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laughed and joked among themselves—often engaged in some inevitable roughhousing. Firehouses are homes, and the crew is family. That night, that’s how I could tell that something had gone spectacularly wrong.
    Three firefighters stood silent and separate in the area they usually used to smoke and play. They stood hunched over, eyes downcast, so still their motion-sensing security lights had shut off, surrounding them with darkness. All three focused on their feet. They looked tired, but worse than that, they looked beaten. Jake stepped into the shadows with them, and the lights once again flared to life. “Is JT here?”
    One of the men, I think his name was Chad, shook his head.
    “Is he…? Are you guys okay?”
    “We’re fine.” He stubbed his cigarette out on the ground, then picked up the butt. “It was just a tough call is all.”
    Jake nodded.
    “JT’s rig transported a victim. He’ll be back after he’s done at the hospital.”
    Silence closed in on us again. The image of Cam came to me as he’d been that morning: solid, reassuring, unashamedly gentle.
    My heart tightened inside my chest. “Where’s Cam?”
    Chad tilted his head toward the firehouse, and before I even knew what I was doing, I’d taken several steps in that direction. I stopped and turned, meeting my brother’s surprise.
    “I’ll be back.” I didn’t think he’d go anywhere without seeing JT in the flesh first, anyway. He nodded that I should go on.
    I went in through the garage, past the trucks, past the rec room and the card table where most evenings you’d find a lively poker game. I turned right at the kitchen where some men sat drinking coffee because I could hear the rhythmic clink clank of free weights, and instinctively I knew I’d find Cam in the weight room.
    I got to the door and took in the sight. Cam was shirtless—wearing a pair of those breakaway workout pants with a stripe down the side. His bare feet looked oddly vulnerable. Gloved hands gripped the barbell as he bench-pressed what seemed to be enormous iron wheels of weight. With each push— clink —his muscles stood out, straining and sweaty, bulging, stretching…reaching the limit of their ability before Cam grunted and brought the bar back to the cradle. Clank.
    I didn’t have to be a personal trainer to know that what he was doing wasn’t advisable or safe to do alone.
    “Whoa there,” I said, and instead of spotting him—because, how could I?—I placed my left hand over his and said, “Stop.”
    When he stilled, I let him go and looked for something to sit on. The only thing I found was a massive exercise ball, so I rolled it over. When I sat down, it squeaked like a fart, and I thought again that the day could surely have gone better than it had. The barest lift of his mouth in a half-smile told its own story.
    “What happened?”
    “Bad call.” His tone was clipped.
    I hardly knew him; I knew he didn’t want to tell me what happened. Because I didn’t know what else to do, I put my hand on his again. My feelings about St. Nacho’s, about small towns, about my divorce, my brother, and my life in general were complicated. Taking Cam’s hand was nothing of the kind. He was basically good, a mischievous boy-man with a tough job, and he was hurting. A broken Cam was an awful, awful thing.
    “Will you tell me?” I asked.
    His eyes opened, and I realized I’d never really looked into them before. Cam’s irises reflected the blue of alpine skies, brilliant and clear with a smudgy charcoal circle around the outer edges. The pupils were surrounded by what appeared—in that light—to be silver starbursts. The whites of his eyes were red, and his lashes damp from crying.
    “Kids and fireworks.”
    Ah, shit . I wondered if I really wanted to hear the rest.
    “We were called to a single-family home containing a cache of illegal fireworks. Kids found them and lit them in an enclosed space. Things got out of control before they could stop it.