The Protector

  “You don’t understand. Where’s Jack?”

  Her voice wobbled. He wanted to wince when he heard it. Rae normally handled crises so calmly that he was having to scramble to get in sync with where she was at. He hadn’t been expecting this, wasn’t ready to handle it, and he blamed himself for being the one who had put it in motion. If only he’d handled the situation differently when he called her. “We’ll find Jack in a minute.” He turned Rae back the way he had come. “Come on. Dry your eyes. You really don’t want to cry all over him, do you?”

  She wiped her face with the back of her jacket sleeve.

  Inside the building she turned to walk on through to the fire station, instead he turned her toward his office. Someone had been raiding his Kleenex box; he found it tucked on the bottom shelf of his bookcase atop a copy of an old edition of the fire science journal.

  “You don’t understand,” she repeated. “I talked to Tom last night. Some preliminary blood panels came back.…” Rachel wiped at her eyes and blew her nose.

  The fact she didn’t care that she’d shown up in an old Northwestern sweatshirt with spaghetti sauce splatters on it, a pair of faded jeans, and running shoes told him more than she realized. “The remission is over.”

  “Tom—he hasn’t told her about the panels until he gets the results from a more sensitive series over the next couple days.”

  Cole pressed another Kleenex into her hand and guided her into a chair. “That’s why he went out to buy a dog today,” he murmured, adding another piece to the puzzle of what had happened in Texas. He felt for Tom, having to face the fact Jennifer was taking a turn for the worse so that he needed to move the holiday presents up.

  “Yes.”

  It was serious if Jennifer’s remission was indeed showing signs it was over, but it didn’t explain this. Rachel was falling apart.

  Cole had watched her step into trauma situations on a moment’s notice where she faced putting back together the shattered lives of children. He watched her deal with Jennifer’s cancer for five months. Rachel had gone through far more difficult crises than the incident tonight without this kind of fight for emotional control.

  He wished their relationship was such that he could ask what was wrong and she’d trust him enough to answer. Something was very wrong.

  It was not the time to try and pry.

  He reached over and squeezed Rachel’s hand. “I’ll go get Jack.”

  Twenty-six

  An interesting shift.”

  “That’s an understatement, Cole.” Cassie pushed a mug of coffee across the table to him and resumed her seat. It was approaching 1 A.M. The fire station was quiet. The skeleton crew working through the night handling routine paperwork and monitoring dispatches in the various districts had retired to the communications room. “Every moment past midnight has been a relief. I’ve never watched a clock like this before.”

  “It’s tough to watch and sit on edge.”

  “Should I take coffee down to Rachel and Jack?”

  “Let them be.”

  She wanted to head to bed as she was so tired she was about to fall asleep in her chair, but it didn’t feel right to leave Cole sitting alone at the kitchen table. He showed no sign of leaving even though she knew he had been here before 6 A.M. He had to be exhausted too. She straightened, abruptly realizing the obvious. “Your car keys are in your office.”

  “Yes.”

  “Cole.”

  “Let it go. Rae needs Jack’s attention, not an interruption.”

  “I thought the phone call at eleven was good news. Jennifer’s home with only bruises and the need for a heating pad for her back. I know they were going to conference call with the others in the family, but that was some time ago. Do you have any idea what they could still be talking about?”

  “I’ve got a suspicion.”

  Cassie hesitated. She wasn’t in the same position as Cole who had known both Rachel and Jack for years. “Is there something I should know?”

  “Stay close to Jack. He’s going to need a friend.”

  “Jennifer’s cancer?” Cole didn’t answer her. He didn’t have to say it. His expression told her what he feared. “Christmas with his sister dying,” she whispered.

  “It looks that way.”

  An arsonist targeting him. Jennifer taking a turn for the worse. Jack had a freight train coming toward him. Jesus, what am I supposed to do to help?

  “Cole,” she hesitated. “I was hoping I’d be able to show Jack the real meaning of Christmas this year. He’s been asking a few questions.” She amended that. “He’s been asking hard questions.”

  Cole smiled at her observation. “Cassie, don’t get fooled. I’ve watched you take Jack at face value over the years and you’re making a mistake by doing that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “His questions don’t surprise me and they shouldn’t surprise you. He’s forthright and transparent in a way I admire. He laughs at life. But under that tapestry—you let his humor and casualness suggest that is how he also thinks. That’s a mistake. Watch him around the station. He’s a natural leader in his instincts. He listens, probes for details, is not afraid to make a difficult decision and act on it. When Jack talks about faith—he’s got a lot of respect for the people making the claims, but he’s not comfortable the claims are right. So his response is to respectfully keep listening. That’s very revealing. He’s trying to understand.”

  “I’m simplifying, but he seems to think Christianity is nothing more than a myth that grown-ups believe in.”

  “He’s not yet convinced that a baby in a manger and the King of kings should and could logically be the same person—Jesus.”

  “A hard question to resolve.”

  “Don’t feel like you have to force the questions, or worse, force his conclusions. God has been tugging at him for a long time. Jack will slowly keep working through the claims to decide what he thinks.”

