35. Derek
DEREK
The equipment bay smelled like rubber and citrus degreaser.
Every inch of open floor space was taken up by turnout gear laid out in neat rows, helmets lined by shift, air packs propped against the wall with their gauges facing out.
Checklists hung from every clipboard we owned, taped to the wall by the compressor, taped to the workbench, one even taped to Ember's crate where he'd chewed the corner off within the first hour and gotten yelled at for it more than once.
I stood at the far end running my thumb down a checklist I'd already run twice, waiting for the morning to feel the way the twenty third usually felt, heavy and slow, impossible to outrun.
It never came. I'd noticed it two days late, the way you notice a headache is gone only once you've gone an hour without checking for it.
The twenty third had passed somewhere in the middle of a candlelit town square with a coin in my hand and Leah's mouth against mine, and I hadn't spiraled once. Not that day. Not since.
I wasn't ready to say that part out loud to anyone, not even her.
Some truths felt like they would crack apart the second you put weight on them with words, so I kept this one where it was, folded quiet somewhere behind the checklist in my hands, and let myself feel it instead of explaining it to a soul.
Other years it started before the sun came up, some low hum under my ribs that built through the whole day until by nightfall I could not stand to be around anyone who wanted to talk.
I would find reasons to stay at the station past shift change, run equipment checks nobody had asked for, anything that kept my hands too busy to think.
Sarge learned a long time ago to leave a thermos of coffee on my desk and say nothing else about it.
This year nobody had to leave me anything.
I had not even noticed the day slide past until two mornings later, standing in this exact bay, waiting for a weight that never showed up to knock.
Priya crouched over a row of propane heaters we'd borrowed from three different departments, testing regulator connections one at a time with a patience that used to take her twice as long to reach when she'd started.
"Crowd capacity's the problem," she said, not looking up. "Leah's latest projection has us at eleven hundred for the finale. Square's rated for eight fifty comfortable, a thousand if we open the side lot for overflow."
"Is she giving you a number or a guess?"
"A number. She actually ran it against last year's turnout and the ticket presales for the fireworks viewing. I don't think that woman guesses at anything anymore."
Tomás crossed off another line on his own clipboard without looking up. "Four heaters certified, two more waiting on paperwork from the rental company. County wants documentation on every single one before we're cleared for public use, given the crowd size."
"Get it faxed today if you have to drive it there yourself."
"Sarge already called them about it. They're blaming the holiday for the delay."
"Everybody blames the holiday."
Sarge waved me over to a folding table near the far wall, a hand-drawn map of the square spread out under a coffee mug holding down one corner. Red marker traced two new routes off the main street, funneling toward the parking apron and the side streets behind Hutchins' General Store.
"Two exits isn't enough for eleven hundred people if something goes wrong fast," he said, tapping the map. "I want a third route open here, behind the church, in case the main street backs up."
"That cuts through private property."
"Reverend Okafor already said yes. I asked her yesterday." He straightened, arms crossed, studying the map like it might argue back. "I would rather have a route we never use than need one we don't have."
"Run it by the county for sign-off before we finalize."
"Already sent the email. Waiting on somebody to actually read it, which around here is a bigger ask than the route itself."
Priya went still over the third heater in the row, one hand braced against the tank, eyes narrowed at the small dial mounted near the valve.
"This one's wrong."
I crossed over before she'd finished the sentence, but she'd already flagged it clean, tapping the glass like she didn't quite trust her own read.
"That reads wrong. I'm pulling it before we cert it."
I checked it myself out of old habit more than doubt, watched the needle sit dead still at a pressure that made no physical sense for a tank that heavy, and felt something settle in my chest that had nothing to do with propane at all.
"Good eye, Chen."
She didn't preen the way she might have a year ago.
She just nodded once, set the heater aside for the rental company to deal with, and moved on to the next one down the row like catching a bad gauge before it hurt somebody was routine business instead of the kind of instinct that took most people years to build.
She checked the next four heaters over again before she was satisfied, slower than strictly necessary, the kind of thoroughness that used to annoy me in rookies who were just covering themselves and now read as exactly the opposite.
She was not protecting herself. She was protecting whoever showed up to stand near that heater on New Year's Eve, and she did not need me to tell her the difference mattered.
I thought about the day I'd first put her on equipment checks, green and overeager, double checking everything a second time and asking permission for things that never needed it.
She didn't ask permission anymore. She just caught the mistake before it turned into a problem and told me about it after, the exact rhythm I'd spent two years trying to build into every single person under this roof.
I remembered the first bad call she had walked into fresh out of training, hands shaking so hard on the hose coupling that Tomás had to finish the connection for her while she stood there furious with her own body for betraying her.
