32. Brooks
Brooks
“Not every knot means failure.
Some are just evidence that something was pulled too hard.”
— The Stitch & Bitch Bulletin
The shift crew is staring at me, and I don’t give a fuck.
I’m sitting at the long oak table in the firehouse kitchen on Tuesday morning with a pair of reading glasses perched on the bridge of my nose, a yellow legal pad in front of me, and three library books on basic textile mechanics stacked by my elbow.
Because apparently heartbreak has turned me into a man who researched yarn architecture at three in the morning.
“Chief,” Davis says, hovering near the coffee maker with a look that suggests he’s evaluating whether he needs to relieve me of duty under the psychological distress clause of the county charter. “Is that… are you looking at a diagram of a purl stitch?”
“The tension is wrong,” I mutter, not looking up from the page. “If the gauge of the yarn doesn’t match the needle diameter, the whole row collapses. It’s basic physics, Davis. Why the hell do they call it a ‘bitch’ loop when it’s just a standard reverse orientation?”
Davis blinks, lowering his mug. “I think the ‘bitch’ part refers to the conversation, Brooks. Not the engineering.”
“Get the grease trap on Engine 2 cleared,” I command, finally looking up. “And if I see one more speck of soot on the rear intake valves, the whole C-shift is doing hydrant inventory in the rain on Thursday.”
“Copy that,” Davis mutters, backing out of the kitchen.
I drop the pen, leaning my head onto my hand.
Ember’s voice hasn’t left my ears since Monday afternoon.
I went home, I picked up Sophie, I made her mac and cheese, and I sat on the living room rug for two hours while she showed me how to apply pink glitter to a drawing of a ladder truck.
Every time the glitter spilled onto the hardwood, my chest caved in.
Ember would have laughed. Ember would have helped her spread it into the corners of the room. Ember would have looked at me through her messy curls and told me my living room was finally meeting municipal code for personal expression.
I don’t know how to do this.
I know how to calculate fire spread based on wind velocity and fuel load. I know how to manage forty-ton vehicles on narrow mountain roads.
But I don’t know how to make a woman love me again.
? ? ?
Marge doesn’t even look up from the tray of cinnamon rolls she’s frosting. “I told you on Monday, Lawson. The kitchen is closed. We’re out of bread, we’re out of flour, and we’re out of patience.”
“I need a dozen glazed donuts, Marge,” I say.
Ember is in the back.
I can see the edge of her oversized linen shirt through the square window of the swinging kitchen door. She’s lifting a heavy mixer bowl, her narrow shoulders tensing under the fabric, her hair held up by that same flour-dusted pencil.
“Donuts are for people with a soul,” Marge says, leveling her spatula at my chest. “Go buy a box of stale crackers from the gas station.”
“I’m not leaving, Marge,” I say. “I’ll sit on the bench outside until the shift ends. Then I’ll come back tomorrow. I have a lot of free time between administrative reviews.”
A small, sharp sound comes from the kitchen—the distinct clack of a metal spatula hitting a stainless-steel table a little too hard. Ember’s shoulders stiffen through the glass, but she still doesn’t look at me.
Marge looks from the kitchen door to my face, her eyes narrowing until she looks like she’s measuring me for a coffin. Finally, she lets out a harsh, gravelly sigh and shoves a paper bag across the counter.
“Six dollars. And if you touch the glass with your greasy station fingers, I’m calling the sheriff.”
I drop a ten-dollar bill on the counter. “Keep the change.”
“I intend to,” she snaps.
I take the bag, step out onto the sidewalk, and sit down on the green wooden bench directly beneath the bakery window. The wood is cold against my thighs.
I open the bag, take out a glazed donut, and eat it slowly, staring straight ahead at the gravel parking lot.
Ten minutes later, the side door of the bakery opens, and Ember walks out to the big metal dumpster with a green plastic bin full of old flour sacks.
She reaches the dumpster, heaves the bin up with both hands, and dumps the sacks inside with a loud, metallic bang. She turns around to walk back, her eyes fixed on the ground, completely ignoring the massive black command truck parked ten feet away.
“You know, that dumpster is off by three inches,” I call out, my voice low and conversational across the gravel. “Technically, if the county inspector comes through, Marge is looking at a code violation for blocking the fire lane egress.”
Ember stops. Her back is to me, her shirt catching the morning breeze.
For three long seconds, she doesn’t move. Then, she turns her head just enough to look at me over her shoulder.
