Free Shore Lights by Barbara Bretton Page B

the tailgate. “New York strip steaks and a couple of kegs of Heineken?”
    Aidan grunted as he pulled the two-gallon drums of chili out and handed them to the older firefighter. “Better quit smoking that strange tobacco, pal.” He grabbed for the two enormous foil-wrapped platters that were piled high with ribs and kicked the tailgate closed with his right knee. Pain shot from knee to thigh to groin. It registered on some distant part of his brain, the part he hadn’t yet figured out a way to subdue, but he kept his focus outward. Sometimes that was the best you could do.
    Barney watched him closely through tired brown eyes that had seen things even Aidan couldn’t imagine. Barney had taken him under his wing when Aidan first joined the company eighteen years ago, and it was Barney who had stayed with him on that long screaming ride through the hot summer night to the hospital.
    And it was Barney who had helped carry his brother’s casket out of Our Lady of Lourdes after the funeral when Aidan was still suspended between two levels of hell.
    Neither man spoke of that time again, but it was there between them in every word they didn’t say, an unbreakable bond.
    They crossed the asphalt to the kitchen door. Barney slowed automatically to keep pace with Aidan’s off-center gait.
    â€œComing in?” Barney asked casually.
    â€œNot this time.” Aidan placed the trays down on the top step. He hadn’t been in there since the day of the warehouse fire. “Claire needs to leave early tonight, so I want to get back.”
    â€œBetter motor then.” Barney’s tone was still casual. “Don’t want to keep her waiting.”
    â€œIrish stew Wednesday,” Aidan said as he turned to leave, “and a tray of baked mac and cheese.”
    â€œKeep ’em coming,” Barney said. “Fenelli has a long way to go until he can hold a spatula to you, O’Malley.”
    â€œSave the butt kissing for the Rotary Club,” Aidan said with a grin. “I’m still billing your ass for home delivery.”
    â€œPunk kid.”
    â€œOld fart.”
    â€œSee you Wednesday.”
    â€œYou got it.”
    He wondered if everyone saw the ghosts he saw around the firehouse. All the men who had come and gone over the years, the ones who died saving others, the ones who had been lucky enough to die in their own beds. He saw his brother Billy’s Camaro angled in the last spot on the right, tailpipe hanging on by a thread. Aidan was the one who was good with cars, but not even he had been able to keep Billy’s wheels in good repair. Billy drove the way he lived: balls-out, overdrive all the way. In the first months after the accident there had been times when Aidan would wake up from a deep sleep and for a second he was sure it was all a joke, that Billy was holed up in one of those motels on the outskirts of Atlantic City, laughing his ass off at the primo gag he’d pulled.
    Then he would look in the mirror and it would all come tumbling down.
    Â 
KELLY PULLED HER car into the lot behind O’Malley’s at exactly eighteen minutes after six. She had waited around the corner until Aunt Claire left for the night. The last thing she wanted was to be subjected to her godmother’s endless probing questions. And she knew there was no way Aunt Claire would let the opportunity pass without a little digging around.
    If only they had taken the back way to the lake. She had been so happy, so excited, that she hadn’t even noticed the women standing on the corner until Seth said, “Isn’t that your aunt Claire?” She had peered into the side mirror and there was her aunt, squinting into the fading sunlight, her face creased in permanent lines of worry. She wanted to shout out, “It isn’t what you think, Aunt Claire!” but of course it was exactly what Claire thought, every bit of it.
    They had been so careful, so