Chapter 1: 3:04 A.M.
The pager went off at 3:04 a.m.
I know the exact time because I’ve been married to a firefighter for nineteen years, and some part of my brain still checks the clock every time those tones go off, like I’m going to be asked about it later.
Matt was already moving before the second tone ended. Boots, pants, the navy T-shirt he sleeps in on call nights. The radio on the dresser crackled with the dispatcher’s flat, calm voice.
“Battalion Four, Engine Twelve, Medic Six. Multi-vehicle collision, Route 9 at Hollis Road. Reported entrapment. Two juveniles.”
Two kids. Trapped.
He kissed my forehead without looking at me, grabbed his keys off the hook, and took the stairs two at a time. I heard the front door open.
And then I heard nothing.
No truck door slamming. No engine. No crunch of tires on the driveway. Just the front door, still open, letting in cold October air.
“Laura.” His voice from downstairs. Not loud. Worse than loud. “Laura, come here.”
I ran down in my socks and my old gray hoodie. Matt was standing on the porch under the yellow light with his keys in his hand and the radio clipped to his belt, staring at our driveway.
Our empty driveway.
His truck lives there. It’s not really his truck. It belongs to the Larkin County Fire District, a red pickup with a white stripe, an amber light bar on the roof, a locked medical box in the bed, two radios, and his turnout gear behind the seat. Battalion chiefs on call take it home, because when kids are trapped in a car on Route 9 at three in the morning, nobody wants the man in charge stuck driving to the station first.
Tonight there was nothing there but two dark lines across the concrete where tires had been dragged.
“Somebody stole it,” I said. “Matt. Somebody stole your truck.”
“Nobody stole it.” He pointed.
Taped to our mailbox, flapping in the wind, was a bright orange sheet of paper. I pulled it off and held it under the porch light.
NOTICE OF VEHICLE REMOVAL. Vehicle removed per Willow Creek Estates HOA Rule 7.3 (Commercial / Logo Vehicles – No Overnight Parking). Authorized by: G. Pratt, Board of Directors. Contact Apex Recovery for release.
G. Pratt.
I looked across the street.
Gerald Pratt’s house sits directly across from ours. Two-story colonial, perfect hedges, a flagpole he lowers every night at sunset. He’s sixty-seven, retired from insurance, and he has been on the HOA board for as long as we’ve lived here. His porch light was on. The front curtain in his living room twitched.
Matt’s radio crackled again. “Battalion Four, status?”
He keyed the mic. “Battalion Four. Delayed. My vehicle’s been… my vehicle is unavailable. Responding in a private car. ETA twelve minutes.”
He looked at me. I was already running for my keys.
My minivan still had juice boxes in the cupholders and a soccer bag in the back from our daughter’s game. Matt rode in the passenger seat with his radio in his lap and his jaw so tight I could see the muscle jump. No lights. No siren. Just me, doing seventy on a two-lane road, praying no deer stepped out, while he listened to the first engine arrive on scene and call for the battalion chief who wasn’t there yet.
“Two in the back seat,” the radio said. “One unresponsive. Need extrication. Battalion Four, your ETA?”
“Four minutes,” Matt said into the radio. Then, to me, quietly: “Drive, Laur.”
I dropped him at the edge of the flares. I watched him run toward the blue and red lights without his helmet, without his coat, without the medical bag that was locked in a truck somewhere in an impound lot.
Then I sat there in the dark with the engine running and shook.
When I got home it was almost four. The street was silent. I pulled into the driveway, onto the tire marks, and turned off the engine.
Across the street, Gerald Pratt was standing on his front porch in a plaid bathrobe.
He was holding a coffee mug.
When he saw me looking, he lifted it toward me. Just a little. Like a toast.
