Chapter 2
Chapter Two
CHASE
“ Y ou’re looking good, brother,” I said to Forrest Winters as he greeted me with a fierce hug. It was true. He carried a sort of glow. He stood a little taller, which was saying a lot for a man who already stood at 6’3”. His beard had an extra shine. And everything about him seemed content.
“Domestic life suits me.” His smile was smug.
“Sierra’s still putting up with your shit?”
Forrest gave a low chuckle. “She still wants me, believe it or not. She’s loving life on the lake.”
“When are y’all gonna have me over? I wouldn’t mind some of those bacon bites she makes.” I waved him inside. When Forrest suggested we catch up, I’d invited him up to the farm. I’d been bored since the peach harvest, so hosting was a win-win. I liked to cook and he liked to eat.
“We’ll have you over once the remodel’s done. I’m on my sixth week without a kitchen.”
“I didn’t know you were having work done, man.”
“We were only supposed to replace a few appliances. Now, we’re close to a whole new kitchen. But what Sierra wants, Sierra gets.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “She’s got you wrapped around her finger.”
“The only thing I wrapped around her finger is a ring.”
“Holy shit. You proposed?”
“Last week.” Forrest looked even more smug now. “Matter of fact, I was hoping you would host our engagement party. Return to the scene of the crime, and all.”
The Noble Pig was a supper club I ran in spring and summer—an open-air farm-to-table restaurant with a menu I cooked myself. The meal was served on china—more country chic than formal—on a long table on the most idyllic of my orchard roads.
The intimate experience was a favorite for dates—it was where Forrest and Sierra had their first. The Noble Pig had been written about in magazines. I’d started it after months of obsessively cooking weekly dinner parties for my baffled friends. Turning my dinner parties into a supper club that could serve as an outlet for my manic culinary phase had been all Violet’s idea.
“Hell yeah I’ll host your engagement party,” I agreed.
“We’re working on dates with Sierra’s folks. Might be around Thanksgiving. They’re coming in from California.”
Forrest came farther into the house he hadn’t seen the inside of since my remodel.
“Place looks great.” He took an approving look around.
“Yeah, well, nervous breakdowns are underrated.” I scratched the back of my neck. “Turns out when you quit your job and move in with your parents, then start big projects to get your mind off of things, you can get a lot of shit done.”
“How are Laurel and Pete these days?” Forrest had known my folks for years.
“ Where are they is more like it. Down some river in Vietnam.”
“How long have they been away this time?”
“Going on four months now. I’ll send you a link to my momma’s blog.”
They were deep in their retirement travel and, God bless them, they had earned it. They’d run the peach farm for a solid thirty years. After that, they’d delayed a series of vacations on account of my troubles. All of that had ended in a drastic measure born out of self-preservation and tough love: they’d handed me the deed to the farm.
I’d spent the first week after they left glaring resentfully at the deed—my inheritance mocking me from the kitchen table, the legacy they’d always known I didn’t want staring me in the face. The sixty-acre farm was mine to sell or rent, or to let go to seed. But I couldn’t disrespect their life’s work. So I’d brushed myself off, gotten over my own bullshit, bucked up, and taken to the fields.
“You hire a designer or something? I know you don’t have this much taste.”
Forrest took an appreciative look around, admiring a living room he hadn’t seen in quite some time. The worn rug had been removed and the floors beneath refinished—they were now stained a modern brownish gray. The cherrywood doorframes and finishes had been painted over in white. Drab wallpaper had been ripped out from floor to ceiling. Chair rail molding now bisected light and dark shades of blue gray on top and bottom. But the decor really finished it—pops of color amid a palette of grays that matched the stone platform that housed my wood burning stove; a corner with stands for my guitars and banjos; a comfy couch long enough to lounge on, even with my tall frame.
“The kitchen’s not the only place I know what I’m doing,” I boasted. “All this woodwork was me.”
I’d spent the past two winters restoring the farmhouse to its original beauty. I’d used contractors for the foundation work and basement refinishing, but I’d done the cosmetic work myself. I’d taken craftsmanship classes—invested in sanders and belt saws and lathes. I’d restored the detailing to its former glory, from the ornate mantelpiece in the dining room to custom railings on the stairs.
“But who taught you how to do the rest? You been watching those property brothers on HGTV?”
I put my hands on my hips and took in with satisfaction all the elements that made my house a home. “Naw, man. I didn’t pick out any of the furniture or the colors. This is all Violet’s touch.”
Forrest gave a long whistle, looking even more approving than before. “She really fixed up this place. No offense to your momma’s taste, of course.”
“More like my grandmama’s taste,” I commiserated. “The way it looked when I grew up here was pretty much the same as it looked when my momma did.”
“Where’s Jameson?”