  “I wish it were easier to start that conversation. I feel like I’m stumbling around sometimes. He hadn’t mentioned Jennifer’s cancer.”

  “Cassie—” Cole winced and rubbed his forehead.

  “Need more aspirin?”

  He shook his head with much more care. “A little less caffeine.”

  “What were you going to say?”

  “How long have we been friends?”

  “Long enough probably to handle what you’re about to say.”

  “I wish you and Jack could get on the same page.” Cole leaned forward and folded his arms on the table. “I see the frustration he feels at times, but I don’t know that you see it.”

  “Over what?”

  “You’re honest, but not open. And it has an impact when you try to talk about something like religion and why you believe. In a rush to convince Jack of the truth, you gloss over eighteen painful months. Faith doesn’t stand in a vacuum. He knows you’re not telling him everything when you talk about other things, so he listens to you talk about God and wonders what it is you’re not saying.”

  “Cole—”

  “Just listen, Cassie. You hurt him when you hide the scars. Not just the cosmetic ones, but the deep ones. Jack knows it’s been a rough eighteen months, yet you’re wanting to tuck it away and downplay it with him on the assumption that it would be a drag on the friendship. Over Thanksgiving it would have helped had you been straightforward that you were fighting the depression of a holiday without Ash.”

  She winced.

  “I don’t mean it in a harsh way. I know where you go when you are retreating as a means to cope. I know the things you turn to and hold on to. But Jack doesn’t have that history with you. So he gets worried. And he’s a man who prefers to act, not worry. He about took my head off for this insane idea of you riding along on the fire calls.”

  There was a balm for the searing truth of his observation in those last words. “So…Jack’s giving you a hard time about me.”

  “You don’t need to sound so amuse
d about it,” Cole replied, pushing a napkin toward her to put under the straight pretzel sticks she was stacking into a log cabin square. “Start being more open with him. God can use openness on your part to touch Jack’s heart.”

  “Cole, I understand your point, but I don’t know if I can.”

  “No one ever said witnessing was easy. You’ve got to step back and get your priorities straight. It’s wrong to flirt and mess up Jack’s head only to draw back later because you can’t marry someone who’s not a Christian. Be a true friend and convince him about Jesus.”

  “I can’t change his mind.”

  “Try.”

  She made a face at him. “Easier said than done.”

  “You got through the last eighteen months because the option was to give up and you refused to do it.”

  “Yes.”

  “So just decide to do it and don’t give up. Jack’s got that kind of crisis coming. It would help him if you’d let him learn from what you’ve been through.”

  “I’m not wise about how to cope just because I’ve been forced to do it.”

  “Yes, you are. You sat outside in the cold because what you most wanted on your own bad days was someone to talk to, so you instinctively gave that to Jack. That’s wisdom learned from experience.”

  Cole reached across the table. “Watch your square of pretzels.” He pulled a lower one out. The pretzel wall shifted, then held because the side walls held them in place. “As the pressure builds, Jack’s going to be reaching for strong things to brace himself against. And I do expect him to look toward God because that’s who Jennifer is resting against.”

  “The O’Malleys will close ranks. They’re doing it with the conference call tonight; they’ll do it through the holidays.”

  “Yes.”

  “I envy them that.”

  Cole smiled across the table at her. “Jack would be glad to share. There are times having four sisters drives him absolutely crazy.”

  “If that’s where Jack is at, what about Rachel? How’s she handling this?”

  Cole pushed aside his coffee mug.

  “Cole?”

  “Unlike Jack, Rae is impossible to understand.”

  “She’s gracious, thinks about others, helps in practical ways, is there to do whatever she can in a crisis—what’s so hard to understand?”

  Cole didn’t answer her, just looked at her, let her think through what she had said. Cassie knew she was getting tested, but she just didn’t see what he did. She shook her head slightly, not understanding.

  “What’s she leaning against to get herself through this?” Cole asked quietly.

  The truth hit like a brick through glass. Rachel was leaning against herself. “Cole—”

  He shook his head. “She’s my problem.” There was a grimness to that statement. “I’ll deal with it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Twenty-seven

  Rachel pushed her car door closed and wiped at the tears that made her eyes burn. The tears would simply not stop. She’d cried all over Cole. Cried all over Jack. Was still crying. She was losing Jennifer, and the grief had grabbed hold and shook her so hard she could not get it subdued. She headed into the apartment building.

  The phone call—one simple little trigger and the wall holding back the tears had burst. It wasn’t Jennifer’s fall that was the entire embarrassing reality of tonight. Jack had even lost his ability to offer a joke to help lighten the moment because she’d so flustered him with her tears. She dealt with too much grief in her life already through the tragedies of others, she simply didn’t have the strength to face it on a personal level. Not grief this overwhelming.

  She had denied what was happening with Jennifer since July, denied the reality of what it could lead to. She knew it, could clinically see the pattern of denial she so often counseled against in others. She knew this break in the wall holding back the tears was inevitable, and yet when it happened it caught her by surprise.

