“Hey, baby, did you sleep good?”

She nodded. “I missed you.”

He brushed a kiss across her lips. “I didn’t go far,” he said, and then kissed the top of her head and tucked her under his arm as he went back to stirring.

“Whatever that is, it smells heavenly,” she said.

“It’s meat sauce for spaghetti, and all it needs to do now is cook down a bit.” He turned the fire down to simmer. “I have coffee, but there are also the cold drinks. Would you like something?”

“Yes, something cold. I put Cokes in the fridge the other day.”

“Then Coke it is. On ice?”

She nodded.

“I’ll get it for you, honey. Sit down. Oh…one of the Blessings officers drove your car back. We’ll have to take it to be checked out, but it’s here.”

She eased down onto one of the chairs and leaned back. The sight of him standing in her kitchen stirring pasta sauce was unforgettable. He put the lid back on the pot and fixed her Coke.

Melissa took a sip of the cold, fizzy drink, watching as he brought his coffee and a couple of cookies with him. He handed one to her and joined her.

She sat quietly, eating the cookie and sipping Coke, but still thinking about today.

“Sully?”

“What, baby?”

“A whole lot of your work life has been life-or-death situations, hasn’t it?”

He nodded, wondering what was on her mind.

“And there must have been times when your life was on the line,” she added.

“Yes, there were days like that.”

Melissa leaned forward. “So how did you cope? I mean…how did you rationalize waking up on a normal day, having a life-altering event and living through it, and then coming home to being normal again?”

“First thing to consider is that risk was often my normal. I accepted it when I became a firefighter. And the other thing was simple gratitude for living to fight another day.”

She let that soak in for a minute, then finally admitted what was bothering her.

“I’m struggling with that concept right now. Two really awful things have happened to me in less than a month. I wasn’t responsible for either one of them, but they happened anyway…regardless of how normal my life was just before it happened.”

Sully pushed his chair back from the table. “Come sit,” he said and patted his leg.

Melissa got up and plopped back down on his lap. When he put his arms around her, she leaned against him and sighed.

“Here’s the deal, honey. I learned a long time ago not to question what happens because most of the time it’s out of our control. What I had to come to terms with was how to get through it. What lesson was I supposed to take away from coming out on the other side? I think you’re looking at your life right now, trying to make sense of it from the viewpoint of the incidents. You’re missing the fact that you continue to get up afterward. You heal with faith. You persevere with the strength of a warrior, my love. When I looked over the edge of that road today and saw you clinging to that slope and how far down it was…and how far up you had to climb…I couldn’t believe you’d done it. And yet there you were.”