Fire Born (Firehouse 343) (20 page)

But no.
Not only was she alive, her damn kid was still alive. Thank goodness he’d had the foresight to silence his poor excuse for a
hitman
, otherwise both of them would be able to identify him. If he was identified, then the guy would have been picked up, and possibly convinced to turn state’s evidence. He couldn’t allow that. So he’d killed the ignorant prick
.

Only now he wished he hadn’t, because he could have sent him in to finish the job. Maybe blame something else on Trevor
Breckon
so that the BFS would have no choice but to arrest that punk. Unfortunately, he had no idea yet what his next move would be. He just knew he had to make it soon, before the whore told someone about him and they got suspicious.

***

The last two days had been nothing short of hell. He would have preferred walking into an inferno to dealing with the grief of Calvin’s family, because it only served to remind him how much he was hurting. Chris had done the best he could, supporting whatever decisions the
Maynards
and Tonja wanted to make. The only thing he’d insisted on
were
the bagpipes. Calvin had loved the sound of
“
Amazing Grace
”
played on Scottish bagpipes, once saying that even the coldest of hearts had to melt at that haunting refrain.

Karalyn
was being a trooper, trying to be strong for her aging grandparents and her aunt, who’d fi
nally managed to get home from
he
r business trip
. Chris loved her for putting on a brave face in front of everyone, but he could tell she was hurting. He hoped she would soon make time for her own grief, because if she didn’t he knew it would eat her up from the inside out.

Chris also missed Martie. She’d called him from Billings every night, but as much as he loved hearing her voice, that sultry, husky sound that had attracted him almost as much as her beautifully shaped ass, it just wasn’t the same as having her beside him. Even if they were just in the same room he’d have been happy, though certainly he’d have preferred to have her in his bed. Even he was beginning to wonder how in the world they were going to make a relationship work when they lived in different cities—it had hardly been two days since he saw her last and already he was miserable without her.

As much as he missed her, however, he had to put that aside for today. Today he
needed to be strong—for his men, for Calvin’s family, maybe even for the entire city. Though it had taken him time to see it, he’d come to realize just how much losing one of their own had meant to the citizens of Gracechurch. Flags in front yards had been lowered to half ma
st. One of the local church
youth group
s
had organized a bake sale fund raiser and donated the money to
The Fireman’s Rescue, a charity that supported the families of injured or deceased firefighters, in Calvin’s name. Another had raised money to put toward Calvin’s funeral.

All of this in a matter of days.
Chris knew he might never be prouder of the people in this place he now called home than he was today.

Though his mother had once said he looked “devilishly handsome” in it, he hated having to put on his dress uniform. The only time he ever had occasion to wear it was for special ceremonies and funerals. Still, he pulled it from the closet and put it on, making sure every crease was sharp, every button shiny, every medal (yeah, he
had a few) in its proper place…his rarely-worn badge, complete with black mourning band.
Personally he thought the navy blue clashed with his copper skin rather than enhanced it, as his mother believed, but then his favorite outfit was a t-shirt and jeans, so what did he know?

Martie had said she would be back in town for the funeral, but he hadn’t seen her yet. He hoped he would see her soon—he needed to see her, to see that there was a light at the end of the dark tunnel he’d been living in the last few days. She was that light for him now, had become his future so fast his head felt like it was spinning every time he thought of it.

After dressing, he locked up his apartment and headed over to Calvin’s house. He was to meet with the family there and they would head to the church, St. Michael’s, together.
When he arrived, Richard Maynard
opened the door for him, looking as though he’d aged
from 80 to 100 in the last two days.

“Mr. Maynard,” he said, nodding as the elderly gentleman stepped back to let him in.

“I think after all these years, you’d be calling me Richard, son,” Cal’s father replied.

Chris smiled lightly. “Maybe so, sir,” he said simply. “How are Kara and Tonja?”

Richard’s expression fell. “
Them
girls are having a hard time, though
Karalyn’s
trying to be tough for everyone.”

“You noticed that too, huh?” he replied, following the other man into the living room. There he found
LouAnn
, Calvin’s mother, holding the hands of Irene, her former daughter-in-law, and Tonja, her would-be daughter-in-law. The latter woman looked up on their entering the room.

“Chris!” she cried, then jumped up and ran to him.

He wrapped his arms around her and embraced her tightly. There was nothing he could say to Tonja—to any of them—that might ease their pain, so he said nothing, merely held her close and let her cry.

The priest leading the ceremony was about Calvin’s age. His was a strong, deep voice, a voice that commanded attention even though he spoke quietly.
Reverently.
Every mourner in attendance listened as he
talked about
w
hy they were there, of the roles Calvin had played
—son, brother, husband, father
, firefighter
. Then he invited anyone who had something they wished to say about Calvin to the pulpit, and Richard rose first.

“I don’t rightly know what I can say what
ain’t
already been said the last few days,” he began. “Most of us here knew Calvin, or knew of him. But I suppose I can say that only a few of you know what I mean when I say I loved him like no other. Only a parent knows or understands the love another parent has for their child. That’s how I loved Calvin. That’s how he loved his little girl, my granddaughter
Karalyn
. And though he never met her, Calvin knew that was the same love a young mother felt for her daughter, that little girl he saved.

“Am I sad that my boy is gone? I am, because no parent should have to bury their child. That’s why he went into that building. That’s why he used his own body as a shield to protect a small, frightened child. He knew
what it was to love as only a parent can, and he didn’t want that little girl’s mother to lose her baby. So yes, I am sad. I am going to miss Calvin
somethin
’ fierce. But I’m proud of him, more proud than I’ve ever been. Because my only son gave all he had to give so that another parent didn’t have to say goodbye to her only child.”

