Page 42 of Dream Weaver

Now that I thought about it, though, his old flannel shirts fit me just fine. So maybe that was just the way I remembered him.

Talking about him didn’t turn out to be as hard as I’d imagined. And it was a lot better than pretending. So I kept at it.

“My other brothers would play tricks on me sometimes, but Peter would always come to my rescue. Like the time Chris lifted me up to his chin-up bar and left me hanging there. It was so high, I was scared to let go.” I chuckled. “But Peter got me down. He talked me out of building a bathtub boat too, after Chris put that idea in my mind.”

“A bathtub?” Abby chortled.

I grinned. “Yep. I really thought it would work, too. But Peter talked my mom into getting us a little inflatable boat for the pond.”

“Oh! Can Roscoe and I have a boat, Mom?” Claire asked.

I stifled a laugh.

“Where are you going to use it, sweetie?” she asked.

“In the creek. Oh! We could take it to Lake Powell. My friend Casey went there in a houseboat, you know.”

I did, because Claire had told me all about it one afternoon in the shop. Casey took lots of great trips with her parents — plural — but she didn’t have as many horses as Claire.

Abby sighed. “Remind me when we get closer to your birthday.”

Claire’s was July fifth, I knew, because she’d told me. When was Abby’s?

I pictured a cake, silly hats, and excited dogs for Abby’s birthday. A small pile of presents, one from each of the sisters and “grandfathers” Claire had mentioned. One from me, too. But what would I give her?

A playground, I finally decided, because Abby was a mother, and watching her kid have fun would give her great joy, as my mother liked to say. My sister, her husband, and one of my cousins had started an off-season business designing and building playgrounds. I could get the plans from them…maybe even add a few of my own touches…

A good thing our drinks came and cut off those fruitless fantasies. Claire started slurping her soda immediately, while Abby raised her glass — ginger ale — to mine.

“To Peter,” she whispered.

We clinked, and I echoed her quietly.

Abby gazed off into the distance, and it didn’t take much imagination to know she was thinking of Kevin and other fallen firefighters.

“Hey,” I whispered a moment later.

With a blink, she looked up.

I tapped my glass against hers. “To pizza night. In Sedona.”

Her lips curled in a thin smile, and she tapped back. “To that too.”

Our eyes locked for a long time afterward, and waves of understanding washed between us. Waves of all kinds of things that people who didn’t fight fires had no clue about. Like sorrow, guilt, and regret — and how we’d learned to live with them. Other things too, like the terror — and thrill — of coming within spitting distance of a raging wildfire.

“I miss it sometimes,” Abby whispered after a few seconds of silence.

I knew I would. As much as I loved the peace of the off-season, I always got itchy after a while. That was one reason I’d never managed to find someone willing to put up with my long absences — and my restlessness in the off-season. I’d never met a woman I was interested in who got it.

Until Abby.

But, yikes. She was a witch, or part witch, anyway.

Our pizza came, cutting off those thoughts — all thoughts, actually, because I was that famished — and we dug in.

“Watch your fingers, Claire,” someone chuckled. “In case these two beasts bite you by accident.”

I gulped down my mouthful of pizza and stood, belatedly catching a whiff of wolf shifter.

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