Page 43 of Igniting Her

12

CASSIE

The fight followed Cassie home like smoke. It clung through the shower, where gray water ran from her hair despite two cleanings at the station. It sat beside her at the kitchen counter while she drank coffee she did not want and reviewed the Harrow Court incident timeline she had already approved. It went upstairs with her at nine in the morning and lay down with her when she tried to sleep.

Whose funeral did I just make you plan?

Cassie closed her eyes. The question had been cruel only in its accuracy. That was why she had ordered Ellie out instead of answering it. At Harrow Court, Cassie had heard the first low-air warning cut across Ellie’s report that the room was isolated. She had watched smoke thicken at the Charlie eaves while Engine 7 raised the ladder. Then Ellie’s radio had failed. Seven seconds passed before Jamie reported them outside. Seven seconds in which Cassie’s mind built a memorial service with the efficiency of a command structure: notification, black band, flags, the empty place at the long table. None of that belonged in a performance review. None of it excused the scene in her office.

Cassie turned onto her side. Daylight pressed at the edges of the blackout curtains. Sleep refused her with the same discipline she had once admired in herself. She got up at eleven. She stripped the bed even though the sheets were clean, ran a load of laundry, sharpened the kitchen knives, and reorganized the hall closet. At two, she went down to the harbor and walked until the heat reflected from the pavement through the soles of her shoes. At four, she returned to a silent house and left every light off.

Ellie did not call. Cassie didn’t call either.

Neither would apologize. Ellie believed the removal had been the right decision, and Cassie believed the fact that it worked did not restore the margin Ellie had spent. Both positions could be true. The part neither of them could defend had happened after the fire, inside an office with the blind closed.

By ten that night, harbor fog had begun to erase the lower streets. Cassie stood at the living-room window with a glass of water and watched the breakwater lights disappear one by one. Headlights turned at the bottom of the hill. They climbed past the neighbor’s rosebush and swept across Cassie’s front windows before angling into her driveway.

She knew the car.

Ellie sat behind the wheel after the engine went quiet. For nearly a minute, neither of them moved. Cassie watched through the dark glass. Ellie looked toward the house, then down at her hands. Cassie had no plan to open the door. Ellie had given no sign that she intended to leave the car. Then both women moved at once.

Cassie reached the entry as Ellie stepped onto the porch. She opened the door before Ellie could ring. Ellie wore jeans, boots, and a thin black jacket over a gray T-shirt. Her short braid had come loose from a day of failed sleep. Exhaustion shadowed her eyes. Anger kept the rest of her sharply awake.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Cassie said.

“I know.” The answer removed the easiest objection. Ellie remained outside. “Are you going to order me in or out?”

Cassie stepped back. Ellie entered and shut the door behind her. The same hallway held their first kiss, the wet outline of Ellie’s boots long since gone from the wood. Tonight, neither woman touched the other. “You used a private question to make a point in a command discussion,” Cassie said.

Ellie’s jaw tightened. “You stopped having a command discussion when you made it about every life except the one we pulled out.”

“I was responsible for all of them.”

“I know. You tell me every time I breathe near a fire.”

“Then perhaps listen,” Cassie said.

“I did listen.” Ellie came one step closer. “I heard you say my low-air alarm like it had happened to you.”

Cassie’s stomach tightened. She set her water glass on the hall table before her hand could reveal anything else. “You don’t get to interpret what happened in my office.”

“Then tell me I was wrong.”

“This is the second time you’ve come to my house and demanded a particular answer.”

“The first one worked out for both of us.”

“That depends on which hour you’re evaluating,” Cassie said.

Ellie’s chin drew back a fraction. Anger covered the reaction before Cassie could take the sentence back. “There,” Ellie said. “That. You get scared, and suddenly everything between us was a tactical error.”

“Everything between us is an error in judgment.”

“You didn’t look sorry when you were teaching me how to ask.”

Cassie’s body remembered the bedroom before she could stop it: Ellie on her knees, saying submission aloud; her own admission returned; the fragile quiet afterward when Ellie had traced her forearm. “Do not confuse desire with wisdom,” Cassie said.

“I’m not. I’m saying you don’t get to punish me for surviving something you haven’t told me.”