Remember (2 page)

Ashley watched the women step carefully into an intersection and then freeze with fear when the light turned, catching them halfway across. An impatient driver laid on his horn, honking in sharp, staccato patterns. The expression on the women’s faces became nervous and then frantic. They hurried their feet, shuffling in such a way that they nearly fell. When they reached the other side, they stopped to catch their breath, and again Ashley wondered.

Was this all that was left for these ladies—angry drivers impatient with their slow steps and physical challenges? Was that all the attention they’d receive on a given day?

The most striking thing about the memory was that as the questions came, Ashley’s cheeks had grown wet. She popped down the visor and stared at her reflection. Something was happening to her that hadn’t happened in months. Years, even.

She was crying.

And that was when she had realized the depth of her problem. The fact was, her experiences had made her cynical. And if she was ever going to create unforgettable artwork, she needed something more than a canvas and a brush. She needed a heart, tender and broken, able to feel in ways she’d long since forgotten.

That afternoon as she watched the two old women, a thought occurred to Ashley. Perhaps she had unwittingly stumbled upon a way to regain the softness that had long ago died. If she wanted a changed heart, perhaps she need only spend time with the aged.

That’s why the ad in this morning’s paper was so appealing.

She drove slowly, scanning the addresses on the houses until she found the one she was looking for. Her interview was in five minutes. She pulled into the driveway, taking time to study the outside of the building. “Sunset Hills Adult Care Home” a sign read. The building was mostly brick, with a few small sections of beige siding and a roof both worn and sagging. The patch of grass in front was neatly manicured, shaded at the side by a couple of adolescent maple trees. A gathering of rosebushes struggled to produce a few red and yellow blossoms in front of a full-sized picture window to the right of the door. A wiry, gray-haired woman with loose skin stared out at her through the dusty glass, her eyes nervous and empty.

Ashley drew a deep breath and surveyed the place once more. It seemed nice enough, the type of facility that drew little or no attention and served its purpose well. What was it her father called homes like this one? She thought for a moment, and it came to her.

Heaven’s waiting rooms.

Sirens sounded in the distance, lots of them. Sirens usually meant one thing: it’d be a busy day for her father. And maybe Landon Blake. Ashley blocked out the sound and checked the mirror. Even she could see the twinlike resemblance between herself and Kari, her older sister. Other than Kari’s eyes, which were as brown as Ashley’s were blue, they were nearly identical.

But the resemblance stopped there.

Kari was good and pure and stoic, and even now—five months after the death of her husband, with a two-month-old baby to care for by herself—Kari could easily find a reason to smile, to believe the best about life and love.

And God, of course. Always God.

Ashley bit her lip and opened the car door. Determination mingled with the humid summer air as she grabbed her purse and headed up the walkway. With each step, she thought again of those two old ladies, how she had cried at their condition—lonely, isolated, and forgotten.

As Ashley reached the front door, a thought dawned on her. The reason the women had been able to warm the cold places in her heart was suddenly clear.

In all ways that mattered, she was just like them.

* * *

There was no way out.

Landon Blake was trapped on the second floor somewhere in the middle of the burning apartment complex. Searing walls of flames raged on either side of him and, for the first time since becoming a firefighter, Landon had lost track of the exits. Every door and window was framed in fire.

His partner had to be somewhere nearby, but they’d separated to make the room checks more quickly. Now the fire had grown so intense, he wasn’t sure they’d ever find each other in time. Landon grabbed his radio from its pocket on his upper jacket and positioned it near his air mask. Then he turned a valve so his words would be understood.

“Mayday . . . Mayday . . .”

He stuck the radio close to his ear and waited, but only a crackling static answered him. A few seconds passed, and the voice of his captain sounded on the radio.

“Lieutenant Blake, report your whereabouts.”

Hope flashed in Landon’s heart. He placed the radio near the valve in his mask once more. “Lieutenant Blake reporting Mayday, sir. I can’t find my way out.”