Forrest eyed the empty dog bed in the corner. Jameson was the other thing that had come with my deed. The first time I’d met him, his face-licking had awakened me out of a drunken sleep. I’d opened my eyes to find my mother standing over me, where I’d passed out on the couch. In her hand was the empty bottle of whiskey I’d polished off the night before. That was when she told me I needed to stop drinking until I got myself together—that the only Jameson allowed in the house for a while was my dog.
“He spends most days in Violet’s barn. You know, I raised him from a puppy. I’m the one who feeds him and takes him to the vet. You think that boy’d be loyal. But I’m telling you—he likes her better than me.”
I led Forrest through the living room, then the dining room, then the kitchen, which I’d knocked down a wall in order to double in size.
“This is really nice,” Forrest said with the kind of appreciation that could only be shared by a man in the middle of a remodel of his own. “I know I’ve been to the Pig a few times, but it’s been a while since I came inside the main house. I don’t think I’ve been here since right after you quit.”
To call what I did “quitting” was putting it lightly. I’d spiraled into an incapacitating depression that had served as an abrupt end to my firefighting career. The last fire I’d fought, three men from Tennessee hadn’t come home. One of those men had been Todd.
“Grab some plates,” I instructed as we passed through. The lunch I’d made was on the porch, a wraparound affair with a nice view of the orchards from the back. I’d put our spread under a mesh food tent in order to keep out the flies.
“You ought to start a sandwich shop,” Forrest complimented two minutes later around a mouthful of turkey club. “What the hell did you put on this?”
“I make a special mayonnaise. Smoked paprika. Umami salt. That kind of thing.”
Forrest took another indulgent bite, which made me chuckle. Forrest Winters had never met a sandwich he didn’t like.
“Asking you to host my engagement party is only the first reason why I’m here,” he said after polishing off two-quarters. His expression sobered. “We need you back.”
His “we” had to be the National Forestry Service. And then “needing me back” had to refer to becoming a firefighter again.
“I’m happy where I am.” I repeated the same line I’d said to others who’d come knocking. Hell, I’d already refused Forrest twice.
“You must have time,” he went on. “The Noble Pig is closed for the season.”
“I’ve still got a farm to run.”
“I know you do. But this is more than just me on my annual pilgrimage. Those other times, I just wanted my friend beside me again. This time, I need you. You’re a damn good firefighter, Chase.”
“Past tense,” I was quick to say.
“I’m not asking you to come back as a duty firefighter.” He went on like I hadn’t spoken. “I need you on my Council on Wildfire Prevention. This is some real-deal shit. Federally funded. Not some rinky-dink local subcommittee. Our charter is to set the national standard for how we fight wildfires.”
“I told you. I’m not a firefighter anymore.”
“I don’t care what the hell you call yourself. The simple fact is, only three ranked command leaders were there.”
He looked as haunted as I felt. And he didn’t need to say where there was: in the thick of the deadliest field of the deadliest wildfire on record.
“So call Thompson,” I suggested.
“Thompson’s in hospice, with cancer.”
Shit.
“I didn’t know.”
When he spoke again, Forrest’s look was apologetic. “That leaves me and you.”
I put down what was left of my sandwich. I wasn’t hungry anymore.
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
He fell silent for a long minute. Just when I’d convinced myself he planned to drop it, he spoke again.
“Look, man. I know you were in a real dark place. I know you’ve worked hard to rebuild your life?—”
“You’re damn right I did.”
“But I also know you blame yourself for Todd’s death.”
I shut my mouth.
“I’m offering something a thousand guys in your position will never get: a chance to find out what really happened that day. A chance to make it right.”
I didn’t realize how hard I was clenching my jaw until my teeth gnashed together.
“Nothing can make it right,” I managed to grind out.
“No,” Forrest protested. “Nothing can bring him back. But making it right? Now, that’s something different. Making it right means doing everything in your power to see it never happens again.”
I had questions that I didn’t dare to voice—to do so would make Forrest think that I was actually considering this.
“The project’s sponsored by the Secretary of the Interior,” he went on. “She’s giving us investigator status, and unfettered case file access to the three deadliest wildfires in the history of the US. Our job is to find mistakes and failure points, then to rewrite the manual for how firefighters are trained. And we don’t just hand off our findings to some department that says they’ll execute—they want us to teach the training ourselves.”
I remained quiet, my protests dampened by the merit of his offer. His reasons for why I ought to do it weren’t wrong. But my reasons weren’t wrong either. Taking the job would force me to relive the trauma, even if I never picked up a hose again. For four years, I’d worked hard to not feel so broken—to look forward and leave the past behind. I wasn’t ready to look back.
“I’ve got other people who depend on me now. I can’t just walk away.”
“I’m not asking you to walk away. I’m asking you to split your attention. You know as well as I do, these fires are becoming more extreme. If amateurs keep trying to train these guys to fight the kind of fires they’ve never seen, a lot more guys like Todd will never come home to their families.”