Jonas, page 8
“What are you doing?”
“Looking to see if I glow.”
“Oh, for—stop.” She got up, flicked on the light. “You’re freaking out.”
“And you’re not.” He cinched his bathrobe. “Which sort of unnerves me. Are you in the least worried that your eyeballs might turn to liquid?”
He was funny. Or maybe he wasn’t kidding, but she liked him more than she should probably.
“No. And if they are, there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
“We should go to the hospital and get radiation meds.”
She walked over to the sofa and picked up a blanket. “Or you could try and get some sleep.”
“Where are my pants?”
“Still wet.”
He considered her. “You’re not concerned, are you?”
“Nope.” She had pulled a pillowcase from her ottoman storage and now slipped it over the pillow. Tossed it on the sofa.
Silence, and he had crossed his arms over his chest, leaning one shoulder against the wall.
“What?”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I promise, nothing.”
“You aren’t afraid to jump off a mountain, or stick your hand in a beehive, or even drive with the lights off. And now your cells might be turning to liquid and you’re like, hey, drink a little warm milk and up the wooden hills you go.”
“Up the wooden hills?”
“Something my mother used to say. Stairs. To bed. But, really. Does nothing phase you?”
She sighed and sank down on the sofa. “I’m a little unnerved that my grandfather is missing.”
“Right.” He ran his hand behind his neck. “I forgot that.”
A beat. Silence. Then, “But, no, I’m not easily rattled, I guess.” She got up and grabbed a duvet from the ottoman space. “Your time is your time—you can’t do anything about it. So why worry?”
He just stared at her. “You’re not worried about dying?”
“Every day could be your last.” Ask her parents.
Ask Erazem, or Hedwig, or any of the brave firefighters she’d seen vaporized this summer.
Ask Rok.
In a blink, there he was, dressed in turnout gear, standing with the fire backdropped behind him.
The next, the world exploded around them.
She dropped the sheet, her hands suddenly, weirdly shaking at the rush of emotion. No, not here, not now.
“Sibba, are you okay?”
She swallowed and forced a smile. “Yep. I’m fine.” And now, shoot, her eyes had started to burn. She blinked hard and looked away.
He stepped up to her. “Wait. What is going on?” He touched her arm. “Every day could be your last? Where did that come from?”
And it was hard not to give in to the softness of his voice, especially with him standing there in her puffy bathrobe. Like he might be a friend.
Again, just like in the mountain hut, everything simply unwound, and she found her breathing hiccupping, her eyes filling.
Aw. “Sorry.” She tore away.
“Why are you apologizing?”
“Because the last thing I want is to…” She closed her eyes.
Silence.
She took a breath. “Listen. Fine. Okay.” She took a step away from him. “I…I recently lost someone close to me.”
“A boyfriend?”
She shook her head, looked away. “No. We worked together, but I made a mistake. It was my fault he died.”
Jonas just stood there, his eyes narrowing. “I have a hard time believing that.”
“There it is. And so, you know, you just have to…just, hold things loosely.”
“No, you don’t.” He walked over to her. “You don’t have to hold anything loosely, especially people you love.”
No, no… She pressed her hand to her mouth. “Jonas…I…really. Please, I…”
Although his body didn’t move, his mouth did, tightening down to a firm line.
“I’m just tired.”
“Go to bed, Sibba.” He gave her a small smile.
She fled to her room and shut the door.
Sheesh, she’d nearly broken down right in front of him. She hadn’t even cried at Rok’s funeral.
Pulling off her sweatshirt, she climbed into bed, pulled the duvet over her. Stared out the window.
Oh, she didn’t want to think about Rok. Or the rest of the firefighters.
But there they were, inside her brain, and even as fatigue consumed her, the fire pulled her in.
The choking smoke, the heat, the roar of the flames. A too-hot turnout suit—
“Over here! This way!”
Rok, motioning to the firefighters, trapped in the town of Temnica, now in flames.
Her, standing in the middle of the field, the smoke billowing up to turn the sky to charcoal. “Run where I tell you! Exactly!”
Rok nodding, running the path she’d shown him.
Already, fire breaking through forest around them, burning the grass.
Four firefighters, their helmets blackened, their jackets singed. And Rok, running hard for the chopper.
The fire, so fast now it could catch them, climbing up a tree, shooting off the top, like fingers beseeching the sky.
“Run!”