Her face is completely still. The dark circles under her eyes are still there, but her jaw is set in that stubborn, unyielding line that makes her look like she’s about to tell a judge exactly where to shove his injunction.
“Go back to work, Brooks,” she says quietly.
“I am at work,” I say, holding up the paper bag. “Public relations. It’s part of the community outreach program.”
A tiny, almost imperceptible twitch appears at the very corner of her mouth. But she suppresses it instantly, her eyes going flat again as she turns back to the side door.
“The outreach program is closed,” she says, and the door clicks shut behind her.
? ? ?
On Wednesday, I’m back on the bench at 10:15 AM.
Marge gives me the donuts without speaking, though she slams the register drawer hard enough to rattle the display cases.
I sit outside for two hours.
Ember doesn’t come out to the dumpster. She doesn’t even look through the kitchen window.
But when Engine 3 roars past the intersection on a routine call to the north ridge, I see the white curtain in the bakery window move just a fraction of an inch before dropping back into place.
? ? ?
On Thursday the rain comes down in thick, gray sheets that turn the valley roads into a soup of mud and pine needles.
“You’re going out in that?” Davis asks as I pull my rain jacket over my uniform shirt in the bay. “The council meeting isn’t until seven, Chief.”
“I have a meeting with the community safety committee,” I say, grabbing my yellow pad from the desk.
Davis frowns. “The safety committee met last Tuesday.”
“This is a subcommittee,” I state, shoving my truck keys into my pocket. “The textile and infrastructure division.”
“Chief, with respect, I think you’re having a very specific mental breakdown. I’m begging you to either kiss the woman or request psychiatric leave.”
? ? ?
The church basement smells like fifty years of damp carpet, old coffee, and wool grease. The fluorescent lights overhead hum as I walk down the concrete steps, my heavy boots squelching with every step.
The room is silent except for the rhythmic click-clack of aluminum needles.
Sitting in a circle of folding chairs near the industrial coffee urn are Bernice, Hazel, Dotty, two other women I recognize from the library board, and Ember.
She’s sitting between Dotty and Bernice, a ball of bright, obnoxious mustard-yellow yarn resting in her lap. She’s wearing a thick gray sweater that looks three sizes too big for her, and she’s staring down at her hands with a look of intense, concentrated frustration.
Her tongue is poking out of the corner of her mouth just a fraction of an inch.
The click-clack of the needles stops the instant my boots hit the floor at the bottom of the stairs.
Six pairs of elderly eyes snap up to mine, locking onto my face with the kind of unified hostility usually reserved for developers trying to turn the historic park into a strip mall.
Ember doesn’t look up.
She keeps her eyes fixed on the yellow yarn, her fingers twisting a loop around her needle with a jerky, aggressive movement that looks like she’s trying to strangle the thread.
“This is a private meeting, Chief,” Bernice says. She doesn’t drop her knitting. She just glares over the rims of her glasses.
“The building is a public space, Bernice,” I say, as I walk toward the circle. “And technically, the fire exit behind your chair is partially blocked by that stack of folding tables. I’m here to conduct a visual assessment.”
“The tables have been there since 1994, Brooks,” Hazel says, her needles starting up again with a vicious, rapid-fire speed. “You aren’t here for the tables. You’re here because you’re an asshole.”
I stop exactly three feet outside the circle, directly across from Ember.
Up close, I can see that her yellow knitting is a complete disaster.
It looks less like a scarf and more like a bird’s nest that’s been run over by a lawnmower. There are massive, gaping holes in the center of the row, and one side is twice as wide as the other.
“Your gauge is inconsistent,” I say, pointing a finger toward her needles.
Ember’s fingers freeze. Slowly, deliberately, she lifts her head.
“My gauge is artistic, Chief,” she says. “You wouldn’t understand it. There aren’t any municipal codes for it.”
“If you don’t maintain the tension on the yarn, the whole edge is going to curl,” I say, taking a step closer, ignoring the gasp that comes from Dotty on her left.
“You’ve dropped four stitches in the last three rows, city girl.
At this rate, by the time you reach the collar, you’re just going to have a single, long string of knots. ”
“Maybe I like knots,” she says, her eyes locking onto mine, a stubborn spark finally flaring up in the dark brown depths. “Maybe I think things that are perfectly straight and uniform are incredibly boring.”
“They aren’t boring,” I say. “They’re stable. They keep the roof from coming down.”
“Some roofs need to come down,” she whispers.
Bernice lets out a sharp, rhythmic sniff that sounds like a warning shot.