There was a pause. “Lieutenant Blake, report your whereabouts.”

Landon’s stomach tightened. “I’m on the second floor, sir. Can you hear me?”

“Lieutenant Blake, this is your captain. Report your whereabouts immediately.” A brief hesitation followed; then the captain’s tone grew urgent. “RIT enter the building now! Report to the second floor. I repeat, RIT report to the second floor.”

RIT?
Landon forced himself to breathe normally. RIT was the Rapid Intervention Team, the two firefighters who waited on alert at any job in case someone from the engine company became lost in the fire. The command could mean only one thing: Landon’s radio wasn’t working. His captain had no idea that he’d become separated from his partner or where to begin looking for him.

Landon made his way into the smoky hallway and heard his radio come to life again. He held it close to his ear.

“This is an alert. We have two men trapped on the second floor, and the radios aren’t working for either of them. Backup units are on the way, but until then I need everyone in the building. Let’s move it!”

So he was right. The radios weren’t working.
Dear God, help us. . . .

Landon fought off a wave of fear. In situations like this he’d been trained to scan the room for victims and then fight his way out of the building. Choose the most likely place for an exit and barge through burning beams and broken glass. Do whatever it took to be free of the building.

But Landon had gone back into the building for one reason: to find a five-year-old boy in one of the apartments. He would find the child—dead or alive—and bring him out. He had promised the boy’s frantic mother, and he didn’t intend to break the promise.

The smoke grew dense, dropping visibility to almost nothing. Landon fell to his knees and crawled along the floor. The flames roared on either side of him, filling his senses with intense heat and smoke.
Don’t think about the broken radios. They’ll find me any minute. Help is on the way.
Please, God.

He still had his personal accountability safety system, a box on his air pack that would send out a high-pitched sound the moment he stopped moving. If that signal worked, there was still a pretty good chance his engine company might locate him. But they’d have to get here fast. If they waited much longer, ceiling beams would begin to fall. And then . . .

Landon squinted through the smoke, his body heaving from the excruciating heat and the weight of his equipment.
God, help me.
He crept through a burning hallway door.
I need a miracle. Show me the boy.

Just ahead of him he saw something fall to the ground—something small, the size of a ceiling tile or maybe a wall hanging. Or a small child. Landon lurched ahead and there, at the bottom of a linen closet, he found the boy and rolled him onto his back. He held a glove against the boy’s chest and felt a faint rise and fall.

The child was alive!

Landon jerked the air mask from his own face and shoved it onto the boy’s. He switched the mask from demand to positive pressure, forcing a burst of air onto the child’s face. The boy must have hidden in the closet when the fire started, and now here they were—both trapped. Landon coughed hard and tried to breathe into his coat as the acrid smoke invaded his lungs.

Then he heard crashing sounds around him, and he glanced up.
No, God, not now.

Flaming pieces of the ceiling were beginning to fall! He hovered over the child and used his body as a covering. Inches from the boy’s face, he was struck by the resemblance. The boy looked like a slightly older version of Cole, Ashley’s son.

“Hang in there, buddy!” Landon yelled above the roar of the fire. He removed the mask from the boy for just an instant and held the child’s nose while he grabbed another precious lungful of air. Then he quickly replaced the mask over the boy’s face. “They’re coming for us.”

He heard a cracking sound so loud and violent it shook the room. Before Landon could move, a ceiling beam fell from the roof and hit him across the back of his legs. He felt something snap deep inside his right thigh, and pain exploded through his body.
Move,
he ordered himself. He strained and pushed and tried to leverage the beam off his leg. But no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get free. His legs were pinned by the burning wood.

“God!” The pain intensified, and he reeled his head back, his jaw clenched. “Help us!”

He fought to stay conscious as he lowered himself over the boy once more. His training had taught him to limit his inhalations, but his lungs screamed for air, and he sucked in another deep breath. The smoke was choking him, filling his body with poisonous fumes and gasses that would kill him in a matter of minutes—if the falling debris didn’t bury them first.

