Before the Storm. Diane Chamberlain

on the edge of a bed on the other side of the room. His head was bandaged and his T-shirt-clad broad shoulders drooped. When he looked up to say something to his nurse, the movement made him wince. I recognized the dark hair, the thick-lashed brown eyes. He passed a tremulous hand over his face and I saw the sheen of tears on his cheek.

      Andy’s nurse was listening to his lungs. She asked him to breathe deeply. To cough. I took that moment to whisper to Maggie.

      “Ben Trippett’s over there,” I said. Ben was a volunteer firefighter, twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He was also Andy’s swim-team coach and I wasn’t sure how Andy would react to seeing him there, injured and upset.

      Maggie started as if I’d awakened her from a dream, then followed my gaze to the other side of the room. She knew Ben fairly well, since she coached the younger kids’ swim team.

      Maggie got up, and before I could stop her, walked across the room toward Ben. He’d be embarrassed that we’d seen him crying, but Maggie was seventeen and I had to let her make her own errors in judgment. Her back was to me as she greeted Ben and I couldn’t see his reaction. But then she pulled a rolling stool close to the bed and sat down and they talked, both of them with their heads bowed as though they were sharing a prayer. Ben’s shoulders shook, and Maggie reached out and rested her hand on his wrist. She amazed me at times. Had she learned that compassion from me, watching me with Andy? I doubted it. All good things about Maggie had been Jamie’s doing. A seventeen-year-old girl finding it in herself to comfort a grown man. I was, for just a moment, in awe of her.

      Andy’s nurse straightened up. “Let me take your vitals and then I’ll see about getting you discharged,” she said.

      Andy stuck out his left arm for the blood pressure cuff.

      “Your other arm, Andy,” the nurse said. “Remember? You need to be careful with the burned arm for a few days.”

      She took his blood pressure and temperature and then left us alone.

      “I’m going to write a book about being a hero,” Andy said, as I reached beneath the bed for the plastic bag containing his shirt and shoes.

      “Maybe someday you will.” I considered bringing him down to earth a little, but how often did he get to crow about an accomplishment? Other people would not be so kind, though.

      Opening the bag, I recoiled from the pungent scent of his clothes. “Andy, what you did tonight was very brave and smart,” I said.

      He nodded. “Right.”

      I thought about letting him leave the hospital without his odorous shirt or shoes, but it was chilly outside. I handed him the striped shirt.

      “But the fire was a very serious thing and a lot of people were hurt.” I hesitated. It was best that he heard it from me. “Some died.”

      He shook his head violently. “I saved them.”

      “You couldn’t save everyone, though. That’s not your fault. I know you tried. But don’t talk to people about how you’re a hero. It’s bragging. Remember, we don’t brag.”

      “Is it bragging if it’s in a book?”

      “That would be okay,” I said.

      Behind me, the glass door plowed open and I turned to see Dawn Reynolds fly through the room toward Ben.

      “Oh my God! Ben!” She nearly knocked Maggie off the stool as she rushed to pull Ben into her arms. “I was so scared,” she said, crying. Tears welled in my own eyes as I watched the love and relief pour from her. She and Ben lived together in a little beach cottage in Surf City, and Dawn worked with Sara at Jabeen’s Java.

      “I’m okay.” Ben rubbed her arms in reassurance. “I’m all right.”

      Maggie quietly stood up, offering the stool to Dawn, then walked back to us.

      “Is he okay?” I nodded toward Ben.

      “Not exactly.” She bit her lip. “He has a seven-year-old daughter who lives with his ex-wife in Charlotte. He keeps thinking about her being trapped like that. He’s upset that people…” She looked at Andy, then me. “You know.”

      “I explained to Andy that some people died in the fire,” I said.

      Maggie started to cry again. She reached in her jeans pocket for her shredded tissue. “I just don’t understand how this could happen.”

      “I’m going to write a book about it so it won’t be bragging,” Andy said as he pulled on one of his shoes.

      Maggie stuffed her tissue in her pocket again. She lifted Andy’s leg so his foot rested on her hip as she tied his shoelaces. “Ben said a beam landed on his head,” she said. “Uncle Marcus was with him.”

      Marcus. I remembered what the ATF agent had said: Two kids and one adult. And for the second time that night, my fear and worry shifted from my son to my brother-in-law.

      Chapter Four

       Marcus

      I DIALED LAUREL’S NUMBER FOR THE THIRD TIME as I swerved onto Market Street. Voice mail. Again. Cute, Laurel. Now’s not the time to pretend you don’t know me.

      “Call me, for Christ’s sake!” I shouted into the phone.

      I still couldn’t picture Laurel letting Andy go to a lock-in, especially one at Drury Memorial.

      I’d just come out of that fire pit when Pete ran up to me.

      “Lockwood!” He’d only been a few feet away, but he had to shout above the racket of generators and sizzling water and sirens. “Your nephew’s at New Hanover. Get out of here!”

      It took a second for his words to register. “Andy was here?” I shrugged out of the air pack and peeled off my helmet. My hands had been rock steady inside the church. Suddenly, they were shaking.

      “Right,” Pete called over his shoulder as he raced back to the truck. “Drop your gear and get going. We’ll take care of it.”

      “Does Laurel know?” I shouted as I stripped off my turnout jacket, but he didn’t hear me.

      I ran the few blocks to the fire station, yanking off my gear along the way until I was down to my uniform. Jumped into my pickup and peeled out of the parking lot. They’d closed the bridge to all traffic other than emergency vehicles, but when the officer guarding the entrance recognized me, she waved me through. I’d tried Laurel at home as well as her cell. Now I called the emergency room at New Hanover. I had to dial the number twice; my hands were shaking that hard. I set the phone to speaker and dropped it in the cup holder.

      “E.R.,” a woman answered.

      “This is Surf City Fire Marshal Marcus Lockwood,” I shouted in the direction of the phone. “You have a patient, Andy Lockwood, from Drury Memorial. Can you give me a status on him?”

      “Just a moment.”

      The chaos at the hospital—sirens and shouting—filled the cab of my pickup. Someone screamed words I couldn’t make out. Someone else wailed. It was like the frenzied scene at the fire had moved to the hospital.

      “Come on, come on.” My fists clenched the steering wheel.

      “Mr. Lockwood?”

      “Yes.”

      “He’s being treated for smoke inhalation and burns.”

       Shit.

      “Hold on a sec…”

      I heard her talking to someone. Then she was back on the phone. “First-degree burn, his nurse says. Just his arm. He’s stable. His nurse says he’s a hero.”

      She had the wrong boy. The words “Andy” and “hero” didn’t go together