“She needs to be more cautious. That’s an old building and she’s gonna have mobs of kids in there every afternoon.”
George pushed his ever-present baseball hat back on his head, showing his balding mop of now-more-white-than-red hair. “This is a woman who’s just survived a fire, Chad. You of all people know what that does to a person. Go easy. I have no doubt she’ll go the extra mile so all those cute little tykes can stay safe buying their bubblegum. She’s just raw right now, and she needs to move forward to feel better. Take a little extra care walking her through the process, will you?”
Chad scowled. Extra care was George’s department, not his. It was George who stuffed himself into the firehouse’s Santa suit for every Christmas party, George who’d found Plug as a stray puppy and took him in despite serving no clear use short of good company. Which begged the question he’d been wanting to ask George since yesterday: “So why draft me into overseeing Nick as Plug’s official dog walker?”
“Your sunny disposition, of course.”
With a whistle Plug would ignore, George walked out of the equipment bay into the firehouse kitchen to pull open the refrigerator. “You can relate to the boy, I think. He needs watching. And you? You’ve been gloomier than usual. I know October’s coming, but…”
“Don’t.” Chad hated it when George got it into his head to play armchair shrink.
The old chief sighed. “It’s been eight years, Chad. That’s too long to play hermit, don’t you think?” George pulled out a brown glass bottle of root beer and snapped its cap against the bottle opener mounted nearby.
Chad moved in front of him. “So I need a thirteen-year-old? To supervise? This is a bit off the mark, even for you.”
“You’re just like Nick. You need something other than your losses to care about. And goldfish are lame.”
“George…”
Ignoring his challenge, George took a healthy swig followed by a satisfied sigh, then gazed out the kitchen window onto Tyler Street. “He’s a great kid, but he’s been through too much. The way I see it, you know something about holding up that kind of weight. And since you won’t go full-time back onto an engine, you’ve got too much free time.”
George could be exasperating when he hatched a plan, but Chad knew better than to argue with him. He didn’t care one bit for the orchestrating look in George’s eye as they stood in silence for a moment, staring across Tyler Street to Jeannie’s shop. A pair of work lights strung from the high ceilings of Jeannie’s shop gleamed out through the front windows on either side of the boarded-up doorway like yellow eyes over a square wood nose. Her yellow polka-dotted Jeep was still out front, but the blue insurance van had driven off. Jeannie was probably still in there, cooing to the woodwork with visions of sugarplums dancing in her head.
“I don’t want to do this, George.”
“Well, I suppose I can’t make you, either.”
Oh, I suspect you can. “She bothers me. You should see the colors she’s gonna paint that place. It’ll be like working across the street from a life-size game of Candy Land.”
“It will, won’t it?” George chuckled. “It’ll be nice to see that building full of life again, don’t you think? My dad used to take me over to that store for root-beer floats when I was Nick’s age. Best treat in the world. Not like all the sugar water they call soda pop now.” George’s beefy hand came down onto Chad’s shoulder. “Don’t be the guy to stop Jeannie Nelworth from reopening her candy store for the holidays. It’d be giving the Grinch a run for his money.”
“She’s got to be careful.”
“She’ll be careful, Chad. She’s got more reason to be careful than all of us put together with what she’s been through. I’m kind of proud of her, actually, getting back into the swing of things so quick and taking on such a big project like this. She’s got spirit, that woman. Can’t knock Jeannie Nelworth down for long.”
That was it. The fact that Jeannie Nelworth was so unsinkably cheerful, that she bobbed right back up after every blow like some over-buoyant bath toy was exactly what bothered him about her.
Chapter Three
The restaurant down the street had blocked its secondary exit with a Dumpster again. Why didn’t some of these businesses take his inspections more seriously? A knock on his door startled Chad out of his paperwork. He looked up from the report he’d been writing to see Nick Nelworth standing in his doorway. “Hey, Mr. Owens. Chief Bradens said you had something to ask me.”
Jeannie’s son had that legs-too-long amble of every teenager, but it was the way he always hung his head that caught Chad’s attention. George was right; life had beaten Nick down a lot more than the boy would let on. The kid had lost his dad to a car crash in the first grade, and then his home had burned—all before he even hit everything high school would throw at him. How could Nick hope to have anything but a dark outlook on life, even with his mother’s high-voltage optimism? From what Chad remembered, mothers and thirteen-year-old sons barely spoke the same language as it was.
He didn’t really know Nick, hadn’t known him at all before the fire, but felt an instant recognition now. Anyone could easily see the kid was quietly unhappy. And why not? Chad recalled hating every minute of middle school, and he’d had none of Nick’s traumas to overcome. Annoyed as he was at George’s scheming, Chad couldn’t tamp down an urge to help the boy. “Hi there, Nicholas. How’s it going across the street?”
Nick rolled his eyes—those same big eyes of his mother’s. “Mom’s all weird about it. She’s talking really fast and forgetting where she put things.”
The image of Jeannie Nelworth bouncing around her store hadn’t left his mind since the meeting. “Your mom’s excited about the place?”
“Yeah, something like that.” Plug wandered in, nuzzling Nick’s hand. “Whoa, Plug, that doesn’t belong to you. Don’t go getting Mr. Owens’s forms all slobbery.” Nick raised his hand out of Plug’s reach—which didn’t take much effort, because Plug never jumped up for anything—and put the handful of forms on Chad’s desk. “Mom said to give you these…and these.” He reached into his back pocket and reluctantly produced six very bright, very sparkly yellow pens. The promotional kind with “Sweet Treats” written on them in the pink swirly script that was Jeannie’s logo. Nicholas looked about as eager to be handing those out as Chad would be to use them. “They have the new address on them and the website.” He said in the monotone of a boy repeating an instructed script. Chad wondered if there was anything more repugnant to a thirteen-year-old boy than to be the distributor of sparkly pens.
Chad scooped the pens up, noting with horror that yellow glitter came off onto his fingers. “They’re very…yellow.” He raised an eyebrow at Nick, hoping to let the boy know he wasn’t expecting an endorsement of anything so cute.
“Yep.” Plug began inspecting Nick’s hand and back pocket, evidently thinking glitter might prove tasty. “They are.”
Chad slid out of his chair and came around to the front of his desk. He squatted down to scratch Plug between the ears. “Can you keep a secret?” Nick hunched down as well, and Plug rolled over on cue, to make sure they didn’t miss scratching his big belly. “Don’t tell your mom, but I’m not a fan of glitter.