She had not quit. She had shown up the next morning before shift and asked me to run her through it again, and again after that, until the shake stopped showing up anywhere except in her voice when she talked about it months later.
Watching her now, steady and certain over a gauge that could have hurt somebody, I knew the slow, unglamorous work of building her back up had actually held.
Digby found me an hour later, stepping into the bay in a wool coat too clean for the kind of morning we were having, a clipboard tucked under one arm like he'd come to inspect the inspection.
"Chief."
"Digby. Didn't expect you out here on a holiday week."
"I don't take holiday weeks. The board doesn't stop meeting because the calendar says otherwise.
" He glanced around at the gear laid out across the floor, at Priya crouched over the heater she had just condemned, and something in his expression shifted, not quite approval, closer to reluctant respect.
"This is thorough. More thorough than I expected. "
"Eleven hundred people is a lot of people to get wrong."
"I can see that." He hesitated, which wasn't like him at all. Digby didn't hesitate. Digby delivered information the way weather delivered snow, flat and inevitable and entirely without apology. "Walk with me a minute, Chief. Off the record."
We stepped toward the far bay door, out of earshot of Priya and Tomás, cold air cutting through the gap where the seal had never quite held right.
"Off the record, Chief, even a perfect number might not save you.
" He said it plain, none of the procedural cushioning he usually hid behind.
"There's talk above me. Regional consolidation, folding smaller departments into the county system, cutting overlap.
I wanted you to hear it from a person, not a memo. "
"How serious is the talk?"
"Serious enough that I'm standing in your bay on my own time instead of waiting for the numbers to come in and letting a letter do the talking for me.
" He looked almost sorry, an expression I had never once seen cross his face in two years of dealing with him.
"This festival could break every record in the book.
It might not matter. Some of this is already leaning a direction, regardless of what your numbers say. "
"Then why bother certifying heaters and running crowd math at all?"
"Because it's still your job, and I'm not in the business of telling a man to stop doing his job over a rumor." He pulled his coat tighter, turning back toward the door. "I'm telling you because you've earned better than finding out in a letter. Do with it what you want."
"Give me a number, Digby. How likely is regional consolidation, actually?"
"I do not deal in guesses any more than Ms. Bennett does, and I have not seen hard numbers myself.
" He met my eyes for the first time since we had stepped outside.
"But I have sat in enough of those meetings to know which way the room leans before anyone puts it to a vote.
I would not be standing out here in the cold if I thought this was nothing. "
"That's not a number."
"It is the closest thing to honesty I am allowed to give you today."
He left the way he always did, business concluded the second the relevant facts had been delivered.
I stood there in the cold gap by the door, holding information I had no idea what to do with yet, turning it over slow while my crew kept working twenty feet away, still riding the high of the best week this festival had ever had.
Sarge caught my expression on his way past with an armful of folded turnout coats. "Everything all right with Digby?"
"Just paperwork."
"You get that face for paperwork now?"
"I get this face for a lot of things, Sarge." I picked my clipboard back up, giving my hands something to do. "It's fine."
He did not push, which was its own kind of mercy, though I caught him watching me a beat longer than the moment strictly required before he carried the coats off toward the storage room.
I thought about calling Leah right then, phone already halfway out of my pocket before I stopped myself.
She was three days into the best stretch of momentum this festival had ever seen, ticket numbers climbing, vendors thrilled, the whole town buzzing about a New Year's Eve finale that might be the biggest thing Pinewood Ridge had ever pulled off.
Handing her Digby's news now felt like taking something from her I had no right to take, not yet, not before I understood what any of it actually meant.
I told myself I was protecting her momentum.
I told myself I would say something once I had real information instead of a rumor delivered off the record by a man who dealt exclusively in formulas.
Both of those reasons felt true enough in the moment to let me slide the phone back into my pocket and go back to work.
By the time the crew cleared out that evening, gear reorganized, heaters tagged and stacked, the faulty regulator boxed up and labeled for return, the bay had gone quiet in the particular way it always did once everyone else went home to actual lives waiting for them.
I ran the last checklist alone, boots echoing off the concrete, and killed the lights one bank at a time until only the exit sign glowed red over the door.
I checked my phone twice on the walk to my truck, her name sitting right there in my recent calls same as it always did, and put it away both times without dialing.
I locked up carrying something I had not told a single person about, not Sarge, not Priya, not even the one person I told everything to now.
I told myself that would change soon enough.
I just was not ready yet to be the reason the best week she had ever had ended with a piece of bad news I was not even sure how to explain.