Chapter 14
Sam
The drive to Jamie's took fifteen minutes from my apartment. Long enough to think too much.
She had guardianship now. The papers were signed, the seal pressed into the corner, Rosie officially hers. The proposal wasn't finished yet. We still had gaps to fill and voices to gather, but the thing that had kept her anchored to Havensworth was done.
She had a life waiting in New York. A career she'd spent years building. An apartment, probably. Friends. I didn't know if she'd go back. She hadn't said. Maybe she didn't know yet either.
What I did know was that I wanted to spend as much time with them as I could before they left. However long that was.
Jamie opened the door before I could knock. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen.
"Rosie's down for her nap," she said, stepping back to let me in. Her voice was steady, but her face told a different story.
"What's wrong?"
She shook her head. Tried to smile. It didn't land.
"Jamie."
She hesitated. Took a breath like she was bracing herself.
"Mark and I broke up."
It took me a second to process what she'd said.
"Last night." Her voice cracked on the second word. "After you left. I called him to tell him about the hearing, and we just..." She pressed her lips together and swallowed. "It's over."
I didn't know what to say. Part of me felt something close to relief. I wasn't proud of that. I had no right to feel it while she was standing in front of me with tears welling in her eyes.
"I'm sorry," I said. Because that was the truth, even if it wasn't the whole truth.
The tears spilled over. She wiped at them with the back of her hand.
I stepped forward and pulled her into my arms.
She stiffened for half a second. Then she let go. Her face pressed into my chest, her hands gripping the front of my shirt. She cried the way people did when they'd been holding it together for too long.
I held her. That was all I could do. All I'd ever been able to do.
After a while, her breathing slowed. She didn't pull away, but she started talking, her voice muffled against my shirt.
"I moved to New York because I needed to be somewhere no one knew me." She pulled back just enough to look at me. "I really thought Mark was going to be part of that. I thought we were going to figure it out together."
My heart cracked a little watching her grieve a future with another man.
"He's not ready to be a father." Her voice was steadier now, flatter. "He told me last night. He wasn't planning on having kids for another five years. Maybe more."
"Jamie..."
"I asked him, Sam. I asked him directly if he was ready, and he said no." She wiped her face with both hands. "So that's it. That's the answer."
I wanted to tell her Mark was an idiot. That any man who had a chance to build a life with her and Rosie and didn't take it was out of his mind. But that wasn't what she needed to hear right now.
"Mark isn't New York." The words came out before I'd fully thought them through. "Everything you built for yourself is still there. You can still go back if you want."
She looked at me for a long moment. Something shifted in her face.
"It doesn't matter." She straightened and squared her shoulders. "I'm not done here. The proposal isn't finished. Jack's death can't be for nothing."
There she was. The Jamie I remembered.
"Okay," I said. "Then we finish it."
She nodded and wiped her face one more time. The tears were gone now, replaced by something harder and more determined.
A small voice came from the hallway.
"Auntie Jamie?"
We both turned. Rosie was standing in the doorway to her bedroom, rubbing her eyes with one fist, her stuffed rabbit dangling from the other. Her hair was mussed from sleep, her pajamas rumpled.
She looked at Jamie's face. Then at me. Then back at Jamie.
"Why are you crying?"
Jamie and I exchanged a look, one of those wordless conversations you have with someone when a child asks a question you're not prepared to answer.
"I wasn't crying," Jamie said.
Rosie frowned. "Your face is wet."
"That's because Uncle Sam told me a really funny joke." Jamie crouched down to Rosie's level. "It made me laugh so hard I cried."
Rosie's frown deepened. She looked at me with suspicion. "What joke?"
I hadn't prepared for this. "What do firefighters put in their soup?"
Rosie waited.
"Fire crackers."
Silence. Rosie stared at me like I'd lost my mind.
"That's not funny."
"I know." I shrugged.
Jamie snorted. Actually snorted, which made Rosie giggle. Jamie's laughter followed—it was real and beautiful.
Rosie didn't fully believe us. It was all over her face. But she accepted it anyway.
"Can I have a snack?" she asked.
"Sure, sweetheart." Jamie stood and took her hand. "Let's see what we've got."
I followed them into the kitchen and leaned against the counter while Jamie rummaged through the cabinets. Rosie climbed onto her stool and waited with the patience of someone who knew good things were coming.
And just like that, the afternoon continued.
The proposal took longer than we expected to finish.
Jamie and I had been working with Megan and Danny to put it together, and now we finally had something to show.
Thirty pages of recommendations, backed by data, grounded in what other departments across the country were already doing.
Nothing radical. Nothing that hadn't been done before.
Just the kind of changes that might keep the next firefighter from dying the way Jack did.
The plan was to start with Captain Sutton. If we could get him to listen, maybe he'd point us toward someone higher up the chain. And if not, at least we'd know where we stood.
"I hear you," Cap said when we finished. "But this isn't how things work around here."
"How things work around here is outdated," Jamie said. "It puts firefighters' lives at risk."
This was what I'd been afraid of when she first brought up the proposal. That she wouldn't be taken seriously. That the department would dismiss her before she got a word out.
"There hasn't been a line of duty fatality since 1965," Cap insisted.
"So we wait for another one before Havensworth decides there's a problem?"
Cap leaned back in his chair. His shoulders dropped, just slightly, and he rubbed a hand over his jaw. I'd seen that look before. It was the look of a man who'd run out of arguments and knew it.
"You want this to go anywhere," he said slowly, "you can't just be two people with a document. You need more firefighters willing to stand behind it. Get enough of them together, maybe you've got a shot. Maybe."
"We can do that."
I turned to look at her. I wasn't sure anyone in this department would stick their neck out for something like this.
She doesn't need you to protect her from a fight. She needs you to be in it with her.
Anna's voice echoed in my head.
"I can't guarantee anything," Cap said. "I'm not putting my name on this. But I'm not going to stop you either."
"Thank you for your time, Captain." Jamie stood. "And for being willing to listen."
We walked out of his office.
"We just need to get more firefighters to back us." She said it like it was simple.
"Yeah," I said, even though I knew how difficult that was going to be.
"So that's what we do," she said.