Chapter 50
Luke turned back to the emergency crews in front of them.
A fire crew had a tanker truck angled across the gravel. Hoses already ran toward the tree line, and men shouted numbers and directions Luke couldn’t follow.
Micah spotted them and broke out into a jog, his radio already up.
“They’re out!” he shouted into it. “I’ve got Luke, Jenna, and Caleb. I need a medic—” He took in Travis hanging off Luke’s shoulder and the driver zip-tied beside them. “Over here. Now.”
Two paramedics broke away from the trucks and met them halfway.
One took Travis and eased him onto a stretcher, going to work on his leg without wasting a word. The other reached for Caleb, but Caleb waved him off and pointed him toward Jenna instead.
The paramedic settled an oxygen mask over Jenna’s face. She let him, her shoulders dropping as the clean air hit.
Freya planted herself against Luke’s leg. He crouched and ran a hand down her side, checking for blood. All he found was ash. Relief washed through him. He was thankful the dog hadn’t been harmed.
Someone pressed a mask on his face too. He took it, pulled in a single breath, then lowered it. “I’m fine.”
“You need air,” the paramedic told him.
Luke knew the man was correct. He gulped in several more breaths.
He watched as another paramedic placed a cone-shaped mask over Freya. The dog seemed to realize it was for her own good, and she didn’t fight the paramedic.
As Luke sat there, he reached for Jenna and gripped her hand.
She sat on the tailgate, soot streaked down one side of her face. He stood close enough that his knees touched her legs.
“I thought the fire had you.” His own voice came out raw. “Standing at that fire wall, I didn’t know which side of it you were on.”
She pulled the mask down again to answer. “I didn’t know which side you were on either.”
The truth hung between them. It wasn’t the old grief they’d both carried the past two years. It something underneath it, something neither of them had said out loud yet.
They’d stood on opposite sides of the same wall of fire, each one certain the other was already gone.
She gripped his hand harder, as if she were making sure of him all over again.
The paramedic finished his examination and stepped back. “Vitals are good. We’ll want her looked at properly, but she’s stable.”
Stable. Such a small, flat word for a woman who’d been hauled through a burning forest an hour ago and come out the other side still fighting. But Luke took it.
It was the first true thing anyone had told him all night that didn’t come with a catch. And when he looked at Jenna—sitting up under that blanket, smoke still in her hair, her eyes finding his—stable was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard.
The ranger station sat low and brown against the tree line, its parking lot lit up bright as day with emergency vehicles. A cluster of rangers in green moved between them with radios crackling at their hips.
Jenna had never been so glad to see a plain government building in her life.
Micah’s SUV rolled in behind the ambulance carrying Travis. She, Luke, Caleb, and Freya were inside.
The truck had barely stopped before Jenna was out of it.
Ruby reached her first, both arms wrapping around her so hard it forced the breath out of her. Jenna held on just as hard.
For a second neither of them said anything at all.
Then small hands grabbed at her from every direction.
“Mama!” Cora grabbed her around the waist. “You came back. You said thirty seconds, and it wasn’t thirty seconds. It was forever—”
“I know.” Jenna went down into a crouch in the gravel and got both arms around her.
Jonah shoved in between them both, all four-year-old elbows and no patience for waiting his turn.
The breath left her lungs when someone else flew into their huddle.
Liam.
Liam was hugging her!
He folded into her embrace, his face pressed into her shoulder and his arms locked around her neck.
More tears sprang to her eyes.
Luke joined them, putting his arms around all of them.
For a moment it was just the five of them in the middle of the parking lot, wrapped around each other, the noise of rangers and radios and idling engines fading into something Jenna barely registered.
“I’m here,” she said, into the mess of arms and hair and small, hot faces. “I’m here. All of you. I’m here.”
Liam didn’t say anything back. He just held on tighter.
Thank You, Jesus.
Maybe her oldest son had finally let her in. Maybe he’d forgive her.