His air tank was still half full, so the boy should be breathing okay—as long as Landon stayed conscious enough to buddy-breathe with him.

The heat was oppressive. The visor on his helmet was designed to melt at 350 degrees—a warning that a firefighter was in a dangerous situation. Landon glanced up and saw a slow, steady drip of plastic coming from just above his forehead.

This is it. There’s no way out.

He could feel himself slipping away, sense himself falling asleep. He borrowed the mask once more, gulped in one more breath of air, then firmly placed the mask back on the child’s face.
Keep me awake, God . . . please.
He meant to say the words out loud, but his mouth wouldn’t cooperate. Gradually, the pain and noise and heat around him began to dim.

I’m dying,
he thought.
We’re both going to die.

And in the shadows of his mind he thought about the things he’d miss. Being a husband someday, and a father. Growing old beside a woman who loved him, standing beside her through the years, watching their children grow up.

A memory came to him, sweet and clear. His mother, frowning when she first learned of his intention to fight fires. “I worry about you, Landon. Be careful.”

He had smiled and kissed her forehead. “God wants me to be a firefighter, Mom. He’ll keep me safe. Besides, he knows the number of my days. Isn’t that what you always say?”

The memory faded as smoke burned its way down his throat again. A dark numbness settled over Landon’s mind, and he was struck by an overwhelming sadness. He held his breath, the smoke strangling what little life remained in him. He no longer had the strength to choke out even a single cough, to try for even one more breath of clean air.
So this is it, God. This is it.

His impending death filled him not with fear, but with bittersweet peace. He had always known the risks of being a firefighter. He accepted them gladly every day when he climbed into his uniform. If this fire meant that his days were up, then Landon had no regrets.

Except one.

He hadn’t gotten to tell Ashley Baxter good-bye.

Chapter Two

The place smelled like urine and mothballs.

Ashley shut the door carefully behind her and looked around. The front door led directly into an oversized living room lined with four faded recliners, three of them occupied by shrunken, white-haired women. The house was warm—too warm—but each of the women was buried beneath at least one homemade afghan.

Ashley spotted an old television set in the corner of the room.
A relic, like everything else,
she thought. The tinny dialogue of a morning talk show rattled from its fabric-covered speakers. A cheap VCR sat on top of the TV, a few battered video boxes stacked beside it.

Only one of the residents was awake.

Footsteps sounded, and Ashley turned to see a slender woman with conservative gray hair bustle around the corner. “Ashley Baxter?”

Ashley stood a bit straighter and flashed a smile. “Yes.”

“I’m Lu.” The woman held out her hand. Perspiration dotted her upper lip and she was out of breath, as though she’d spent the morning running from one end of the house to the other. The corners of Lu’s mouth rose but stopped short of a smile. “I own the place. We spoke on the phone.” Her eyes gave Ashley a quick once-over, taking in her dark jeans, duster-length rayon jacket, and bright-colored shell. “You’re on time. I like that.” She turned and motioned for Ashley to follow her down a long hallway. “This is the third vacancy we’ve had this year.” She sighed, and the sound of it trailed behind her like exhaust fumes.

Definitely overworked.

They entered an office at the back of the house. A stout woman in her early forties spilled over an orange vinyl chair.

“This is Belinda; she’s the office manager.” Lu didn’t stop for the introduction but continued across the office to a small desk made of pressed wood. The surface was cluttered with documents, a dozen different sizes and colors.

Belinda wore aqua stretch pants and a T-shirt that read “Don’t even go there!” She crossed her arms and glared at Lu. “Your ad should read ‘No pretty girls.’ ”

Ashley took the only other chair and narrowed her eyes at Belinda. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.

“Oh, quit.” Lu clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Give her a chance.”

“Pretty girls never last.” Belinda sneered in Ashley’s direction. “Too much lifting.” A laugh devoid of any humor slipped from her throat. “Let’s get this over with.”