Chapter 7 #2
“Superheroes wear capes and fly,” Caleb said, clearly uncomfortable. “I just … I … happened to be driving by.”
“You ran into the fire twice,” Eli interjected hoarsely. He’d been mostly silent during the meal, but now he looked at Caleb with an intensity that reminded Ethan of himself at that age. “That’s braver than flying.”
Caleb’s face did something complicated … pleasure and pain and guilt all mixed together. “Your mom’s the brave one,” he said, his voice rough. “She kept you both safe until help arrived. That’s real courage.”
Lydia’s eyes filled with tears, and she turned quickly back to the stove, but not before Ethan caught the emotion on her face. She didn’t feel brave, he realized. She felt like she’d failed somehow, even though she’d done everything right.
He recognized that guilt. Wore it himself most days.
After lunch, with the kids back in their blanket fort and Lydia cleaning up, Ethan and Caleb found themselves on the couch with mugs of coffee, the comfortable silence of two men who’d seen enough in life to not need to fill every moment with talk.
The woodstove crackled, and outside the window, the world was a study in white.
Endless, pristine, beautiful in its starkness.
Ethan had always loved snow days when he was a kid.
The suspension of normal rules, the permission to stay inside and be cozy.
Sarah had loved them too, had talked about building snowmen with their future children, about hot chocolate and sledding and all the winter traditions they’d create.
Now, here he was, living a version of that dream with someone else’s children and … someone else.
It should have felt like betrayal. Instead, it just felt … right.
“Can I ask you something?” Ethan said finally.
“Sure.”
“Why’d you really drive through a blizzard to check on us?”
Caleb was quiet for a long moment, his hands wrapped around his coffee mug. When he spoke, his voice was low enough that Lydia couldn’t hear from the kitchen.
“Someone might have tried to kill them. And I need to make up for some things. Bad karma, I guess you could say.” He took a sip of coffee. “Thought maybe helping out here might balance the scales a little.”
Ethan wanted to press. Wanted to ask what kind of bad karma drove a man to run into burning buildings and brave blizzards for strangers. But he recognized the look in Caleb’s eyes. It was the same one he saw in his own mirror sometimes. The look of a man carrying ghosts he wasn’t ready to share.
“Well, we appreciate it,” Ethan said instead. “The company and the supplies both.”
The conversation drifted to safer topics.
Sports, mostly. Caleb had opinions about the Patriots that made Ethan laugh, and they argued good-naturedly about whether the Red Sox would ever win another World Series.
At one point, Caleb mentioned watching the Stanley Cup finals at his station a couple years back, and Ethan caught the slip.
The possessive pronoun that told him more than Caleb probably meant to reveal.
Not just former firefighter. Recently former. The wounds were still fresh.
“You know,” Caleb said, changing the subject abruptly, “I met that guy I asked you about. Michael Smith.”
Ethan’s attention sharpened. “When?”
“Couple days ago. He was handing out food boxes in the park by the church. I was going to just drive past, but my truck wouldn’t start.” Caleb’s expression was troubled. “He came over to help. We talked. And when I shook his hand, my shoulder—” He stopped, like he wasn’t sure he should continue.
“What about your shoulder?”
“It stopped hurting,” Caleb said it flatly, like he was daring Ethan to call him crazy. “I’ve had chronic pain since my surgery. Eighteen months of grinding, constant ache. I shake this guy’s hand, and it just … eased. Not gone, but better than it’s been since before the injury.”
Ethan thought about Michael in the woods, about the way he’d known about Sarah, about the present tense he’d used.
“She’s happy where she is now.”
“I met him too,” Ethan said. “In my woods, couple days ago. He knew things about my late fiancé he shouldn’t have known. Talked about her like—” He stopped, not sure how to explain it without sounding insane. “Like she’s still around.”
Caleb nodded. “Yeah. He’s got that quality. Like he knows something we don’t. Like he can see things we can’t.”
They sat in silence for a moment, two rational men trying to rationalize something that defied rationality.
“There’s something about him,” Caleb said finally. “Something I can’t quite name. But I don’t think he’s dangerous. I think he’s—” He searched for the word. “Pure. Like, fundamentally good in a way most people aren’t.”