It chewed the grasses, reaching out to grab Hedwig. He went down and she screamed as Erazem rounded back—
“Run!”
Rok, now, helping Isak, who also tripped.
Then they were down, and the fire swelled around them.
Rok popped up, pushed Isak in front of him. Matik ran past them, hard for the chopper.
Rok tripped and she left the chopper, running hard—
Somehow, he stood then, the fire behind him, a backdrop of writhing flame.
Rok—
The explosion slammed her to the ground, and Rok simply disintegrated.
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t—
Wetness across her face. She threw up her arms, fighting—
“Sibba, wake up. I got you. I got you. Breathe!”
She opened her eyes to Jonas grabbing her, holding her arms. “Breathe.”
Oh. Her breaths came fast, over each other, then suddenly she was twisting off the bed, holding herself, hyperventilating.
Len was on the bed, barking.
She couldn’t catch her breath.
“Okay, okay, come on, don’t do this.” Jonas bent down, put his face close to hers. “Breathe out of your nose. Close your mouth. In and out now, through your nose.”
She tried, and he breathed with her. Out through her nose, in through her nose, out—
“That’s right. Good job.”
She kept the rhythm until her chest stopped seizing, until her breaths became full.
Until the panic loosened its grip.
She stood up, trembling. “I’m okay.”
“Right.” He took her arm and led her back to the bed, sitting down next to her. “That was…loud.”
She looked over at him. Len pushed himself onto her lap.
Jonas picked up the dog. “You kept yelling run, and for a second I thought maybe I should run. And then I realized that you were also whimpering, so…sorry, I didn’t mean to break in, but actually Len came in first—”
“It’s okay.” She closed her eyes. “It’s just a…”
“Memory. Probably one I dragged up, right?”
She made a face. “I try not to think about…” She looked away.
“What was his name?” Jonas said quietly.
“Rokko. He was twenty-eight.”
“That’s young.”
Not in her business.
“Yeah.”
“How’d he die?”
“He was trying to rescue a group of firefighters.”
“Was he a firefighter?”
“Actually, no. He was EOD.”
She glanced at him, and he just kept looking at her. “Explosive Ordnance Disposal.”
“I know,” he said slowly, his gaze hard on her. Probably piecing together her words. Her job.
“This summer, along southwestern Kras, there were massive fires. It also happened to be the location where a dozen World War One battles were fought. And nearly five hundred unexploded bombs lay in wait.”
She pushed off the bed and went to the window, her back to him. “EOD had marked the roadways where the ordnances were, and we were systematically disposing of them, but a handful of firefighters were trapped in a city that had been evacuated, and Rok tried to get them out.”
Outside, the night was still deep, thick. “He was killed during the evacuation.”
More silence, and she knew, just knew he was going to ask.
“I’m so sorry, Sibba. That sounds awful.”
Oh. Or maybe he’d already figured it out. But in case he hadn’t: “Mostly because I was the one who marked their route.”
The bed creaked and he stood. She turned and didn’t care that her face was wet. “Twenty pound Coopers, all World War One era. We landed a chopper to get the team out, and I thought I’d found them all—I used a state-of-the-art Foerster locator, and…” She shook her head, didn’t even bother to wipe her cheek. Stupid tears. “I missed one.”
“Just one.”
“That’s all it takes.” She met his gaze. “And that’s why I can’t fall apart, Jonas. Because the next second, I had to get off the ground and load into the chopper the people who lived.”
“Including you.” He made a face.
She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t count.”
He stepped closer, and she wasn’t sure why she let him wrap his arm around her and pull her tight against him. “Sibba.”
Maybe she was just tired. And worried about her grandfather, which had spilled out into this emotional wreckage.
“You absolutely do count.”
Oh, no, no, he wasn’t going to get under her skin, make her care. Start feeling again.
Not when she’d developed a nice, deep scab over her heart.
Admittedly, Jonas hadn’t expected to end up here. Not in a puffy bathrobe, feeling half-naked and sensing that he’d stepped into something bigger than he wanted to understand.
Because if he did the math right…
Sibba disposed of bombs for a living.
And that felt, well, like a bomb in the middle of his chest, given the thoughts he’d been having about her.
The kind that entertained asking her out for dinner after they found her grandfather, and after the right people determined that their organs weren’t going to dissolve inside their bodies.