Tears fell from the old man’s eyes, and it was all Chris could do not to rise from his seat and help him down from the pulpit. But he had a feeling Richard wouldn’t have wanted that. He’d stood strong this long, he could stand strong a little longer.

Cal’s mother spoke next, a tearful
ly
eloquent speech about how much she had loved and would miss her little boy. Then Irene spoke. She said that though she and Cal hadn’t been marri
ed for more than a decade, she
still loved him. He’d once been her best friend, and he was the father of her child. Because of that, he would always hold a special place in her heart—and she would miss him more than she could ever put into words.

To
nja got up to speak next, becoming
so upset before she said even one word that she nearly walked off the stage. But as she was descending the few steps, she happened to glance over at the picture of Calvin that had been enlarged and placed next to his coffin
—the last formal portrait of him taken in his dress blues. She’d smiled tearfully, stared at it for a long moment,
and then returned to the lectern.
S
he spoke of a chance meeting at a bar, where she’d met a man who had charmed her and wormed his way into her heart, a heart she’d once thought incapable of loving again after the string of bad relationships she’d been through. But Calvin had been smitten from day one, or so he’d told her over and over, and his patient loving over the last three years had helped her realize that she loved him too. That if she didn’t say yes to his marriage proposal, she was a fool.

“The only thing I regret,” she said, hiccupping as she wiped away tears, “is that I didn’t say yes sooner. Because now I’ll never get to say ‘I do’—I’ll never be his wife.”

With those words, whatever strength she’d gained from looking at Cal’s picture failed her, and sh
e began to sob. Her sister Tina
quickly rushed up and wrapped her arms around Tonja, guiding her back to her seat.

Now it was his turn, and slowly Chris rose to his feet. He’d take
n only one step
before a light voice spoke up from near the back of the church. “Excuse me.”

He turned, as did everyone, and recognized the woman from the
Breckon
Apartments. “I—I’m sorry,” she said, taking a tentative step forward as she nervously patted her light brown hair. “I don’t even know if I should really be here, but… My name is Veronica Thompson. That little girl that was saved was my daughter.”

Chris nodded silently and gestured for her to come forward. As he watched her, he caught sight of Martie sitting about halfway back. She smiled at him and his heart jumped in his chest at the sight. She’d come after all.

Veronica made her way down the middle aisle and stepped up to the lectern. Chris noted as he sat again that she swallowed nervously, and thought that standing there staring out at a
few hundred people she didn’t know had to be intimidating for her. But she took a breath and released it, then took another.

“I did not know Calvin Maynard,” she began. “I never met him. Never even got the chance to thank him for what he did.
In the middle of a nightmare, h
e covered my baby with his own body, and he saved her life. Jessica is still here because he risked his life for a stranger
…
How do yo
u even thank someone for that—for being so
brave
,
so selfless? I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t think about themselves when Hell or high water came.

“While I’ve been with my little girl in the hospital, I’ve been reading the papers. I read that the man that saved her had a daughter of his own, and I remember thinking how sad it was that someone else’s little girl had lost her daddy. Since I couldn’t say thank you to Mr. Maynard, I wondered what I might say to her, if I ever met her. I thought about it a lot, and I realized what I wanted to say was that she should be proud of her daddy. I might not have known him personally, but I know he was among the very best of men
. I just hope that he can hear me up there in Heaven when I say how grateful I am for what he did for me and Jessica.”

Drawing another breath, Veronica turned and started down from the stage. Chris watched as Kara stood and walked over to her
, the two just looking at each other for a moment before Kara tearfully embraced the other woman.

When they parted and Veronica started back to her seat, Chris stood again, his chest constricting as he made his way to the lectern. When he got there, he looked first over at the coffin, which was closed even though Cal hadn’t been burned, and then he searched the pews for Martie. When he found her with his eyes again, she gave a little nod. He felt instantly better that she was there supporting him.

“I met Calvin Maynard as a
probie
six
teen years ago,” he began. “I’d gone to the Montana Fire Academy with big dreams of fighting fires in a big city like Billings, Bo
z
eman, or Helena.
And where did they send me? Gracechurch—a tiny little city I’d never even heard of. I was told that after my
probie
year I could transfer, but there was no getting out of the assignment—and believe me, I tried.”

He took a
breath,
and looking down at the coffin he went on. “I thought I’d learned all I needed to know in the academy, but Calvin taught me different. Over the course of that first year, he showed me what it really meant to be a firefighter. How there are some days that are full of adventure, fighting fires and saving people, and some that are so blasted boring you want to gouge your eyes out with a spoon. Those are the days, he
told me,
that
every firefighter prays for. And when I asked him why, he said it was because on those days, it meant everybody was safe.

“Calvin became more than my teacher. He became my friend. He became my brother. He invited me into his life as an uncle to his daughter, whom I have come to love as though she really were my niece. I got to know the man behind the mentor, and I realized that he was a perfect example of the kind of man I wanted to be. Okay, maybe not perfect,” he said with a little laugh.
Some of the audience also chuckled lightly.
“Cal made his mistakes like any of us. There were times I didn’t like him all that much, especially when he’d poke his nose into my personal life with his usual line, ‘
Ain’t
none
of my business kid, but…’ I told Kara’s mother the other day how I used to hate it when he said that to me, and how it took losing him to finally realize how much those words actually meant
to me
. Because now that I think about it, as angry as I was every time he prefaced a conversation with those words,
he almost always ended up being right. Guess he knew better than I did.”