  The entire family had seen her lose it. Five months of bottled-up tears were all getting shed in one night. The conference call had lasted so long because everyone in the family had been trying their best to offer reassurance that Jennifer would be okay. Jennifer was home. Even if the remission was ending, the doctors had not exhausted treatment options.

  Rachel had been in Florida early in July when Marcus had sent the initial emergency page about Jennifer. She caught the next flight out in the middle of the night, learned the news about the cancer diagnosis very early that next morning, and by that afternoon had been on a plane to Baltimore to join Jennifer at Johns Hopkins.

  It had been so easy to simply do what she did professionally. To step into the role of helper. To be there. To do whatever needed done. To not only help Jennifer get through the chemotherapy and radiation, but on Jennifer’s behalf to also undertake the complex job of implementing wedding plans in Houston so that Jennifer would have that upcoming day of joy to focus on rather than be forced to delay it. Rachel was grateful there was a way to help; it had been her gift to her sister. To pull it off she spent hours on the phone, had made several round-trip flights between Houston and Baltimore.

  The wedding had been a wonderful day. And her relief that it was over had been real.

  Jennifer in remission, the wedding over, Rachel had been looking forward to a chance to step away and catch her breath. Instead, she had walked into the situation with Gage and rearranged her plans.

  Now this.

  She simply did not have anything more to give. She was given out.

  And now the tears would not stop. She walked up the stairs in the apartment building, sorting through her keys. She struggled to get the key into the lock.

  “Rachel.”

  She leaned her head against the door. Not this. “Go away, Gage.”

  Behind her on the stairs going to the next floor, Gage stood. “Cole called me.”

  Cole had called Gage…no need to wonder what impression she had left with that man. She pushed the key into the lock. “Come on in,” she whispered. She was too tired to fight anymore and he’d come in regardless.

  Gage caught the door before it could close on him. “You should have called a cab.”

  She ignored the comment and tossed her keys into the dish on the table in the entryway. Her home was an eclectic place that Gage rarely visited, not because he wasn’t welcome but there was barely room to turn around and he hated the lack of space.

  The rooms were stuffed with furniture. The hallway was lined with pictures. There were enough pillows tossed on chairs and the couch to outfit a small hotel. She liked it this way. Her apartment in Washington was more functional. This was her nest. Not that she would defend it that way to Gage.

  He paced past her into the living room and tossed his jacket on the couch. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m tired.”

  He shot her a frustrated look. “Shall I interpret tired or do you want to get a little more expansive on the language?”

  She pushed aside his jacket so she could sink into the cushions on the couch. She was very aware Gage would have already grilled Cole for the details. “You’re the writer,” she muttered. “Tired: as in go away so I can go to bed.”

  “As if you would. I know you too well, Rachel LeeAnn. You grieve by turning on the T V, curling up on the couch, eating ice cream, and staying up to see the dawn. Where do you keep the aspirin?”

  “I already took some.”

  “I haven’t.”

  It nudged enough sympathy she thought about the question. “Try the bathroom cabinet.”

  He reappeared minutes later, shirtsleeves shoved up, a glass of ice water in his hand. He tossed pillows to the floor and dropped into the chair across from her. “Tabitha used to say crying her eyes out was incredibly therapeutic.”

  Rachel opened her burning eyes. “She was lying.”

  Gage chuckled, albeit forced.

  He was stud
ying her with a frown on his face, and she could almost hear him thinking there was so much coiled energy apparent just in how he sat. She was a problem to be solved and he was figuring out where and how to begin. He had a habit of probing everything in a way that would strip a subject bare, although he rarely did it to her. Under the abrupt exterior there was still a softer Gage loath to hurt her feelings.

  “You held Jennifer’s hand through weeks in the hospital, stepped in and planned her wedding, provided a shoulder to your family for the last five months. Now you’ve got to find the strength to get through Christmas with Jennifer’s health failing. Forgive me for being astonished by your habit of assuming you are strong enough to deal with everything.”

  She was startled at the amount of raw emotion in his words. “I’ve got no choice but to deal with it.”

  “You could have called me; you could have talked to me.”

  “And say what?”

  “How about something honest like, ‘Gage, I’m scared’?”

  She wiped at tears and didn’t answer him.

  He let the silence stretch out for minutes. “Did you think I wouldn’t understand?” There was so much tenderness in those quiet words.

  “I feel like a fool.”

  “Been there, done that. You live through that one.”

  She smiled at his prompt reply, knowing he was speaking from experience. There had been days around the anniversary of Tabitha’s birthday when she wondered not if he would make it, but if she would, after the all-night sessions on the phone when she refused to hang up because Gage was prowling like a caged lion. Months later he had sent her roses in memory of those evenings. He’d survived. It just didn’t always happen without a few scars.

  She leaned her head forward into her hands, heavy of heart, weary, and honestly not sure what she should do in the next few minutes, let alone the next day. Just the idea of facing tomorrow was beyond her at the moment.

  “Where are the sleeping pills?”

  “You know I dumped them,” she muttered. It would be so simple to reach for sleeping pills to push away this stress, to smother it. Gage had turned to alcohol to numb his grief; she couldn’t afford to go back to using sleeping pills.