But really, he was blind not to have seen the truth—this woman wasn’t afraid of danger. And if she could stick her hand in a beehive, yes, she could dismantle a bomb.
So much for staying away from danger.
But still, he couldn’t help but want to reach out to her.
Tough, stoic Sibba.
No wonder she hadn’t gotten worked up about the, um, radiation poisoning. Although, if a guy were to go, getting blown up might be quick and painless, or at least so quickly over that—
No. He’d still give that a one-star, would not recommend.
This moment, however, when he held Sibba in his arms—yes, all five stars.
Because, if he were to admit it, he’d been a little lonely since…
Maybe longer than he had realized.
Sibba put her hands to his chest and pushed. He let her go, stepped back. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I just…sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you into my dark places.”
“Hey. Remember me? Storm chaser? I’m exactly the person you want around when the lights go down and the wind kicks up.” He winked, and then felt like a fool.
Seriously, Jonas?
“Maybe I should make breakfast.”
“At three in the morning?”
“Or…get some shut-eye?”
“And dream about Rokko and the guys again?” She made a face.
“Right. All I’m going to think about is my fingernails falling off.”
“So, dinner?”
“Pizza rolls?”
“What?”
“What do you do when you come home late and need something to munch on as you watch hours of Friends?”
He got a smile.
“Posmodula,” she said, and pushed past him.
He followed her out into the kitchen, where she flicked on a light. Pulled out a bowl and flour.
He sat down in the kitchen chair. He’d emptied his pockets and now picked up his phone.
“My grandmother used to make this for me while we waited for bread to bake.” She’d put some yeast in a bowl, added hot water, salt. Now she stirred it. “What are you looking at?”
“The wreckage of the dirigible.” He scrolled past the pictures he’d taken in the field, landing on the ribbed carcass that had held the black box.
“How did you get into storm chasing?”
He set down the phone. “Storms always held a mystery to me. I have this memory of being a child, maybe five or six, and coming downstairs during a terrible thunderstorm. I was scared, I think, but I found my grandfather—he was living with us at the time—sitting on our big stone porch, watching. I came out to him and sat on his lap, and he wrapped this big blanket around me, and we just sat and watched the storm. The lightning spidering across the sky, the deep roll of the thunder. The wind, moaning as if it were alive. Sitting there with him, those strong arms around me—I wasn’t afraid anymore.”
She had added flour and lard and now stirred it with a wooden spoon. “Dedi is like that. Calm. Solid. He…” She glanced at him now. “He saw his own trauma. Learned how to face it. Mostly.”
“Oh?”
“No, it’s nothing. It’s just, sometimes as he gets older, he’s back there, you know? In war.”
He knew little of Slovenian history, just that they’d fought for their independence from Yugoslavia. So probably, her grandfather had been a part of that.
“So, you weren’t afraid of storms…but when did you start chasing them?”
“I was in high school, sitting in my classroom—about eighteen—and one day, a storm headed our direction. Our teacher told us to go to the gym, and I headed to the parking lot, and ever since then…”
She had dumped out the dough onto a stone board, was stretching it out.
“That looks a lot like pizza to me.”
“It’s better than pizza. It’ll knock your shoes off.”
“Socks?”
She frowned even as she opened the fridge.
“It’ll knock your socks off. But that’s close. Where’d you learn English?”
“It’s taught here in the schools, but mostly, when I was seconded to the British Army to learn EOD.”
“You trained in Great Britain?”
“With the RAF, and then with the Royal Engineers.”
“For how long?”
“Four years. Then I came back and spent the next two disarming bombs for the Slovenian military.” She’d opened a jar of cream and was now slathering it on the dough. “I’ve spent the past two years as a freelancer.”
“Why’d you get out?”
She added salt, and leaves from some fresh herb she had growing in her windowsill. “I lost a friend.”
He stilled. “Oh no.”
She opened her oven and stuck in the bread, set a timer, then turned and wiped her hands with a towel.
“Did you know that, if a bomb goes off, you’ll have a much better chance at survival if you’re standing next to something solid?”
“I don’t want to ask how you know that.”
“During World War Two, the RAF, Russia, and the US Army dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs over Europe. Ten percent of those bombs never exploded.”
She dropped the towel on the counter. “They call it the Iron Harvest, and over the past fifty years, over six hundred EOD personnel have been killed trying to clean it up. Slovenia had divided loyalties—we had both Allied and Axis fighters, so we got the best of both bombings.”
