Chapter 21
Audrey
The string lights were still up.
Two days since the tent, and the lights were still looped across the ceiling in their long warm rows, casting the kitchen in the same gold that made everything look softer than it was.
I kept meaning to take them down. I kept not doing it.
The plants from Astrid's bungalow were still in the corner by the window.
The tent—broken down, folded flat, leaning against the wall by the door—was the last big thing Duke was going to carry to his truck the next time he went back to the house on Elm for a load.
His house. Our house. I was still getting used to the word.
Duke was at the counter with a bowl of cereal, standing up because he always ate standing up before shift.
Hartsdale Fire t-shirt, duty pants, his bag already packed and slung over the chair by the door.
The radio was on low. Nova was in my lap at the table, one hand on the toast I was holding for her, her fist closing and opening against the crust while I took bites between hers.
"What time are you off tomorrow?"
"Eight, if nothing goes long."
"Bring Halsey's bagels if you go past the place."
"Mhm."
The morning moved the way our mornings moved now—small, unhurried, domestic in a way I was still learning to trust. He finished the cereal.
Rinsed the bowl. Picked up his bag from the chair.
Pulled his Hartsdale Fire jacket on over the T-shirt, the navy one with the crest at the chest that smelled like cedar and the laundry soap he'd been using since before I knew him.
Then the goodbye.
He crossed back from the door to the table.
He bent over Nova and kissed the top of her head, his hand cupping the back of her skull for a second, the same hand that caught her on Route 9.
Then he straightened, put his hand on my jaw, and kissed me.
Short, warm, his mouth firm against mine.
I kissed him back. Two people who liked kissing each other at seven in the morning in a kitchen still lit by string lights.
He stopped at the door. "Love you."
"Love you. Be safe."
He raised a hand. "Always."
The door closed behind him.
I sat at the kitchen table with Nova in my lap, the cereal bowl drying in the rack, and the radio playing something I wasn't listening to.
I was allowed to want this.
The thought arrived whole, quiet, too large for the small kitchen it was sitting in.
I'd spent nine months managing my face, managing my expectations, managing the distance between what I wanted and what I let myself reach for.
I was sitting in my own kitchen at seven in the morning watching the father of my child go to work, and the wanting was just here, ordinary, unhidden, mine.
I kissed the top of Nova's head and started my day.
The day passed. Nova on the playmat while I packed another box for the house on Elm.
A text exchange with Duke at four about whether we needed milk.
The last of the pasta reheated for dinner.
Nova's bath, the duck onesie pulled on and zipped—the one she'd finally grown into.
Her 1:30 wake-up, the small opinion cry that meant I am awake, and I have thoughts about it.
I walked her. She went back down. I stood at the kitchen counter at 1:45, drinking water in the dark.
The smoke alarm in the hallway went off.
My body heard it before my brain did. Six years on the L&D floor, a thousand code alarms, a thousand drills. My hand opened. The glass hit the tile and shattered. I was already moving.
The nursery. I pushed the door open. Nova in the crib, asleep through the alarm, her fists curled at her shoulders. I scooped her up—one hand under her head, one under her back—and pulled her against my chest. She woke with the small, confused sound of a baby lifted out of sleep too fast.
I crossed toward the front door. Stopped.
The hospital fire-safety drill. Every year, the whole staff. Two years ago, a tenant on Elm Street opened her front door on a corridor fire, and the backdraft killed her. The post-incident training ran the entire hospital through the rule: if you smell smoke in the hall, check the door first.
I pressed my free hand against the front door.
Hot. The wood radiated heat through my palm, steady, deep, the heat of something that had been burning on the other side for longer than a few minutes.
The corridor was on fire. The thing between my apartment and the stairs was burning.
I stepped back. For one second, the room tilted—the kitchen, the string lights, the plants from Astrid's bungalow—and then I was the nurse again. My hand found my phone on the counter.
I dialed. Gave the address. "The corridor is on fire. I'm on the third floor. I have a baby. I'm going to the window."
"Ma'am, stay on the line. We have units on the way."
"Tell them I'm at the window facing the street. I have the baby with me."
