Chapter 2
Easton
My grandmother died more than a year ago.
I still hadn't packed a box.
They were stacked in the hallway where I'd set them down the day after the funeral.
Flat, taped at the bottom, ready. I walked past them every morning on my way to the kitchen.
Every night on my way to bed. A year and a half of stepping around the same stack of cardboard like it was a piece of furniture.
That was the part nobody told you about taking care of someone who was dying.
People talked about the part where you held her hand at the end, or the part where you slept upright in the recliner because you had to hear her if she called for water, or the funeral. People talked about those.
Nobody talked about the morning after.
The morning after, I woke up at six and had slept the whole night through. Before I was even all the way awake, before I could stop it, something in my chest unclenched. The breath went all the way down for the first time in a year.
A year and a half later, it was still down there, and I still didn't know what to do with it.
You weren't supposed to be relieved.
You weren't supposed to wake up the morning after your grandmother died and feel the house get quiet in a way you hadn't realized had been loud.
You weren't supposed to notice the smell of her medication finally fading out of the spare bedroom.
You weren't supposed to walk into your kitchen at six in the morning and think, I can drink my coffee standin' up.
But I had.
And I couldn't put the feeling down long enough to pack a box.
I did what I'd been doing for a year and a half instead. I drove to the gym.
I pulled into the driveway at nine.
Across the street, the Matthews place had a car in the driveway.
It had been there for about two weeks. Before that, the house had been dark. Four years of that kind of dark. Then the Matthews girl had come back.
Astrid.
I'd summered at my grandmother's house most of my childhood, and the Matthews had been the family in that house. They had a daughter three years younger than me. Astrid, at fifteen, crouched on her front lawn one summer afternoon, working over a sparrow with a broken wing.
I'd seen her maybe five times in the last two weeks. Unloading a trailer. Bringing groceries in. Walking the river trail in the mornings. Sitting on her porch one evening with a glass of wine.
I'd caught myself watching every time. I told myself it was because I hadn't seen her since we were kids.
She had honey-brown hair she wore long. Lean and easy in her body, the way some women are.
I'd been thinking about walking over and saying hi more than once. Figured she'd half-remember me. I was going to do it. I just hadn't figured out what I'd say first.
Penny was at the screen door before I had the truck off, tail going.
I let myself in and dropped the gym bag by the door.
"Hey, old girl."
She huffed. Her tail was at half-mast, the way it always was for me, never a full wag and never resting, just on. She came up against my leg the way she did every morning.
I went down on one knee and put my hands on either side of her face.
She was twelve, a golden retriever going white at the muzzle and slower in the hips than she'd been even six months ago. She was my grandmother's, and she'd been mine since the October before my grandmother died. Twelve years old and on her second human.
"You wait by the door every time," I said. "You don't have to. I always come back."
She huffed again.
I stood and put her morning food in the bowl. She came over slowly, the way she'd been coming over for weeks, and sniffed at it. Picked at the edges. She'd been on wet food for two months now, and it still took her twenty minutes to eat half of it.
I'd had her in to see Dr. Caldwell twice over the past month. Caldwell had run her labs and told me twice she was getting old, and twice I'd taken his word for it. It hadn't stopped me from watching her at the bowl every morning, counting how many bites she actually took.
Penny padded over to the back door after she was done.
The yellow dog Penny was waiting for hadn't come yet today.
He'd been letting himself in through the back gate every morning for the last week and a half—coming to me first, sitting at my feet, taking a scratch, then going to find her.
They'd run the yard. He'd drink her water.
He'd let himself out the same way he'd come in.
I figured his owner would show up eventually.
Penny was happier than she'd been in months.
I wondered where he lived.
I drank my coffee at the counter and watched her settle.
The boxes were still in the hallway.
I hadn't called the realtor.
A year and a half of choices laid out, and I hadn't picked one up.
Stay or go. Sell or keep. Engine 295 or Hartsdale.
Some mornings, I thought about putting the house on the market.
By afternoon, I'd be telling myself I'd do it next week.
Next week had turned into next month. Next month was eighteen months long.
My phone rang in my back pocket. I pulled it out, expecting Duke or the realtor I wasn't going to call back.