He leaned back. “I had no idea.”
“Always watch where you stand.” She winked.
He didn’t. “That’s a little terrifying.”
“Someone has to walk up to the bomb and ask to be its friend, at least enough to figure out its tricks and disarm it. That’s me. But now, I work alone.”
And maybe he was imagining it, but it sort of felt like she might be drawing a little line between them, as if he’d moved too far into her space.
No worries. Because the last thing he wanted was to worry about the woman he loved—and no, he didn’t love Sibba, so hypothetically—walking out the front door, knowing that she might not be coming back.
“Now I get why you jump off mountains.”
She smiled, and for all the darkness that seemed to be cluttered up inside her, she could light up a room—not so much with a dazzling light, but with a sort of softness, the kind that offered a shelter in a storm.
And he liked storms.
The timer on the stove went off, and she pulled out the bread. Crispy and brown around the edges, it had curled up a little on itself. She slid it off the stone and onto a plate, then cut it into pie wedges.
Set it on the table. “It’s hot.”
Grabbing a couple napkins, she set one in front of him.
He wasn’t surprised in the least when she picked it up, tossing it between her fingers, then bit into it. Then she dropped the piece on a napkin and fanned her mouth. “Ot, Ot.” Then she closed her mouth. “Mmm.”
He went to pick up a piece, then dropped it. “That’s hot.”
“Chicken.”
“I prefer wuss, thank you.”
She laughed, her hand in front of her mouth.
Now, there was the sunshine.
He picked up the piece, blew on it, and took a bite. Yes, hot, but the cream—sour cream, with a hint of marjoram and maybe garlic—filled his mouth, along with the bread. He swallowed. “Wow, that’s good.”
“Better than pizza rolls?”
“Not even in the same galaxy.”
She nodded, took another bite. Then she reached for his phone. “What’s this?” she asked after she swallowed.
“That’s a picture of the device on the bottom of my dirigible. It was tampered with.”
She set down her piece of posmodula. “That’s a bomb casing. It looks like an old iron bomb, the kind that was dropped from airplanes.” She widened the picture. “Except, this here—” She showed him a gauge. “That’s an altimeter. This bomb was set to explode at a certain altitude.”
“Looking to see if I glow.”
“Oh, for—stop.” She got up, flicked on the light. “You’re freaking out.”
“And you’re not.” He cinched his bathrobe. “Which sort of unnerves me. Are you in the least worried that your eyeballs might turn to liquid?”
He was funny. Or maybe he wasn’t kidding, but she liked him more than she should probably.
“No. And if they are, there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
“We should go to the hospital and get radiation meds.”
She walked over to the sofa and picked up a blanket. “Or you could try and get some sleep.”
“Where are my pants?”
“Still wet.”
He considered her. “You’re not concerned, are you?”
“Nope.” She had pulled a pillowcase from her ottoman storage and now slipped it over the pillow. Tossed it on the sofa.
Silence, and he had crossed his arms over his chest, leaning one shoulder against the wall.
“What?”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I promise, nothing.”
“You aren’t afraid to jump off a mountain, or stick your hand in a beehive, or even drive with the lights off. And now your cells might be turning to liquid and you’re like, hey, drink a little warm milk and up the wooden hills you go.”
“Up the wooden hills?”
“Something my mother used to say. Stairs. To bed. But, really. Does nothing phase you?”
She sighed and sank down on the sofa. “I’m a little unnerved that my grandfather is missing.”
“Right.” He ran his hand behind his neck. “I forgot that.”
A beat. Silence. Then, “But, no, I’m not easily rattled, I guess.” She got up and grabbed a duvet from the ottoman space. “Your time is your time—you can’t do anything about it. So why worry?”
He just stared at her. “You’re not worried about dying?”
“Every day could be your last.” Ask her parents.
Ask Erazem, or Hedwig, or any of the brave firefighters she’d seen vaporized this summer.
Ask Rok.
In a blink, there he was, dressed in turnout gear, standing with the fire backdropped behind him.
The next, the world exploded around them.
She dropped the sheet, her hands suddenly, weirdly shaking at the rush of emotion. No, not here, not now.
“Sibba, are you okay?”
She swallowed and forced a smile. “Yep. I’m fine.” And now, shoot, her eyes had started to burn. She blinked hard and looked away.
