My husband had been a firefighter for eleven years.
So I thought I understood silence.
There was tired silence after an overnight shift.
Heavy silence after a difficult call.
Irritated silence when the coffee machine broke.
And the particular silence of six grown men pretending they hadn’t eaten the dessert somebody’s wife brought for the entire station.
But I had never heard silence like the one waiting for me at Bellmere Fire Station 7 on Adrian’s thirty-seventh birthday.
I walked through the open bay doors carrying a cake from Maplewood Bakery in one hand and a ridiculous cluster of red and silver balloons in the other.
Six firefighters looked at me.
Every conversation stopped.
Nobody smiled.
Nobody made a joke.
And nobody said:
“Happy birthday, Adrian!”
That was when I knew something was wrong.
