Chapter 27 - Jamie
Jamie
Being back in Havensworth set my mind back to work.
I'd kept the list in my head the whole flight home, and I'd woken up with it this morning still intact.
Hire a lawyer for Jack's LODD. I'd been turning it over for weeks, and now that I was home I could actually do something about it.
Find someone who knew how to fight the city.
Get the paperwork started. Stop letting the word insubordination be the last thing said about my brother.
Danny had gone to the deputy chief about the proposal. I was waiting to hear what came of it. Megan had told me he wanted to tell me in person. I was trying not to read into it but I was failing at it.
The insurance company had been trying to reach me about the claim on the house. I had two voicemails from the adjuster and an email chain I hadn't opened yet.
And the moving truck was delayed. The company had left a message about the weather somewhere between here and New York. The things on the truck would get here when they got here. I wasn't going to think about it today.
I had work to do, and I was ready to do it.
I poured myself a cup of coffee and leaned against the counter.
"Morning."
Sam crossed the kitchen and kissed the side of my neck.
"What time is your shift?" I asked.
"7:00 a.m."
I checked the clock over the stove. It was 6:15 a.m.
"I'm seeing Megan and Danny for lunch today."
"Yeah?"
"Danny has an update on the proposal. He went to Graff last week. He's been waiting to tell me in person."
Sam nodded.
"Let me know how it goes?"
"I will."
He kissed me. Not a quick one—the kind that slowed him down on purpose, his hand coming up to my jaw, his thumb brushing the corner of my mouth.
"You'll be late," I said against his lips.
"I know."
He didn't move.
"Sam."
"I'm going, I'm going."
He kissed me once more, slower, and I felt him smile against my mouth. Then he pulled back, squeezed my hip, and went down the hall to get dressed.
I shook my head and took a sip of coffee.
Megan's kitchen smelled like garlic bread when I walked in.
She pulled me into a hug at the door.
"Get in here. Danny made too much food again."
"I did not." Danny was at the table, off-shift, his hair still damp. He stood up and hugged me briefly. "She made too much food. She's blaming me."
"I'm allowed to blame you. It's in the vows."
He rolled his eyes and pulled out the chair next to his. I sat down.
Megan set a plate in front of me, one in front of Danny, and sat down across from us with her own. For a few minutes it was easy. She asked about Rosie. Asked if the moving truck had a new date. I told her Thursday at the earliest. She nodded and handed me the garlic bread.
I'd known her since I was a baby and she was seven. I could read a room she was in with my eyes closed.
I set my fork down.
"Danny."
He looked up.
"Just tell me."
He looked at Megan. She nodded once, small.
He rubbed the back of his neck.
"I talked to Graff last week. It went like you'd expect."
"What did he say."
"The current system has served Havensworth well for decades." Danny's voice was flat. Not cold. Just tired. "He wasn't unkind. He just wasn't moving."
I didn't say anything.
Megan reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
"We're not done," she said. "We're just figuring out the next thing."
I looked at Danny across the table. Hair still damp from the shower.
Off-shift, home, safe, his knee bumping Megan's under the table without him thinking about it.
I thought about the way Megan had reached for his hand two months ago when her voice had caught at this same table.
What happens if Danny doesn't— . She hadn't finished the sentence.
I thought about Sam. At the station. Two hours into his shift. Same uniform, same rig, same rules Jack had worked under.
Jack was already gone. The proposal wasn't going to bring him back. The proposal was supposed to keep the next one from happening. And the department had just told me it wasn't going to.
Which meant the next one was still coming.
"You went as high as you could," I said. "And the answer's the same."
"I know."
"How many more people have to die for things to change?"
I didn't mean to say it out loud.
Neither of them answered.
Because there was no answer.
Rosie wasn't due for pickup until another hour, and we'd been gone for two weeks.
There was nothing in the house. So I swung by the Harris Teeter on my way through town and filled a cart: bread, milk, the cereal Rosie liked, pasta, chicken, the lemon cleaner, decent coffee and those waffle fries from the freezer section that Sam kept asking about but we never seemed to have in the house.
I pushed the cart out to the parking lot and opened the trunk of Jack's car.