He stepped up to her. “Wait. What is going on?” He touched her arm. “Every day could be your last? Where did that come from?”
And it was hard not to give in to the softness of his voice, especially with him standing there in her puffy bathrobe. Like he might be a friend.
Again, just like in the mountain hut, everything simply unwound, and she found her breathing hiccupping, her eyes filling.
Aw. “Sorry.” She tore away.
“Why are you apologizing?”
“Because the last thing I want is to…” She closed her eyes.
Silence.
She took a breath. “Listen. Fine. Okay.” She took a step away from him. “I…I recently lost someone close to me.”
“A boyfriend?”
She shook her head, looked away. “No. We worked together, but I made a mistake. It was my fault he died.”
Jonas just stood there, his eyes narrowing. “I have a hard time believing that.”
“There it is. And so, you know, you just have to…just, hold things loosely.”
“No, you don’t.” He walked over to her. “You don’t have to hold anything loosely, especially people you love.”
No, no… She pressed her hand to her mouth. “Jonas…I…really. Please, I…”
Although his body didn’t move, his mouth did, tightening down to a firm line.
“I’m just tired.”
“Go to bed, Sibba.” He gave her a small smile.
She fled to her room and shut the door.
Sheesh, she’d nearly broken down right in front of him. She hadn’t even cried at Rok’s funeral.
Pulling off her sweatshirt, she climbed into bed, pulled the duvet over her. Stared out the window.
Oh, she didn’t want to think about Rok. Or the rest of the firefighters.
But there they were, inside her brain, and even as fatigue consumed her, the fire pulled her in.
The choking smoke, the heat, the roar of the flames. A too-hot turnout suit—
“Over here! This way!”
Rok, motioning to the firefighters, trapped in the town of Temnica, now in flames.
Her, standing in the middle of the field, the smoke billowing up to turn the sky to charcoal. “Run where I tell you! Exactly!”
Rok nodding, running the path she’d shown him.
Already, fire breaking through forest around them, burning the grass.
Four firefighters, their helmets blackened, their jackets singed. And Rok, running hard for the chopper.
The fire, so fast now it could catch them, climbing up a tree, shooting off the top, like fingers beseeching the sky.
“Run!”
It chewed the grasses, reaching out to grab Hedwig. He went down and she screamed as Erazem rounded back—
“Run!”
Rok, now, helping Isak, who also tripped.
Then they were down, and the fire swelled around them.
Rok popped up, pushed Isak in front of him. Matik ran past them, hard for the chopper.
Rok tripped and she left the chopper, running hard—
Somehow, he stood then, the fire behind him, a backdrop of writhing flame.
Rok—
The explosion slammed her to the ground, and Rok simply disintegrated.
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t—
Wetness across her face. She threw up her arms, fighting—
“Sibba, wake up. I got you. I got you. Breathe!”
She opened her eyes to Jonas grabbing her, holding her arms. “Breathe.”
Oh. Her breaths came fast, over each other, then suddenly she was twisting off the bed, holding herself, hyperventilating.
Len was on the bed, barking.
She couldn’t catch her breath.
“Okay, okay, come on, don’t do this.” Jonas bent down, put his face close to hers. “Breathe out of your nose. Close your mouth. In and out now, through your nose.”
She tried, and he breathed with her. Out through her nose, in through her nose, out—
“That’s right. Good job.”
She kept the rhythm until her chest stopped seizing, until her breaths became full.
Until the panic loosened its grip.
She stood up, trembling. “I’m okay.”
“Right.” He took her arm and led her back to the bed, sitting down next to her. “That was…loud.”
She looked over at him. Len pushed himself onto her lap.
Jonas picked up the dog. “You kept yelling run, and for a second I thought maybe I should run. And then I realized that you were also whimpering, so…sorry, I didn’t mean to break in, but actually Len came in first—”
“It’s okay.” She closed her eyes. “It’s just a…”
“Memory. Probably one I dragged up, right?”
She made a face. “I try not to think about…” She looked away.
“What was his name?” Jonas said quietly.
“Rokko. He was twenty-eight.”
“That’s young.”
Not in her business.
“Yeah.”
“How’d he die?”
“He was trying to rescue a group of firefighters.”
“Was he a firefighter?”
“Actually, no. He was EOD.”
She glanced at him, and he just kept looking at her. “Explosive Ordnance Disposal.”
“I know,” he said slowly, his gaze hard on her. Probably piecing together her words. Her job.