I walked to the bedroom. Set the phone on the dresser, speaker on. The dispatcher's voice: “Ma'am, are you still with me?”
"Yes."
I unlocked the window one-handed. Pushed it up. November air came through, cold and clean, and the smoke that had been thickening behind me started pulling toward the open window instead of filling the room.
I leaned out. Looked down. The street below was empty. The streetlights running for no one.
Then a Hartsdale Fire engine turned the corner, lights going, no siren—late-night protocol in a small town. The red and white coming through the dark with the weight of something I recognized in my whole body.
Duke was on that engine. I knew every shift rotation at the firehouse because my daughter's father worked there. Tuesday into Wednesday. His crew.
I pulled back from the window. The blanket off the bed. A second one from the closet. I wrapped Nova—face out, blanket tight around her body, head against my chest. She was crying now, the real cry, the scared one, the one I'd never heard from her before. I held her tighter.
Smoke was coming under the bedroom door. The carpet at the threshold had started to discolor, the edge of it darkening in a line that meant the hallway beyond the bedroom was catching.
The dispatcher: "Ma'am, the engine is on scene. They're going to come up to your window. Can you stay there for me?"
"Yes."
I turned back to the window. Leaned out again.
Duke was in the street. Off the engine, helmet on, gear on, looking up. His body went still for half a second—a man looking up at a building and seeing, in one of the windows, everything he had in the world. Then he turned to the crew, pointed, and said something I couldn't hear. They moved.
The ladder started to come up.
Two minutes. The ladder climbed the side of the building. The smoke under the bedroom door was thicker now, the carpet edge glowing in a faint orange line, the wood of the door starting to blister where the heat was pushing through from the hallway.
I held Nova against my chest. My arms were shaking. I was holding her too tight, and I knew I was holding her too tight, and I was going to keep holding her exactly this tight until someone took her from me.
The dispatcher, still on the line: "Ma'am, the firefighters are at your window. Hand the baby to them first."
"I know."
Duke at the window.
He came up the ladder in a helmet and mask, his bare hand reaching through the open sash. He'd been at this window once before in a T-shirt. He was at it now in turnout gear with smoke coming out over his shoulder.
"Aud."
I gave him Nova.
She went from my arms to his—my hands opening, his closing, his free arm coming around the bundle against his chest. He held her the way he held her in the apartment, in the rocking chair, on the couch at midnight. One look at me through his mask. Then he went down with her.
I watched from the window. The ladder descending. Duke at the bottom, transferring Nova to another firefighter—broad shoulders, blond hair visible under the helmet. Easton. Nova against Easton's chest, small and wrapped and screaming.
The ladder came back up.
Duke at the window again. Both hands reaching through the sash.
I climbed out.
My hands found his shoulders. His arm came around my waist, solid through the turnout coat. The ladder rungs were cold under my bare feet—I was in a robe, no shoes, going down a fire ladder with the smell of my own apartment burning in my hair.
His hand was on the back of my neck. His voice through the mask. "I've got you. Look at me. Look at me, Audrey."
I looked at him. Green eyes through the visor, steady, locked on mine.
"Step. Step. One more."
Down. Rung by rung. The cold November air on my bare ankles. Duke's body between me and the building, his arm holding my weight against the ladder. I kept my eyes on his face and my hands on his shoulders, and I let the man who read every room hold the only room that mattered.
We reached the bottom. My feet hit the sidewalk—the concrete so cold it registered before anything else.
Easton was at the medic unit with Nova already in a paramedic's hands.
He'd gotten her there while Duke was coming back up for me.
I could see her across the sidewalk—the blanket, the small furious shape of her under the floodlights, a paramedic with a stethoscope leaning over her.
She was screaming. The proper cry, the one with her whole body in it.
I could hear it from twenty feet away, and the sound was the best sound I'd ever heard, because screaming meant breathing.
Duke walked me to the medic unit. His hand on my back, moving me across the sidewalk, steady and fast. He got me to the paramedic, looked at the man working on Nova, and looked at me.
"I have to go back."
"Go."
His hand left my back. He pulled his mask down, turned, and crossed the street toward Hank at the engine. I watched him go for one second—turnout gear, helmet on, already running—and then I turned to my daughter.