say, this was not the conversation I’d expected. “It sounds too good to be true,” I said.
“The point is not to let one bad night define the rest of your career,” she said, then added, “or your life.”
I nodded, noting the irony.
“They just need you to do one quick thing,” she said then, closing up her folder like we were almost done here.
“What’s that?”
“Apologize.”
I blinked at her. “To who? To the chief?”
She frowned, like, Hello? “To the city councilman.”
My head started shaking before my mind had formed the words. “I can’t do that.”
She gave a little sigh, like now I was being difficult. Which I suppose I was. “A formal apology. You don’t have to mean it. Just get it on the record.”
“I’m not going to apologize,” I said, just to be clear. Again.
“He and his friends on the council, they control our budget.” She gave a head shake. Then she added, “He could press charges for assault.”
But I didn’t think he would. We had too much history, and he had just as much to lose as I did. “He won’t press charges,” I said.
“You don’t know that,” she said. “And more importantly, the chief doesn’t know that. He wants full assurance that this is all over. That’s his deal: Apologize, and we all move on.”
“I can’t apologize,” I said. “And I won’t.”
She assessed me then. Was I really going to go there? Was I really going to dig in and not budge?
Apparently, yes.
“If you don’t apologize, I have to terminate your contract,” she said. “Chief’s orders.”
Terminate my contract. That was my choice. Apologize, and I got promoted; refuse to apologize, and I got fired.
“I won’t apologize.”
She leaned in a little closer and shook her head. “Just do it. Get it over with. Let’s move on. You’re a phenomenal firefighter. You deserve to do what you love. You need us and we need you. Don’t let this derail you.”
“I can’t,” I said. Anything else, but not that.
I held still.
She leaned back. Then she let out the long sigh of a woman who’d seen, and survived, far too much to mess around. She peered at me over her reading glasses, like, Fine. “You’re sure that’s what you want to do?”
I nodded.
She looked back down at her file and retreated into formalities. “Then as of this moment, you are terminated for gross insubordination and conduct unbecoming.”
Terminated.
Oh my God. Terminated.
A fog of panic rose up through my body. Who was I if I wasn’t a firefighter? What did I do if I didn’t do this? This was the life I’d worked for, trained for, dreamed about. This was the only thing I wanted. This was my reason for going to the gym, for eating broccoli, for living. This was my whole identity.
Terminated.
But even facing that, I still wasn’t apologizing.
There was no other choice I could make, and here was my consequence.
Then I suddenly remembered one other possibility—and no matter how out-of-the-question awful it had seemed yesterday, today it was suddenly looking better.
“What if there’s another option?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“What if I transferred? To another department?”
She frowned.
“My mother is ill,” I said. “She’s been asking me to move to Massachusetts and help her out as a caregiver. Maybe I could move away and work at a different fire station. Make myself disappear.”
Maybe this could work. Anything was better than terminated. Plus, something else struck me: This wouldn’t be the last time I ran into Heath Thompson. The man was everywhere in this town these days.
Maybe it was time, after all, to get the hell out of here.
The captain frowned. “If this comes out, if it leaks to the press or he presses charges, you’ll be terminated anyway.”
“He won’t press charges.”
She stared at me while she ran through my remaining options in her head. I could see her weighing everything. She liked me, that much I knew. I wasn’t just a good firefighter, I was great. She didn’t want to see me terminated either. She started nodding, like this could work. Finally, she said, “I didn’t even know you had a mother.”
“Sometimes I forget, myself.”
“Okay. We’ll try your plan B. The promotion’s out, though. You’ll have to start all over. Stay there a few years at least. Work your way back up.”
Starting over, I could handle. Terminated? Not so much. I closed my eyes. “Thank you.”
The captain opened my file back up to make some notes. “Where does she live? I know of some openings in Boston.”
“She lives in Rockport—about an hour north, on Cape