Shane.
I hadn't talked to him in three weeks, which for us was about average. We weren't the kind of friends who needed to be in touch regularly. We were the kind of friends where you could pick up the phone after six months and start mid-sentence.
I set my coffee down on the counter and answered.
"Briggs."
"Ford."
His voice was the same as it had been on every job I'd run with him at the back of the truck. Calm with no warm-up. The kind of voice that didn't change whether he was telling you to grab the irons or telling you his kid had been born.
"How you been?"
"Hangin' in." I turned and put my back against the counter, the way I always did when a call was going to be longer than a minute. Penny lifted her head off the rug to check on me, decided I was fine, and put it back down.
"How's everybody up there?"
"Maya's good. The boys are eating their weight."
"Both of them?"
"Both of them. Henry put down two grilled cheeses yesterday at the kitchen counter without sitting down."
I could picture it. The Briggs kitchen, the island they'd put in when James was a baby, Henry with his shoes still on because nobody could ever get him to take them off at the door.
"How old is he now?"
"Six."
"Already?"
"James is eight, and Henry is six, and I have no idea how either of those numbers is real."
"Zoe?"
"Good. Two of her roommates moved out, so she's looking for a third right now. She and Lily come home on Sundays for dinner."
"That's good." I was smiling without meaning to, looking at nothing across the kitchen. "That's good, Shane."
"We're looking for a bigger place, actually."
"In the borough?"
"Has to be in the borough. New shift means I gotta be close."
I straightened off the counter. "New shift?"
A beat. On his end, I could hear a door close and the background hum drop, like he'd stepped into another room for this part.
"Captain of B-shift, Ford."
I closed my eyes.
"Are you kiddin' me?"
"Wouldn't waste your time."
I dragged a hand down the side of my face. The stubble I hadn't shaved in two days rasped against my palm. "Okonkwo finally pulled the trigger."
"Okonkwo's grandson started kindergarten, and Okonkwo said the words, 'I'm done.' I was on shift the day he turned in the paperwork."
"Shane. Congratulations, brother. That's huge."
"Yeah." He let me have a second. "Thanks, Ford."
"Maya happy?"
Something gentled in his voice. "Maya's been calling me captain in front of the kids for the last week, and the kids think it's the funniest thing on earth."
I laughed. It surprised me. I hadn't done it in a while.
He let the laugh sit, not filling the silence the way most people would have. That was Shane—he'd known me for ten years and knew when not to talk.
"Hey, Ford."
I knew the change in his voice before he said the next thing. It was the voice he used at the back of the truck when he wanted you to listen and not interrupt.
"When you coming back?"
I didn't answer.
"That's not a question I'm gonna make you answer right now," he said. "But Walker's putting in his papers."
I sat up.
"Walker is?"
"Mhm."
"Why?"
"He met a girl in Portugal."
"He met a…"
"On vacation. May. Came back, told the crew, and put in his papers two weeks ago. Wedding's in April. He's moving over there."
"Walker is moving to Portugal?"
"Yep."
"To marry a girl he met on vacation?"
"Mhm."
"How the hell…"
"He won't shut up about her. He brought her picture to the firehouse and made the whole crew look at it like it was a casualty photo. I have never seen a man more in love and more confused about it in my life."
"You're one to talk. I saw you at 295 the month Maya broke up with you. You weren't sleeping. I'd run into you at shift change, and every time, you looked worse than the last."
He groaned. "Do you have to bring that up?"
I laughed.
"Anyway, his papers go through the end of the year," Shane said. "Slot opens after that. Could be late January, could be February. I haven't said anything to anybody else. I wanted to ask you first."
I looked at the boxes in the hallway. Then I looked at Penny on the rug.
"Put my name in."
A beat. I heard him smile.
"Good," he said. "I'll put it in. I'll have to take it to the chief, but I think it'll be a clean call."
"Yeah."
"Alright, brother. I'll let you know when I know."
"Thanks, Shane."
"Hey, Ford."
"Yeah?"
"It'll be good to have you back."
"Yeah, brother."
"Talk soon."
He hung up.
The kitchen was very quiet.
I stayed there at the counter with the phone still in my hand.