Page 83 of Igniting Her

She crossed the bay without deciding to move and stopped beneath the memorial plaque.

FIREFIGHTER J. CALLOWAY

GONE, BUT ON EVERY CALL WITH US

For twelve years, the words had made loss sound useful. Jules remained with them in training standards, radio discipline, clean withdrawal orders, and the captain who brought her crews home. Cassie had allowed the department to turn a dead woman into presence because presence was easier to bear than absence.

Ellie had refused the same conversion.

You don’t get to bury me before I’m dead.

Cassie put one hand against the brass. The other closed around Ellie’s undated request.

She had not cried when incident command took the radio. She had not cried when they recovered Jules, at the memorial, or in the years when grief learned to complete reports in her handwriting. Tears had felt like one more uncontrolled thing a fire had taken from her.

The first one reached her mouth before she recognized it.

Cassie inhaled. The breath stopped high in her chest. She tried again and made a sound that did not belong to the captain, the station, or any version of herself she had permitted to survive.

Her palm slid on the plaque.

Twelve years arrived without order. Jules smiling on the running board. Ellie behind a facepiece. A door beneath an EXIT sign. A balcony swallowed by smoke. One woman who had died without hearing the words and another who had walked out before Cassie could turn silence into a grave.

Cassie bent forward.

The transfer request crumpled against her ribs. Her shoulder struck the wall beneath the plaque. She covered her mouth, but the next sound broke through her hand.

The ice came down all at once.

The next sob took her to the floor.

21

CASSIE

The cemetery sat twelve miles inland beyond the last place the harbor could be seen.

Cassie arrived before eight on a Wednesday morning. The office near the gates had not opened, but she had called the day before and written down the section, row, and plot number in the same notebook she used for grocery lists and vehicle maintenance. She found the grave without asking anyone to lead her there.

Jules had been buried beneath a pepper tree whose roots had lifted one edge of the neighboring marker. The grass was dry from a summer that had refused to end. Dust had settled into the carved letters of her name.

Cassie stopped three feet away.

She had attended the department memorial in dress uniform. She had stood beneath folded flags, accepted condolences from people who needed her to remain upright, and listened while chiefs turned Jules into courage, sacrifice, and a standard the living should carry forward. The burial had been private. Cassie had told herself the family deserved one place where the department did not follow.

For twelve years, she had continued to respect that boundary long after it became an excuse.

No flowers occupied her hands. No uniform gave the visit an official purpose. She wore dark trousers and a gray sweater, and the photograph from the bottom drawer rested in the inside pocket of her coat. Ellie’s undated transfer request was folded beside it.

Cassie crossed the remaining distance.

The headstone gave Jules’s full name. The dates beneath it reduced a life to a line Cassie could cover with one hand. She brushed dirt from the J with her thumb.

“Hello, Jules.”

Her voice sounded ordinary. The cemetery did not alter around it.

Cassie sat on the dry grass and drew one knee up because standing would have made the conversation feel like a report. Wind moved through the pepper leaves. Somewhere beyond the trees, grounds equipment started and then went quiet.