The Fireman's Homecoming. Allie Pleiter

into a small cough, but it was a laugh just the same. Melba jumped on the tiny boost of courage it gave her. “Hey, Dad, guess who I ran into this morning from my high school days?” It felt safer not to start with Clark’s visit to the hospital room.

      “Who?”

      “Clark Bradens. It took me a minute or so to recognize him, he’s changed so much. I never thought he’d clean up his act. He’s going to be fire chief when George retires next month, right?”

      The mention wiped the smile from Dad’s face. “So they say.” He reached for the television remote.

      She couldn’t help herself. She wanted to know what had caused the strong reaction to Clark’s visit at the hospital. “What’s he like?”

      “How would I know? I don’t see that boy.” He turned on the news and turned up the volume. The conversation had been declared over. She wasn’t really surprised that Dad had said “that boy” with the same tone people had used to refer to Clark in high school. Usually around the phrase “stay away from that boy.” Clark was no hero back then.

      Melba was opening her mouth to try again when Barney pushed open the back door. “Lord, save me from church committees!” she declared as she shucked off her coat and set her handbag on the table. “A lot of good may get done, but a whole lot of not-good creeps in around the edges. Some town gossips ought to just hush up and stay home.”

      Melba left her dad to his television news and leaned against the kitchen doorway. “Tough day at the office?”

      “Talk, whisper, talk. And then they wonder why the young people leave this town.” Barney shook her head. “We’ve known for two weeks since the town council meeting, but the yammering hasn’t stopped yet. You’d think there’s never been a second chance given in the whole wide world the way some of them went on about Clark Bradens this afternoon. Ain’t too many of us could stand up to judgment by who we was in high school.” She gave out a trio of disapproving tsk-tsks as she moved the casserole dish from the fridge to the oven.

      “Clark Bradens? Why’d he come up?”

      “Some folks want to throw him a nice party when George retires and he takes up as fire chief. I say it’s a fine thing to celebrate a son coming home like that. Others, well...they don’t see it that way. All they can see is a young high school punk coasting on his papa’s coattails. Honestly.” Melba wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “How many years has it been, and since when isn’t a man allowed to grow up and get it right?”

      “Who says he’s grown up and gotten it right?” Melba could hardly believe Dad was standing behind her. He’d gotten up out of the recliner all on his own?

      “He seemed nice enough to me.”

      “When’d you meet him?”

      Dad was fine, Dad wasn’t so fine. It was like living on an emotional Ping-Pong table. “I just told you I ran into him this morning.” Her frustration ran away with her better sense, because she heard herself add, “You yelled at him last night when he brought me food in your hospital room.”

      “I couldn’t have yelled at him. He’d have no business visiting me.”

      “I just said he was bringing me food. I met him in the hospital cafeteria and he offered to get Dellio’s for me but a fire alarm made him late.”

      Dad shuffled into the kitchen and plopped himself down on the nearest chair. “He’s going to be fire chief.” He did not say it like a person pleased with the idea. In fact, his words had a “there goes the neighborhood” tone.

      Melba started to say “We just talked about that,” but shut her mouth in resignation. Instead, she caught Barney’s eye over her father’s head, and they shared a split second of silent concern.

      “Did you really holler at that boy? Or rather, since he is older than your daughter, did you really holler at that man?” Barney asked.

      “I just said I didn’t yell at that Bradens boy,” Dad snapped.

      “Have the world your way, then.” Barney huffed. It was what she said whenever Dad’s version of the world didn’t line up with reality. Melba hoped she’d someday acquire the ability to let it roll off her the way Barney did. “Get on out of this kitchen, you grumpy old man. Dinner won’t be ready for another fifty minutes.”

      Melba reached out to help her father out of his chair, but he brushed her off. With considerable effort, Dad pushed himself up and shuffled, grumbling, back to the recliner. She stared after him and shook her head. “Should I be glad he’s moving around, or annoyed at his mood?”

      Barney laughed and pulled a package of brown-and-serve rolls out of the freezer. “Both.”

      Melba got a cookie sheet out of the cabinet and took the package from Barney. “He really did haul off at Clark in the hospital room,” she said quietly as she broke apart the rolls and arranged them on the cookie sheet. “It was scary, actually. Came out of nowhere. He yelled at Clark like they knew each other.”

      Barney leaned back against the counter. “You know George Bradens and your father have never gotten along—not for a long time, anyway. Too easy to get a flood of bad water under the bridge in a small town like this. I heard they were close when they were younger.”

      A thought struck Melba. “Clark looks a lot like his dad, doesn’t he?”

      “With all that Bradens red hair, I expect he does. I ain’t ever seen a photo of young George but I can picture it easy enough.”

      Melba moved closer. “Dad kept thinking I was Mom last night. Do you suppose he thought Clark was George, thought it was back then?”

      “Could be.”

      “The question is, then, what could have happened in the past that made Dad so angry at George?”

      “Who knows?” Barney nodded in the direction of the living room. “But take care, hon. Sometimes it don’t pay to dig up past hurts like that.”

      Too late, Melba thought. The digging’s been started for me. Only I don’t know if Dad realizes he’s the one who picked up the shovel.

      * * *

      Melba pulled on her robe and padded downstairs like a woman about to face the noose. She’d been up half the night, her mind a storm of questions about what her father had said at the hospital when they’d been alone. She’d tried to put it out of her mind, knowing Dad didn’t want to talk about it. Help me let it go, she’d prayed nearly hourly since Dad had come home, but to no avail. With the thin pale rays of dawn came the realization that it could no longer be avoided.

      She knew as she smelled coffee that there would never be a better time. He was up, sitting with coffee in his recliner. She was still up, having barely slept. And Barney wasn’t due for another hour. Give me the right words, Father. This is going to need so much grace and I’m running on empty.

      “Morning, Dad.”

      He turned toward her, and she marveled at the health in his features. He looked like Dad again, not that ghost of Dad who’d thrashed around his hospital bed. “Mornin’ Melbadoll.” He smiled, and she fought the urge to just let the day slide into peaceful normalcy.

      It won’t. It can’t until you talk about this, she argued with herself while she fixed a cup of tea and dragged herself into the living room to perch on the ottoman by Dad’s chair. “I need to ask you something, Dad.”

      He raised an eyebrow and sipped his coffee. “Shoot.”

      She’d rehearsed twelve ways to ask this, but couldn’t think of one. “I know people say stuff when they’re sick, and you had a high fever, but you said something to me in the hospital.”

      “Okay, maybe I could be nicer about that Bradens boy, but...”

      “No, Dad, it doesn’t have anything to do with that.” She