Chapter 9
Easton
I was walking three paces behind her on purpose.
Three paces was the distance a man could keep without it looking like distance. Any closer and I'd have my hand on the small of her back. Any further and I'd have lost the sound of her boots on the trail, which I'd been listening to for half an hour without admitting I was listening.
She'd pulled her hair back at the nape with one of the elastics she kept in her kitchen drawer. Honey-brown, a color that turned toward red in the fall light. Her cheeks were pink from the cold. Her breath came out in a small cloud every other step.
Moose was ahead of us, doing his loops, nose down and ears flagged.
Penny was at my hip, matching the only pace she had now—slow and careful, every step a small negotiation with her hip.
The river ran below us off the left side of the trail, low enough you could hear it under the wind.
The lake was a quarter mile up, where the river widened, and the bottom went flat.
Locals called it the swimming hole. Half the town learned to swim there.
It was the first Saturday in October, and the air felt like it.
"So," she said over her shoulder.
"Hit me."
"Duke's pinball machine."
"Yeah."
"Still in his basement?"
"Yup. Still in his basement."
"Still not flipping?"
"Right side won't lift."
She made a small, mock-sympathetic sound, somewhere between a hum and a sigh. "That's a tragedy."
"A man should be allowed to flip both sides." I watched her glance over her shoulder, the corner of her mouth already tilting. "It's the principle."
"It's the principle," she echoed, dead serious, and held it for a beat before the corner of her mouth gave it up.
"Do you have something against pinball, Matthews?"
"Not at all. I love pinball." She paused on the trail, turned half toward me, hands in her fleece pockets. "I just like watching firefighters work very hard to fix a thing that hasn't worked since 1981."
"It's a craft."
"You sound like Duke."
"That's the worst thing you've ever said to me."
She laughed—the real kind, from her chest. Moose came galloping back at the sound of it and circled her knees once before peeling off again.
She was easier in her body this morning than she'd been at any point since she came home.
Her shoulders sat lower. Her hands weren't shaking.
I noticed because I'd spent twelve years on a firehouse line being trained to notice things—the angle of smoke, the pattern of soot above a doorframe—and at some point, I'd stopped being able to turn it off around her.
Three weeks ago, she opened her door for me with her shoulders up around her ears and a smile that didn't fit her face.
Three weeks ago, she let me put my hand over hers at her kitchen table and didn't move it.
I figured I'd allow myself the three paces and try not to think too hard about why I was counting them.
We were maybe two hundred yards from the lake when we heard it.
The first sound was a kid. Loud enough to come through the trees. The second sound was a mother when something had just gone wrong.
I was looking at Astrid when it happened. Her head came up before mine did. Her boots were moving on the trail before I'd done the math on what we were hearing.
"Astrid."
She didn't stop.
She was off the trail in the next breath, cutting straight downhill through the brush toward the water. Moose came back at the sound of her voice and overshot her, plowing through the undergrowth with his ears flat.
Penny was already lunging at my hip.
I caught her by the collar before her front feet cleared the lip of the bank.
She was twelve years old. Three weeks out of anesthesia.
The slope ahead of us needed a young dog with intact hips, and she had neither.
She tried again, her front legs out over the edge, her back legs unable to catch the angle, and her weight tipped forward in a way that turned my stomach over.
I had a hand under her chest, and another at her collar, and I hauled her back onto level ground before gravity finished the job.
"Pen. No. Stay."
She was trying to go, straining toward Astrid, soundless, the whole of her wanting to follow. I got her behind the nearest maple, looped her lead twice around the trunk, and double-knotted on the second wrap.
"Stay."
Four seconds. Maybe five.
I had my phone out by the time I cleared the tree. Dispatch picked up on the second ring.
"Hartsdale Fire, off-duty. We've got a pediatric drowning at the swimming hole, north bank by the dock. Send a rig."
I gave her the rest on the way down. Branches across the face. Roots under my boots, the trail dropping in steps a hiker would never have called a trail. I caught my shin on a downed limb hard enough to break the skin.
I came out of the trees onto the gravel of the bank, and the scene lay itself out the way a fireground does—every figure in its place, the angles already mapped before I registered the picture.