It had been in the shop for an oil change the night the house burned, which was the one mercy of that night—it was the only thing of his I'd walked away with. I still couldn't get in the car without feeling him in the driver's seat.
I started loading the bags in as Danny’s voice echoed in my head.
The current system has served Havensworth well for decades.
I set a bag down harder than I'd meant to.
Sam was at the station right now. Two hours into a shift under the same rules Jack had been under. Every shift he worked, I was going to sit in the apartment and listen for a phone call I didn't want to get.
That was the life I'd just chosen.
"Jamie?"
I went still with my hand on a bag.
I knew the voice.
I turned around.
"Amber." I shifted the groceries in my arms because I didn't know what to do with my hands. "It's nice to see you."
Amber smiled. "I heard about the fire. I'm so sorry about your house."
I nodded. My brain was still catching up to her being here at all.
"Is Sam helping you?"
Something in the way she said it made me set the last bag down slowly in the trunk. "Is there something I can help you with, Amber?"
Amber hesitated. Something flickered across her face that looked almost like sympathy.
"Look, Jamie. You seem like a decent person. And you've been through enough. First your brother, then your house." She paused. "I'm not the kind of girl who kicks someone while they're down. So I really thought you ought to know."
"About what?"
"I feel terrible telling you this. I really do. But Sam hasn't been completely honest with you." She paused. "You've just been to New York, haven't you?"
"How do you know that?"
"And Sam didn't go with you. Did he?"
I didn't know how to respond.
"That's because he's been with me, Jamie. I'm so sorry. I wish you didn't have to hear it this way."
She's making this up, I thought.
She reached into her purse and pulled out an envelope. "I don't know if he's mentioned it. But my father has offered to send him to college for a while now. So he could quit firefighting.”
"He doesn't plan to quit firefighting."
Amber held the envelope out to me.
"I know it sounds unbelievable. But I have his acceptance letter right here."
I didn't take it. She held it closer until I did.
My hands weren't shaking yet. I told them not to.
I opened it.
An acceptance letter. Sam's name. The university logo at the top. A start date in the fall.
I read his name three times.
"We were talking about it the whole time you were away," she said softly. "I told him he really ought to tell you before your trip. I suspect he didn't."
"He didn't mention anything."
"He wouldn't have. That's Sam, isn't it? He's not a confrontational kind of guy."
Her tone was too careful. Too rehearsed. Like a line she'd practiced in a mirror before she got out of the car.
"I wanted to tell you because I thought you ought to know. I know what Bryce did to you in high school."
The cold hit me before the words did. The specific cold of being sixteen. Of a Havensworth hallway. Of everyone knowing.
"That's none of your business, Amber."
"It is. He's my cousin. The whole family knows." She said it the way you'd mention the weather. "And when I realized Sam hadn't ended things properly with you, I came to let you know myself. I couldn't live with myself if I let him humiliate you the same way Bryce did."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
"Girls have to look out for each other, don't we?" She tilted her head.
"I don't know if I want to believe you, Amber."
My voice came out even. I didn't know how.
She reached back into her purse and pulled out a set of keys.
I recognized the shape of his before she said anything. I'd used it. My body knew it before I let my brain name it.
"I still have his key, Jamie. He's never asked for it back. I really think you ought to ask him why."
She held it up between us long enough for me to see it, then dropped it back into her purse.
"Goodbye, Amber." I turned toward the driver's side.
"If you won't believe me about that," she said, "maybe you'd want to know the truth about what happened to your brother."
"Don't you dare bring Jack into this."
"Jack wasn't supposed to be working that night, Jamie." Amber's voice was soft. "He was only there because Sam asked him to cover for him. Sam was with me."
I couldn't answer her.
The parking lot was there. Amber was there. My hand was on the door of the car. I knew all of that the way you know things when the rest of you has stopped working.
"Maybe that's why he couldn't tell you up front. Because he feels guilty." Amber tilted her head. "He's playing you, Jamie. And I thought you ought to know so you can make an informed decision about whether you really want to be with Sam Reeves."
She paused.
"If you won't believe me, ask him."