“This summer, along southwestern Kras, there were massive fires. It also happened to be the location where a dozen World War One battles were fought. And nearly five hundred unexploded bombs lay in wait.”
She pushed off the bed and went to the window, her back to him. “EOD had marked the roadways where the ordnances were, and we were systematically disposing of them, but a handful of firefighters were trapped in a city that had been evacuated, and Rok tried to get them out.”
Outside, the night was still deep, thick. “He was killed during the evacuation.”
More silence, and she knew, just knew he was going to ask.
“I’m so sorry, Sibba. That sounds awful.”
Oh. Or maybe he’d already figured it out. But in case he hadn’t: “Mostly because I was the one who marked their route.”
The bed creaked and he stood. She turned and didn’t care that her face was wet. “Twenty pound Coopers, all World War One era. We landed a chopper to get the team out, and I thought I’d found them all—I used a state-of-the-art Foerster locator, and…” She shook her head, didn’t even bother to wipe her cheek. Stupid tears. “I missed one.”
“Just one.”
“That’s all it takes.” She met his gaze. “And that’s why I can’t fall apart, Jonas. Because the next second, I had to get off the ground and load into the chopper the people who lived.”
“Including you.” He made a face.
She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t count.”
He stepped closer, and she wasn’t sure why she let him wrap his arm around her and pull her tight against him. “Sibba.”
Maybe she was just tired. And worried about her grandfather, which had spilled out into this emotional wreckage.
“You absolutely do count.”
Oh, no, no, he wasn’t going to get under her skin, make her care. Start feeling again.
Not when she’d developed a nice, deep scab over her heart.
Admittedly, Jonas hadn’t expected to end up here. Not in a puffy bathrobe, feeling half-naked and sensing that he’d stepped into something bigger than he wanted to understand.
Because if he did the math right…
Sibba disposed of bombs for a living.
And that felt, well, like a bomb in the middle of his chest, given the thoughts he’d been having about her.
The kind that entertained asking her out for dinner after they found her grandfather, and after the right people determined that their organs weren’t going to dissolve inside their bodies.
But really, he was blind not to have seen the truth—this woman wasn’t afraid of danger. And if she could stick her hand in a beehive, yes, she could dismantle a bomb.
So much for staying away from danger.
But still, he couldn’t help but want to reach out to her.
Tough, stoic Sibba.
No wonder she hadn’t gotten worked up about the, um, radiation poisoning. Although, if a guy were to go, getting blown up might be quick and painless, or at least so quickly over that—
No. He’d still give that a one-star, would not recommend.
This moment, however, when he held Sibba in his arms—yes, all five stars.
Because, if he were to admit it, he’d been a little lonely since…
Maybe longer than he had realized.
Sibba put her hands to his chest and pushed. He let her go, stepped back. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I just…sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you into my dark places.”
“Hey. Remember me? Storm chaser? I’m exactly the person you want around when the lights go down and the wind kicks up.” He winked, and then felt like a fool.
Seriously, Jonas?
“Maybe I should make breakfast.”
“At three in the morning?”
“Or…get some shut-eye?”
“And dream about Rokko and the guys again?” She made a face.
“Right. All I’m going to think about is my fingernails falling off.”
“So, dinner?”
“Pizza rolls?”
“What?”
“What do you do when you come home late and need something to munch on as you watch hours of Friends?”
He got a smile.
“Posmodula,” she said, and pushed past him.
He followed her out into the kitchen, where she flicked on a light. Pulled out a bowl and flour.
He sat down in the kitchen chair. He’d emptied his pockets and now picked up his phone.
“My grandmother used to make this for me while we waited for bread to bake.” She’d put some yeast in a bowl, added hot water, salt. Now she stirred it. “What are you looking at?”
“The wreckage of the dirigible.” He scrolled past the pictures he’d taken in the field, landing on the ribbed carcass that had held the black box.
“How did you get into storm chasing?”
He set down the phone. “Storms always held a mystery to me. I have this memory of being a child, maybe five or six, and coming downstairs during a terrible thunderstorm. I was scared, I think, but I found my grandfather—he was living with us at the time—sitting on our big stone porch, watching. I came out to him and sat on his lap, and he wrapped this big blanket around me, and we just sat and watched the storm. The lightning spidering across the sky, the deep roll of the thunder. The wind, moaning as if it were alive. Sitting there with him, those strong arms around me—I wasn’t afraid anymore.”