Astrid was on her knees in the wet pebbles. Soaked through. Hair stuck to one side of her face from going under. The boy was on his back in front of her. Five, maybe six. Blue at the lips, hair flat to his forehead. His mother was on her knees a yard off, sobbing, both hands clamped over her mouth.
Astrid had the heel of one palm on his sternum, the other hand on top, elbows locked. Counting under her breath, lips moving on each number.
I dropped to my knees opposite her, the wet pebbles biting through my jeans.
"Astrid."
She didn't look up. "Out at the dock. Cleared his mouth. Gave him two. Started compressions ten seconds ago."
"Switch. I've got compressions. Stay on breaths."
She moved. Didn't argue. Didn't waste a second on it.
I put the heel of my palm on his sternum, the other hand on top, elbows locked.
The first compression sank an inch and a half into the chest of a five-year-old, and my brain went somewhere I'd put it a thousand times on shift—the place where you stopped feeling what was under your hands and started counting.
"One. Two. Three. Four. Five."
I counted out loud. She kept his airway open with two fingers under his chin, watching his chest, watching me, watching for the cue. The dispatcher's voice was coming from the phone I'd dropped on a flat rock by my knee on speaker, calm, asking for updates, telling me the rig was rolling.
At fifteen, Astrid leaned in. Sealed her mouth over his. Two breaths. His chest rose twice. She came back up.
Back to me. I counted again.
The mother was praying. The mother was sobbing. The mother started to come over the boy's body, and Astrid put a hand on her shoulder without looking up, and the mother stopped.
I was twenty-three into the second cycle when his foot twitched.
"Easton."
"I see it."
"Keep going."
I kept going.
At twenty-eight, he coughed.
The cough came out of him like a punch. The water came with it—half a lungful onto the pebbles, gray and threaded with grit from the bottom of the lake.
I rolled him a quarter turn so the rest could come up.
He coughed again on his side. He started to cry, and it was the most beautiful sound I'd heard in twelve years on the job.
I had my hand off his chest before he was finished with the first cry.
"Pulse."
"Strong," Astrid said.
"Color."
"Coming up."
His mother was on top of him before either of us could speak again, sobbing his name into the side of his head. Astrid had a hand on her back and was telling her to let him breathe, easy, easy, let him breathe.
I picked the phone up off the rock.
"Dispatch. Patient responsive. Spontaneous respirations. Pulse strong, color returning. Mother on scene. We are good."
The dispatcher told me the rig was three minutes out.
I told her three minutes was good. I told her to keep the line open. I put the phone back on the rock.
Astrid sat back on her heels in the gravel.
She wiped her hands on her jeans like she'd just changed a tire.
The rig came down the fire road in three minutes and forty seconds.
Mendoza had been the lieutenant on my shift the last year, and Halsey was at the wheel. Mendoza saw me on the gravel and clocked me the way a firefighter clocked somebody he knew in a place he didn't expect.
"Ford."
"Mendoza."
"What've we got?"
I gave him the version they needed. Five-year-old, six on the long end.
Submerged at the dock. Civilian on scene got him out of the water at around forty seconds, cleared his airway, two rescue breaths, and started compressions.
I came in and took over compressions about ten seconds later.
Two full cycles. Spontaneous cough and respiration.
Pulse strong, color back, breathing room air.
"Civilian got him out?"
"Yeah."
He looked at Astrid, who was standing at the water with her back to us, arms folded tight across her chest.
"Civilian has training?"
"She's a vet."
They loaded the boy. The mother went up in the back with him. She turned at the rear door and looked across the bank at Astrid, and Astrid lifted her chin once.
Halsey nodded at me on his way around to the driver's side.
"Ford."
"Halsey."
He paused with one hand on the door handle and tipped his chin toward Astrid. "That your woman?"
"That's a friend."
He drew the syllable out—the firehouse syllable that meant I'm not arguing with you, but I'm not believing you either—and went around to the door.
The rig closed up. The lights went on. The siren came on a beat later as they cleared the fire road.
The bank was suddenly very quiet.
Moose walked over to Astrid and pressed his head against her hip. She put her hand on top of his without looking at him.
I walked over and stood next to her at the edge of the water.