“Yeah,” Ethan agreed. “I got that too.”
They let the conversation drift after that, but Ethan’s mind kept circling back to Michael. To the man in the white shirt who appeared when he was needed and knew things he shouldn’t know. To the gentle certainty in the other man’s voice when he’d said Sarah was happy.
Was she? Could she be, wherever she was? Or was that just wishful thinking, Ethan’s guilty conscience seeking permission to move on?
He didn’t know. Wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Movement caught his eye, and he looked over to see Lydia gathering the lunch dishes, her hair falling forward to hide her face.
She was wearing jeans and one of his old college sweatshirts he had lent her to make up for her meager remaining wardrobe.
Navy blue with “UVA” in orange letters across the chest. It was too big on her, the sleeves covering her hands, the hem falling to mid-thigh.
She looked good in his clothes. Looked right, somehow, moving through his kitchen like she belonged there.
The thought should have scared him. Should have triggered all his defenses, all the walls he’d built around his heart after Sarah died. But instead, it just made something warm and terrifying unfurl in his chest.
“I should probably head out,” Caleb said, standing and stretching. “Snow’s letting up. Roads’ll be getting worse as the temperature drops, and I’ve got a couple things I need to keep an eye on.”
“Thanks for coming,” Ethan said, standing to walk him to the door. “And for the supplies. We’d have been fine, but the coffee—” He grinned. “The coffee might have saved lives.”
Caleb laughed. “Glad I could help.” He paused at the door, his hand on the knob. “You’ve got a good thing here, Cole. Don’t screw it up.”
Then he was gone, leaving Ethan standing in the doorway, wondering exactly what Caleb had meant by that.
The afternoon drifted by in a haze of domestic contentment that Ethan hadn’t felt in three years.
The kids played in their blanket fort while Lydia read to them from an app, her voice soft and soothing.
The woodstove crackled and popped, filling the house with warmth that felt like more than just temperature.
The world outside might have been locked in ice and snow, but inside, everything felt safe and warm and right.
Ethan found himself watching Lydia more than he should.
The way she moved through his house with increasing confidence, no longer apologizing for taking up space.
The way she laughed at Rosie’s jokes and helped Eli with his reading.
The way the firelight caught in her hair when she knelt on the rug to teach Rosie how to braid a rag doll’s hair, which Ethan had retrieved from the boxes in their barn.
And the way his heart did something complicated and painful every time she smiled.
He should be thinking about the investigation. About Tom Redding, who was still out there somewhere, who’d tried to kill Lydia and her children. About the danger that might still be lurking, waiting for another chance.
But instead, he was thinking about the way Lydia’s eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled. About the blueberry scent of her hair. About the dream he’d woken from this morning, where her lips had been so close to his.
“She’s happy where she is now,” Michael had said. “She wants you to know it’s okay.”
Okay, to what? To feel this? To want this? To imagine a future that didn’t include Sarah?
Lydia looked up and caught him staring. Their eyes met across the room, and color flooded her cheeks. She looked away first, suddenly very focused on the doll’s braid, but Ethan could see the pink spreading down her neck, could see the way her hands fumbled slightly with the yarn.
She’d felt it too. Whatever this was building between them, fragile and tentative and unexpected, she felt it.
The realization should have sent Ethan running.
Should have made him retreat back behind his walls, back to the safe isolation of grief.
But instead, it just made him want to cross the room and tell her …
what exactly? That he dreamed about her?
That watching her with her children made him ache for things he’d thought he’d lost forever?
That the sound of her laugh was becoming his favorite sound in the world?
He didn’t move. Just sat there on the couch, watching her braid Rosie’s doll’s hair by firelight, and felt his carefully constructed walls begin to crumble.
By nighttime, the storm had finally blown itself out, leaving the world buried in white silence.
The kids were asleep in their blanket fort, curled up together like puppies, their breathing soft and even.
Rosie’s blonde curls were just visible in the dim light, her small hand clutching Eli’s shirt even in sleep.
The woodstove had burned down to glowing embers, casting dancing shadows on the walls that made the whole room feel like something out of a dream.