Yesterday's Embers Read Free Page B

look for that sixth, sweet blond head, feeling restless until all his little towheads were accounted for?
    But he hadn’t been able to keep them safe. For all his training as a volunteer firefighter and certified EMT, for all the talks he’d given at parent-teacher meetings about the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning—none of it had saved Kaye and Rachel. He was the last man this should have happened to.
    But nobody ever thought it could happen to them. You never thought it would be your wife, your child they were carrying away in the ambulance. And then a hearse.
    How would he bear it? He couldn’t imagine going back to work, back to any kind of normalcy.
    But he had no choice. He had to think about the kids. He was grateful for his job at the print shop, glad to have paying work to return to. Still, he’d begged off his volunteer EMT and firefighting duties indefinitely. Right now he didn’t trust his own judgment—even though Blaine Deaver, the fire chief, assured him there wasn’t anything he could have done to prevent what had happened to Kaye and Rachel.
    At the end of winter last year, Kaye had called a chimney sweep from Salina to come and clean out the fireplace and flue, but apparently with several freezes and the spring thaw since then, crumbling mortar and bricks had blocked the flue again.
    “Daddy?” Sadie and Sarah sang out in unison, their voices identical even if the girls were not. “What’re we havin’ for supper?”
    It seemed like they’d left the funeral dinner only minutes ago, but a glance at his watch told him little bellies would be hungry again. An odd sense of panic enveloped him.
    He was doing well to get the coffee maker going in the morning. Kaye always teased him that if it weren’t for her, he wouldn’t know how to boil water. Sadly, boiling water was as far as he’d gone in Kaye’s school of culinary skills. How was he going to fill his kids’ bellies tonight, let alone tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow after that?
    He opened the door to the din of utter silence. For four days the house had swarmed with family and friends. This was the first time he’d been alone, just him and the kids, since he’d come home to find—
    He wouldn’t let his brain finish the sentence. He groped for the switch on the kitchen wall and flipped on the lights. The sight of countertops littered with cake stands and pie tins and plates full of cookies came as a strange relief. On one end of the counter, a stack of empty dishes Kaye’s mom had labeled for return reminded him that the refrigerator was still packed tight with casseroles that neighbors and church friends had brought in. He didn’t have an appetite for any of it, but his kids needed to eat. And he was grateful someone had provided.
    Somehow he got all the kids out of their coats and dress clothes andinto jeans and T-shirts. He scooped spoonfuls of some cheese-laden casserole onto plates and put the first one in the microwave. “How long should I nuke this, Kayeleigh?”
    His oldest daughter looked at him like he’d grown another head. “For real? You don’t know?”
    “A minute, you think?” He punched the quick-minute button like he’d seen Kaye do whenever he’d worked late in the field or got called out on an ambulance run and she had to reheat his supper. He watched the digital numbers count the seconds off, wanting only to crawl in bed and pull the covers up over his head.
    Behind him, he heard Kayeleigh sniffing. Please don’t let her cry, Lord. Please .
    He couldn’t look at her but kept punching the quick-minute button until steam came off the lump of food in the middle. He heated one plate after another, thankful for the mindless task.
    “This one’s cold, Daddy.”
    Coming out of his fog, he saw Sarah beside him, jostling a plate in her pudgy hands. “This is still cold,” she said again, sliding the plate to the back of a counter she could barely see over. He opened the microwave, and the empty turntable