The Fireman's Homecoming. Allie Pleiter

minutes.” Her words were lifeless, as if she were too tired to be angry.

      Clark palmed the pager at his side. “Got a call. Normally I take cell numbers because this kind of thing happens all the time, but I didn’t have yours. Sorry I kept you waiting.”

      She pushed a strand of hair out of her face. She wore exotic, artsy jewelry on several fingers—the handmade kind with lots of colored stones—and a bulky gold band on one thumb. “It’s okay.” He looked past the dark brown curls to see red-rimmed eyes. She’d been crying.

      “No, it’s not.” He kept his voice soft as he walked farther into the room. “Hey, look, are you going to be okay? No offense, but you look like you need a lot more help than just a decent meal.”

      She took a deep breath and swept up the pile of wrappers into the trash can. “It’s been...a bit rough today, that’s all. Harder than I thought.”

      Even though his training as a first responder injected him into people’s moments of pain all the time, he felt this intrusion keenly. “What isn’t?” He placed the bag on the table, uncomfortable but still unwilling to leave. “Is he in pain?”

      “Just really confused. He wakes up not remembering where he is or why he’s here.”

      “Sounds understandable.” Her watched her pull herself wearily out of the chair. “You think he’ll be better once he gets back home?”

      It was the wrong question. “I’m sure he will.” Disbelief pushed a false brightness into her words even as fear leapt up in her eyes. “Thanks, I’m starved.”

      “I’m glad I made it under the wire. Another ten minutes and they wouldn’t have let me in. I’d have been forced to eat that giant fungus for you.”

      She managed a small smile that broadened when she opened the bag of French fries and the savory aroma filled the room. The half-eaten contents of the bag sitting on the seat of Clark’s car held testament to the truth that nothing in the world grew an appetite faster than the scent of Dellio’s fries.

      The aroma even roused Mort, who groaned and rolled his head on the pillow to face them. His ashen face startled Clark. It seemed impossible that the man in that bed was nearly the same age as his own robust father—they looked decades apart.

      Mort’s brows furrowed in confusion, staring at Clark as if he were a misplaced object. Melba walked over to touch her father’s arm, her whole body reacting to his wakefulness. Something dark and hard flashed in Mort’s eyes, and he began to pull himself up off the bed. “What’s he doing here?” he snapped.

      “That’s Clark Bradens, Dad. He brought...”

      “How dare he come here?” Mort jabbed an accusatory finger in Clark’s direction. “You swore to me, Maria, you said you’d never...”

      “Dad, it’s Melba. Calm down, okay?” With a flash of a look in Clark’s direction, Melba pushed her father back onto the bed and hit the nurse call button.

      “Get him out of my home!” Mort yelled, and Clark backed up toward the door.

      “I’m sorry, he’s not himself.” Melba struggled to keep Mort from rising.

      Clark felt awful for not being able to help, but it seemed clear that moving any closer to Mort would just escalate things. “I’ll just go.” The nurse came in behind him as he ducked out of the room.

      “Go away and don’t come back!” Mort’s brittle voice called behind him.

      * * *

      Her father’s angry words still echoed in Melba’s head as she stared into her tea the next morning. The chill of them made her pull the afghan Mom had knitted for her first apartment tighter around her shoulders. Its blue-and-green design didn’t fit this house’s color scheme, but then again nothing from her Chicago apartment looked at home in this country bungalow. She was at home and out of place at the same time.

      The color clash was a mirror of her mood. Events felt confusing since last night, facts wouldn’t fit together in neat patterns, and life itself felt disjointed and tangled.

      “I’m...” she searched for the right verb as she stroked Pinocchio, the fat tabby who’d been their pet since Melba was sixteen “...tumbling into a new life today, hm?” Tumbling seemed like the best word. Tumbling was something set in motion not by her, but by things beyond her ability to control. Tumbling didn’t imply control or direction—and she felt like none of those were in her grasp today. Pinocchio merely purred and pushed against her hand, the universal cat gesture for “more, please.”

      “Dad’s coming home today. You’ll get plenty of petting soon.” Pinocchio was one of the few things guaranteed to calm Dad down when he got confused. Pinocchio and music. Melba had loaded Dad’s favorite record album—a collection of old hymns played on the piano—onto her digital music player so she could play them for him in the hospital. She had it playing now. It was nice to have the music cue the long-remembered lyrics in her head—“Great is Thy Faithfulness” was a good message for someone thrashing their way through a huge life shift.

      When she heard the cuckoo clock downstairs in the living room announce 8:00 a.m., Melba shook off the afghan and hoisted Pinocchio from her lap. Resolutely, she walked downstairs. Face the day head-on, Melba girl. Bright April sunshine filled the kitchen from the window over the sink. Melba let the light soak in, a welcome counterbalance to the cloudy way her soul felt today. Cued by the music, Melba sang the hymn’s reassuring words as she loaded her breakfast dishes into the twenty-year-old dishwasher and spun the funky little dial to hear it gurgle to life.

      Am I gurgling to life? Or about to drown?

      Barney was sitting at the kitchen table making a shopping list when Melba came back downstairs dressed and showered. With a lopsided grin, she nodded toward the dishwasher. “You paid for that, didn’t you?”

      Melba had to laugh. “I’m used to living in an apartment building where you can run the dishwasher and the shower at the same time.” She mimed a shiver. “Brrr, but at least I’m wide awake now. I don’t suppose they have decent chai tea at the supermarket here, do they? I need better caffeine these days.”

      Barney laughed. She was a hefty, jolly woman, the kind whose eyes sparkled and whole body jiggled when she laughed. “Lipton’s about as exotic as they get down at Morgan’s Finer Foods, darlin’.”

      Melba added Stop at Karl’s Koffee and get some decent tea to her mental list of “Dad Coming Home Tasks.”

      “Coming-home day,” Barney said as she opened the door and surveyed the empty fridge. “Glad of it, too. I don’t like to think of your dad holed up in one of those cold, harsh hospital rooms. He needs his things around him, you know?”

      “He does, I know.” Half of her was glad Dad was going to be discharged today, but the other half of her was anxious, even with Barney’s offer of extra help. “Dr. Nichols just called the fever ‘a bump in the road,’ but I’m worried. He seemed to...” she searched again for the right verb “...unravel in a way he hasn’t before.” It seemed a better way to put it than “I think he blurted out a deep dark secret about me,” which was what the back of her mind had been yelling at her all morning despite every effort to ignore it.

      “Hey,” she called over her shoulder as she stuffed papers into a purple batik tote bag, “did Dad ever blurt stuff out at you...say things you’re not sure he meant?” It didn’t come off as casually as she tried to make it sound.

      She felt Barney’s hand on her shoulder and almost resisted turning, afraid she’d be unable to stop herself from crumpling into a tearful heap on the big woman’s shoulders. “It’s not him talking, child, it’s the disease. Don’t you dare take it personal when he gets mean like that.”

      Melba swallowed, unsure whether to be glad Barney half mistook her real question. “I know.”

      Barney pointed at her. “Do you know how glad—how