Danny stayed quiet on the whys of everything, and he felt so badly for Emilio. This was going to be a hard road. “He wants to see you.”

“Let me ask someone to cover for me,” the woman said. “My manager, she understands. She is married to an ambulance. EMT, I mean.”

“Do you need a ride over?” Anne asked.

“Yes, I take the bus here.”

Danny swung his keys in his hand. “We’ll wait for you.”

As Josefina headed for the back, he stared at Anne. She was looking around the place as if she’d never seen it before, and he wondered whether that was a good or a bad thing for her. She seemed to want to leave everything behind. Him included.

Then she faced him. “Moose told me the fight here was with some yachtsmen because they insulted her.”

“They were being disrespectful. They got less than what they deserved.”

“You always were protective.”

He pictured someone doing Anne a wrong. “I still am.”

There was a pause. “I really don’t think I should go to dinner on Saturday.”

“There will be other people there.” Or at least, there would be when he told Moose he better damn well invite half the town. “It won’t just be us. And I’ll make sure folks know that it’s not a case of ‘us.’ Besides, you’re missed.”

“I’m not a member of the crew anymore.”

“We do hang around with outsiders, you know. Particularly ones with a good sense of humor.”

“I’m sorry. I just can’t. It’s not appropriate and you know it.”

“Worried you might want to have sex with me again?” Danny didn’t bother hiding the bitterness in his voice. “We both enjoyed it.”

“No.” Her jaw tightened. “I’m not worried about anything.”

Liar, he thought.

“Suit yourself.” He nodded toward the exit. “I’ll go start the truck. It’s cold as ice tonight.”

Outside, he took advantage of a break in the downpour and lit up, even though the cig got soggy fast on the short walk to the truck. As he got in, his phone went off. When he took it out and saw the text, he cursed.

Great. The chief wanted to see him first thing in the morning.

Looked like he was getting fired sooner rather than later.

Chapter 26

Anne didn’t want to be rude. But by the time Danny got Josefina to the glowing entrance of the emergency room, she had a pounding headache and a knot in her stomach that might have been hunger but felt like a bowel obstruction.

The fact that she was sitting in between the two of them didn’t help. The entire trip back, which lasted all of ten minutes but felt like twenty-five years, she’d had Danny’s leg bumping against her own. Just like old times in the engines.

Not what she wanted to be reminded of, especially after what they’d done at his apartment.

Danny found a parking spot right by the ER’s entry, and Josefina fumbled her purse as she got out, dumping everything over the pavement. Anne immediately dropped down to the pavement help the woman gather keys and wallet, Tampax and makeup bag.

“Listen, I’m going to let Danny take you in.” Anne passed over a Kleenex pack. “There are a lot of people here already.”

“Thank you for coming and getting me.”

Anne looked away from those teary brown eyes. “No problem. Take care of him.” Straightening, she looked over the truck’s hood at Danny. “I have to go.”

His eyes were in shadow, and that was just as well. She didn’t want to see what was in them.

As she waved and headed for her Subaru, she felt like she was dumping the whole situation on him—and that was not perception; it was fact. But she was a distant relative to all of this now, and she needed to respect the boundaries.

Back in her own vehicle, she got turned around and ended up exiting through the entrance, which felt like a commentary on the night. But at least she was free of it all.

She was going to go home, check and see if there was anything chewed up, and then go to bed early.

Or that was the plan.

When she came up to her little house and saw a familiar car parked in front of her walkway, she hit the brakes. And then debated if she could just drive on by.

Her mother.

Pulling into her driveway, she got out and went on the approach. As she came up to the ten-year-old Honda Civic, the window went down—and she realized she hadn’t actually set eyes on her mom for months.

Nancy Janice Fitzgerald Ashburn did not look her sixty years. She’d never been a smoker or a drinker, had stayed out of the sun and followed a “regime”—whatever that was. So even without plastic surgery, her pale Irish skin was still fair and largely unwrinkled, the powder and foundation light, the lashes curled and darkened, the lipstick a perfect shade of pink for that complexion. And of course, the hair was done. She colored it to cover the grays, but not in a brassy way: Ginger streaks through the auburn, everything cut well so it framed her face and brushed her shoulders.

“I was going to call you,” Anne lied.

“I am so sorry to bother you, but I can’t reach your brother.”

“What’s up?”

“Do you want to get out of the rain?”

“No, I’m fine.” Anne looked up and got a raindrop directly in her eyeball. As she squinted and rubbed away the sting, she was frustrated with the whole world. “What’s going on?”

“You know that big maple tree in the backyard? The one you and your brother swung on—”

“Yes. I know.”

“Half of it broke off in the wind and landed on the house.” As Anne exhaled with exhaustion, her mother hurried through her speech. “The nice man behind me tried to put tarping up, but there’s terrible leaking in your father’s and my bedroom, and then downstairs. I need some place to stay—and I promise, I tried to reach your brother. He must be busy.”

What Anne wanted to say was that Nancy Janice should try her brother again. Try him a thousand times. But she wasn’t going to turn her mother out into a storm, for godsakes.

“Ah, let me go check my house. I’ve . . . ah, I’ve got a dog and I need to make sure he’s secured before you come in. I’m not sure how he’s going to do with strangers.”

“You got a dog? You should have told me.” The hurt that flared in that face went through Anne’s chest like a spear. “But it’s all right. I’ve been telling you for a year to get a pet. This is really good.”

“Stay here.”

Anne jogged up to her front door and punched in her code. Inside, she leaned in, expecting to see the sofa shredded. Nope. Proceeding into the kitchen, she found the trash bin was where she’d left it, no garbage strewn about. But he also wasn’t in his crate.

Dear Lord, her mother was going to spend the night.

As she wondered how this had happened, she was very cognizant that in most families, it was commonplace—.parents staying with their children.

But then their family hadn’t been normal. It had only looked that way from the outside, the hero firefighter, the perfect homemaker, and a boy and a girl to boot. Real nuclear stuff until you scratched the surface, particularly when it came to Tom, Sr.

And that was Nancy Janice’s problem. The woman was only surface, no substance.

Whatever, though. She could make it through one night with her mother.

After Anne finished with the first floor, she got paranoid. Soot had snuck out somehow and she all but ran upstairs. Flipping on the hall light, she—

As she looked through the open door of her bedroom, she saw her dog curled up on her bed, his nose tucked under her pillow as if he wanted her scent with him in her absence.

“Hi, Mr. Man,” she said softly.

He startled and lifted his head, sleepy eyes blinking. Then that bony tail of his thumped on the comforter.

Anne went across and stretched out with him, putting her face against his and breathing deep. In response, Soot nuzzled her, and she marveled at the connection they had. It felt as though she had had him all her life.

Pulling back, she stared at him. “I need you to do me a favor and not eat my mother, ’kay? She’s only going to be here until the morning, and she’s . . . well, I think she’d taste like a marshmallow Peep, anyway. Way too sweet. Not your kind of entrée.”