Chapter 17
Now
Silas
Third time’s the charm, I repeat to myself, determined to attend today’s meeting.
I think of Bea in my truck bed two weeks ago, laughing at my side and crying in my arms, and every little act of defiance before and since over the last month.
The mottled, bruised knots on her rear end and the wince of pain she gave when I helped with one of her shots a few days back.
If she can keep being brave and forging on through all her painful, hopeful shit, I can do this.
I’ve officially made it inside the building this time. I got here early, punched my truck into park, and didn’t let myself linger. I figured getting the layout of things and being the first one to arrive would help. Mastering a plan might help me master my panic—that sort of thing.
The same assortment of food is set out again, so I march over the old parquet floor with my fists clenched and shove three cookies into my mouth at once with undue force.
“Oh! Hello!” I hear. I turn to a sturdy woman I’d guess to be in her late sixties.
She’s got small, dark eyes beneath a raised, wrinkled brow, and a long, quasi-friendly face.
Something about her reminds me of Martha O’Doyle.
She looks like she’d give me shit before force-feeding me stew. I like her immediately.
Which makes this first impression inconvenient, since I am still trying to chew through a wad of cookie. I point at my mouth in explanation, and she watches me patiently. I try to swallow, and it sticks halfway. Swallow again, painfully but successfully this time.
“Water?” she asks, already pouring me a cup. I nod and quickly drink before jutting out my hand.
“Silas,” I say.
She indicates that I should wipe my chin. “Caprice,” she says. “But everyone just calls me Cap. Glad you made it in this time. You won me twenty bucks.”
I reply something noncommittal under my breath. “Glad I could help.”
“Firefighter, I take it?” She tips her head at the emblem on my shirt.
“You’d be correct.” I try to surreptitiously search her for scars and see none. She levels a shrewd glare at me like she knows just what I’m doing, but I’m saved from any added awkwardness when more people file in.
They’re the same group I saw the first time I tried to join.
No more and no less. When the man who confronted me at my truck strides in, he mutters a curse and pulls out his wallet, then hands Caprice a bill.
I learn that man’s name is Garvin, and his buddy is Saul.
The little girl, age eight, is Mila, and her moms are Lisa and Jules.
It’s easy to fall into casual conversation after that.
Cap pulls out a deck of cards and a case of poker chips, and before I know it, I’m teaching Mila how to play five-card draw and hold ’em.
The minutes tick by, and I keep waiting for someone to call an official start to this meeting.
I imagine us all circling our chairs and talking about how we were injured and the metamorphosis wrought on each of our lives because of it, but it never happens.
Saul and Garvin play Ping-Pong while Jules and Lisa play gin.
Mila pulls out an art project she did at school to show off to Caprice.
When I overhear Garvin and Saul talking about fishing, I butt into their conversation and learn that Saul’s brother is a deckhand on a charter boat.
I get a list of recommendations for boats to book a fishing trip with Bea, plus suggestions for what weeks they predict will be best to run for halibut.
Soon enough, we’re all cleaning up the snacks and filing out the doors. Not a single scar or graft was discussed, no standing up and sweating over panic attacks. No talk of tissue massage or pain management or even recommending creams to each other.
I stall at the end so I can talk to Cap, and when we step outside, she smiles up at me expectantly.
“So, what’d you think, Silas?” she asks.
I scratch the back of my neck and match my stride to hers. “Great,” I tell her. “I thought it was great.”
“But?”
“But . . . is that how these meetings always go?”
“I’m not sure I follow?”
“I mean, does no one have to talk? About our injuries? About how we got them, what we’re having a hard time with, et cetera, et cetera?
The perspective we’ve gained on life, the brighter outlook we all have, the meaning we’ve derived from it,” I ramble.
“Not even anyone making jokes that would be inappropriate and uncomfortable for anyone without our scars but allow us to make light of ours.”
For her tough exterior, Caprice’s laugh is surprisingly girlish.
“Oh, sometimes there’s all of that, my dear boy.
And if you wanted to know about any of their injuries, all you had to do was ask them.
They’d’ve told you,” she says. “Saul and Garvin were both military. Mila was caught in a house fire.”
“And you?” I ask before I can stop myself.
Her smile falls into a gentler one. A sadder one. “My husband was a hotshot killed on duty seven years ago, three months before he was set to retire,” she says. “I’ve been doing this—attending and then running burn survivor groups—for about six years now.”
Pain lances through my core, a vise around my throat. I blink hard and away from her. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” she says with a long sigh. “But you know what? Not all pain, yours or mine or anyone’s, has to have a purpose.
You are not obligated to learn something or find a divine purpose in this.
Sometimes it just fucking sucks. This terrible thing stays terrible, what you lost stays lost, and you carry on anyway because life is worth it, and maybe the only things you gotta find are whatever those things are—the things that make it worth it. ”
She leaves me stunned by my truck and turns to walk off to her car, flicking a wave over her shoulder.
“But if you’re going to eat ninety percent of the cookies next time, you’ll need to bring some of your own!”