“How are the girls?”
“Great. Now that we have the cat, they have even more things to fight about—who gets to feed him, who he likes better, whose bed he should sleep on. They also drew pictures of him on each other’s arms with a black Sharpie. Cattoos, they said.”
Justin laughed, slowed his pedaling, and wiped sweat from his face. “Well, we miss seeing them. Don’t be a stranger too much longer, okay? Life’s short.”
I fell silent, thinking—as he probably was—about the call we’d responded to earlier in the week. A structure fire with two children trapped in first-floor bedrooms. I’d been in a lot of life-threatening situations in my SEAL days, but I’d never prayed as hard as I did that day as we felt our way through the house on our hands and knees with zero visibility. Thankfully, we’d located them hiding together in the closet and were able to extract them before the roof collapsed. They were going to be okay, but both were in the hospital with serious injuries.
I normally didn’t go to the girls’ school when they weren’t with me, but after my shift ended the next day, I’d shown up at pickup time, needing to see them and hug them and hear their voices. Naomi had understood, and let me have a little time with them that afternoon. She’d even given me a tearful hug, congratulating me on the rescue and telling the girls how proud they should be of their dad.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll give Bree a call.”
“Why don’t you come over tomorrow night for a few beers? Do you have the kids?”
“Not until Wednesday.” Tomorrow was Saturday, but I wanted to spend the evening with Winnie.
Justin guessed what I was thinking. “Bring her with you. We’ll play cards or something.”
“Maybe,” I said hesitantly.
“Come on, you can keep your fucking pants on for a couple hours,” he chided.
I slowed the treadmill to a walk. “I’ll think about it. But today is her last day at work, and she’s still got a lot of packing to do.”
“When does she leave?”
“Thursday.”
“Oh, wow. I didn’t realize it was so soon.”
“Yeah.” I tried to sound offhand. “Less than a week.”
“Did her place sell?”
“Not yet. She’s still next door.”
“You guys gonna date long-distance once she moves?”
I gave him a look like he was crazy. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because.” I switched the machine off and stepped down. “I wasn’t even good at a relationship when I lived in the same house as Naomi, let alone when I was gone.”
“But you could—”
“No.” My tone was final. “But if you get off my ass, I’ll ask her about cards tomorrow night.”
He held up his hands. “Okay, okay. I’m done.”
I was hoping Winnie would rather just have a quiet night in, but she loved the idea of going to my sister’s house to play cards. She even made some kind of chili dip to bring. “You think it’s okay to use her oven?” she asked on the ride over.
“I’m sure it’s fine.”
“I just didn’t want to heat it up at my place because the cheese would get hard.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” I repeated.
She glanced at me. “You okay?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Sorry. I’m just a little out of it. Haven’t slept well this week.”
“I won’t keep you up late tonight.” She reached over and rubbed my leg. “Unless you want me to.”
Glancing over at her, I tried to smile. “How was your last day at work?”
“It was really nice. They had a cake for me and everything.”
I tried to think of something else to say, but couldn’t. I continued to feel slightly ill at ease on the drive, and when we pulled up in front of Bree’s house, I turned off the engine but didn’t get out right away.
“What is it, Dex? I can tell something is wrong.”
I frowned, staring at the steering wheel.
“Talk to me,” she pleaded.
“That fire on Monday really messed with me.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was something.
She reached over and took my hand. “I bet. Have you heard any more about the kids?”
“Last I heard, they were still in the hospital, but expected to be okay.”
“Good.” She smiled. “You’re all heroes. Everyone is so proud of you guys.”