She had added flour and lard and now stirred it with a wooden spoon. “Dedi is like that. Calm. Solid. He…” She glanced at him now. “He saw his own trauma. Learned how to face it. Mostly.”
“Oh?”
“No, it’s nothing. It’s just, sometimes as he gets older, he’s back there, you know? In war.”
He knew little of Slovenian history, just that they’d fought for their independence from Yugoslavia. So probably, her grandfather had been a part of that.
“So, you weren’t afraid of storms…but when did you start chasing them?”
“I was in high school, sitting in my classroom—about eighteen—and one day, a storm headed our direction. Our teacher told us to go to the gym, and I headed to the parking lot, and ever since then…”
She had dumped out the dough onto a stone board, was stretching it out.
“That looks a lot like pizza to me.”
“It’s better than pizza. It’ll knock your shoes off.”
“Socks?”
She frowned even as she opened the fridge.
“It’ll knock your socks off. But that’s close. Where’d you learn English?”
“It’s taught here in the schools, but mostly, when I was seconded to the British Army to learn EOD.”
“You trained in Great Britain?”
“With the RAF, and then with the Royal Engineers.”
“For how long?”
“Four years. Then I came back and spent the next two disarming bombs for the Slovenian military.” She’d opened a jar of cream and was now slathering it on the dough. “I’ve spent the past two years as a freelancer.”
“Why’d you get out?”
She added salt, and leaves from some fresh herb she had growing in her windowsill. “I lost a friend.”
He stilled. “Oh no.”
She opened her oven and stuck in the bread, set a timer, then turned and wiped her hands with a towel.
“Did you know that, if a bomb goes off, you’ll have a much better chance at survival if you’re standing next to something solid?”
“I don’t want to ask how you know that.”
“During World War Two, the RAF, Russia, and the US Army dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs over Europe. Ten percent of those bombs never exploded.”
She dropped the towel on the counter. “They call it the Iron Harvest, and over the past fifty years, over six hundred EOD personnel have been killed trying to clean it up. Slovenia had divided loyalties—we had both Allied and Axis fighters, so we got the best of both bombings.”
He leaned back. “I had no idea.”
“Always watch where you stand.” She winked.
He didn’t. “That’s a little terrifying.”
“Someone has to walk up to the bomb and ask to be its friend, at least enough to figure out its tricks and disarm it. That’s me. But now, I work alone.”
And maybe he was imagining it, but it sort of felt like she might be drawing a little line between them, as if he’d moved too far into her space.
No worries. Because the last thing he wanted was to worry about the woman he loved—and no, he didn’t love Sibba, so hypothetically—walking out the front door, knowing that she might not be coming back.
“Now I get why you jump off mountains.”
She smiled, and for all the darkness that seemed to be cluttered up inside her, she could light up a room—not so much with a dazzling light, but with a sort of softness, the kind that offered a shelter in a storm.
And he liked storms.
The timer on the stove went off, and she pulled out the bread. Crispy and brown around the edges, it had curled up a little on itself. She slid it off the stone and onto a plate, then cut it into pie wedges.
Set it on the table. “It’s hot.”
Grabbing a couple napkins, she set one in front of him.
He wasn’t surprised in the least when she picked it up, tossing it between her fingers, then bit into it. Then she dropped the piece on a napkin and fanned her mouth. “Ot, Ot.” Then she closed her mouth. “Mmm.”
He went to pick up a piece, then dropped it. “That’s hot.”
“Chicken.”
“I prefer wuss, thank you.”
She laughed, her hand in front of her mouth.
Now, there was the sunshine.
He picked up the piece, blew on it, and took a bite. Yes, hot, but the cream—sour cream, with a hint of marjoram and maybe garlic—filled his mouth, along with the bread. He swallowed. “Wow, that’s good.”
“Better than pizza rolls?”
“Not even in the same galaxy.”
She nodded, took another bite. Then she reached for his phone. “What’s this?” she asked after she swallowed.
“That’s a picture of the device on the bottom of my dirigible. It was tampered with.”
She set down her piece of posmodula. “That’s a bomb casing. It looks like an old iron bomb, the kind that was dropped from airplanes.” She widened the picture. “Except, this here—” She showed him a gauge. “That’s an altimeter. This bomb was set to explode at a certain altitude.”
