Muffin Top

After a few seconds, no doubt to make sure everyone was thinking the same thing as Frankie, his dad went on. “Well, you’ve been on the job for some time now, Junior. You must have seen families go through hell after something like that happens. They cry. They scream. They fight against the darkness. They go a little crazy.”

Maybe there were other jobs where things were like that—the military, cops—but in the firehouse they really were a family. When one went down, they all mourned. And the wives and kids of the fallen firefighter? They did whatever it took to make sure they were taken care of, something that occasionally crossed some lines. Something started the tingle on the back of Frankie’s neck, that oh-shit signal that had saved him more than once in the middle of a fire.

“Becky came into the firehouse to collect Andy’s things even though we told her we’d take them out to her,” Frank Sr. said, his shoulders hunching forward as if even this many years later he needed to ward off the blow of what came next. “She said she wanted to take a look at the place he loved. And before she left, I gave her a hug. She was a lost widow grieving, and I was a friendly port in a storm. She didn’t mean it. I had been just extricating myself when you walked in.”

Frankie pulled up the memory of walking into that firehouse. His dad had been against the wall, his hands at his sides. It was Becky who’d been plastered against his old man.

“That’s a pretty convenient story that you didn’t share all those years ago,” he said as he kept running it over and over in his head.

“Junior,” his dad said with a frustrated sigh. “I love you, but don’t think for a minute that I need to explain myself to you when I haven’t done a damn thing wrong.”

Maybe the explanation wouldn’t have mattered when Frankie was seventeen, but after years as a firefighter, he’d seen that agonizing place when someone went down in a blaze, where a spouse was experiencing so much pain that became so overwhelming that all they wanted to do was just be rid of it for a little while. Still, he’d been so sure then and had never let go of it, even when the doubts started creeping in.

“He’s telling the truth,” Finn said, his voice sounding as tired as Frankie felt at the moment. “I ran into Becky outside of the firehouse when I came back from that bullshit errand you sent me on. She was talking to Mom, who’d come by to drop off lunch for Dad since it was a Saturday and she wasn’t working. Becky was crying to Mom, hanging onto her as if her whole world had been blown away. She kept telling Mom she was sorry, that she didn’t mean to kiss him. Mom just held Becky tight and told her it was okay, that it was all going to be okay. So I gotta ask you, do you really think you know more than Mom?”

The question landed like a two-by-four to the side of the head. There wasn’t a Hartigan sibling alive who would dare think they knew more than Katie Hartigan, because his mama didn’t raise any stupid kids. He turned to his dad, still half-processing what in the hell he’d just learned, almost afraid to hope that he’d been wrong.

“Is that really what happened?” Frankie asked.

His dad didn’t blink, didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

All those years, all those times that he thought he was protecting everyone, he’d just been digging a hole for himself because he thought he knew best. Instead of talking it out and asking questions, he’d given up and walked away from a man who up until that moment had been his real-life hero.

He’d been a fucking idiot.

“I gave up too easily,” he said, realization sucker punching him in the gut.

Ford snorted. “That’s because everything always came easy to you. School. Friends. Women. Life. So when something didn’t fit within your accepted parameters, you didn’t have a damn clue what to do about it. That’s why you fucked shit up with Lucy, because you thought you could blast in like some knight in shining armor when that was the last thing she needed or wanted.”

Frankie, Finn, and Frank Sr. all turned to look at Ford, wearing almost identical expressions of shock and horror.

“When did you turn into some crackpot TV doctor?” Finn asked, blinking in surprise.

Ford glared at them. “Gina has recommended some books.”

Who in the hell had taken over his emotionally clueless brother’s body? Looking around, he saw he wasn’t the only one with that reaction. Frank Sr. and Finn were staring at Ford like he was one of the Pod People, too. For his part, Ford just tapped his thumb to his fingers as the tips of his ears turned red.

“The thing is,” Ford said, zeroing in on Frankie, “I’m not wrong and you know it.”