweetheart? So are you. You’re my perfect storm.”
She looked up at me with tear-stained cheeks.
“You struck me close to home, and didn’t leave until you wrecked me in the best way. You made me face my fears. You helped me confront things I’ve been too scared to face. And you know what? I’m better for it. I’m scared of losing you, Roar . I’m fucking terrified that you’re going to wake up tomorrow and drive back to Colorado .”
“What if I do?” she whispered. “ What if I leave?”
I tucked her hair behind her ear. “ Then I’m coming with you.”
Aurora didn’t say a word. She simply laid her head on my chest, wrapped her arms around me, and cried.
I didn’t blame her one bit.
* * *
The next morning didn’t fare any better. Light had an uncanny way of illuminating the parts we wanted to keep secret or ignore. The moment that Aurora peeked through the curtains and saw the outline of the house barely standing, she lost it.
I caught her as she crumbled and held her through the onslaught of grief.
When she had worked through the first wave of shock, she calmly peeled herself away and announced that she was going over there.
I watched through the windowpane beaded with air conditioning condensation as Aurora stood in the middle of the blackened stilts that had once held up the house. She was in a pair of my gym shorts that had been rolled over at the waist six times, one of my t-shirts tied at the bottom, and a pair of my boots to keep her feet safe.
So many decisions had to be made. For the house. For the property. But right then, all I cared about was her.
Hell, she didn’t even have clothes. The only thing she had over here was some damn underwear. That was where I needed to start. The practical stuff.
The existential “ I love you, but you don’t love me” problem could be handled later.
I gave Aurora time to grieve the future plans that had turned to ash, and waited patiently. I knew from firsthand experience that mourning couldn’t be rushed. Hell , it never really ended. Whether you were mourning someone or something, grief was grief. Like the ocean, it came in waves. It had to be experienced, and it had to be respected.
I watched as she found a safe place to sit on the fallen chimney and hugged her knees, soaking it all in. Taking that as the signal that she might be ready for company, I slipped on a pair of shoes, grabbed a pair of work gloves and supplies in case she wanted to paw through it all, and walked over.
Aurora didn’t say anything as I crunched through the debris. I squeezed in beside her on the charred bricks and wrapped my arm around her.
“My debit and credit cards are gone.” She wiped a stray tear. “ So are my driver’s license and my keys. Well , I guess my keys are in there somewhere, but it would be like finding a needle in a haystack at this point.” She let out a sharp breath. “ My clothes are gone. My laptop is burned to shit. I backed up my manuscripts to the cloud, but all my pictures and old files are gone.” Her lip quivered. “ The drafting desk is gone. I’ve never been given something so beautiful. You put so much into that and it’s . . . it’s gone.” She kicked at the rubble. “ I knew the house wasn’t mine, but I didn’t want to see it be bulldozed.” Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and her voice softened. “ I wanted to be able to drive by it someday and see the place where I fell in love with you.”
“Roar . . .”
She leaned against my side and wrapped her arms around my middle. “ I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I’m sorry it took losing everything to realize what I can live without and what I can’t.”
I cradled her head against my chest and kissed the top of her hair. “ I love you, baby. We’ll figure out the house. We’ll get you a phone. We’ll get your cards replaced. We’ll get you some clothes. But you didn’t lose everything, Roar .” I set the seared notebook in her lap that I had salvaged when we got home from the hospital. “ I know you finished the book already, but I thought you might want this.” I tapped the cover that was well-worn after a long career of storytelling. “ You didn’t lose yourself. And that’s the most important thing. You’re irreplaceable.”
“I love you,” she whispered. “ And I really hope you’re okay with having an accidental roommate because I can’t exactly leave until I find my keys.”
“I’ll start looking for your keys.” I chuckled. “ And if I find them, I’m throwing them into the ocean.”
She traced the cover of the notebook. “ I can’t believe this survived . . . again.”
A wistful smile crossed my lips as I remembered the time she had intentionally tried to burn it.
“Sharing yourself with the world like you do? You’re powerful. That notebook? It’s powerful. Together , you two create the moment when the sun clashes with the earth. And you know what happens?”
She looked up at me with glassy eyes full of love. “ What ?”
“Auroras.” I kissed her softly. “ And it’s beautiful. Life is going to be hard. But it’s also going to be spectacular. And you have me to walk with you in between."
We sat and simply stared at the blackened house.
“I think I’m ready to go,” she said after a long stretch of silence. “ I need to steal your phone and make a lot of calls.”
I took Aurora’s hand to help her up, but she froze.
“What’s the matter?”
She didn’t say anything for the longest time, just stared. I tried to follow her gaze, but I couldn’t spot what had caught her attention.
Without a word, Aurora handed me the notebook and started moving through the bricks of the downed chimney.
“Babe, stop,” I said as I grabbed the work gloves I had stuffed into my pocket. “ Everything is unstable. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Do you see that brick right there?” She pointed to the one she was talking about. “ It has the Aurora Archer stamp on it.”
“Is that the brick Whitney found the letter in?”
“No.” Aurora pointed to where we had been sitting. “ I already found that one. I kind of want to keep it.” She grabbed the gloves from me and put one on to work the second stamped brick out of the toppled chimney. “ I think this part was toward the top. We wouldn’t have been able to see it from the floor.”
The brick grated back and forth against the loosened mortar as she wiggled it free. Something metallic fell free and skittered along the bricks. I lunged forward and caught it before it could disappear in the pile.
“Any chance this is the key to your car?” I asked as I held the small key with a rounded top.
“I wish,” she muttered as she inspected the brick it had been hidden inside.
I handed the key over and let her take a closer look.
“Nothing in the house had a lock like this. Not even the old furniture I had to throw out.”
“What do you think it goes to?”
Aurora slipped her gloved hand into mine and gave it a squeeze. “ I guess we’ll have to figure it out together.”