“A couple. I was a little too close once and had the soles of my shoes start to melt.”

“Oh hell, Marco…please tell me you’re serious about retiring,” David said.

“Yes, I’ve already given notice. I just have to finish up this last piece.”

“What else besides volcanic activity will be in the story?”

Marc popped a fry into his mouth and chewed before answering.

“Oh, fires and hurricanes, and some human-interest stuff to go along with each one. I’m actually going to Georgia after this to do some follow-up there. I have a couple of really amazing stills of a life-and-death rescue during a hurricane, and I want personal interviews with the people to back it up. I don’t know if one of the victims who was in a photo even survived.”

“What are you going to do afterward?” David asked.

“Oh, that’s easy. I have a life’s worth of photos that have yet to see the light of day. If I want, I can do coffee-table books forever. But what I really want to do is find the little out-of-the-way places in this country and get human-interest stories there.”

David reached across the table and took one of Marc’s fries, dunked it in Marc’s ketchup, and popped it in his mouth, then saw the irked look on his brother’s face.

“What? Mine are gone. You were letting yours get cold. I didn’t want that one to go to waste.”

Marc laughed. “If you only knew how many cold leftover meals I’ve eaten in my life.”

“Besides having to outrun fires and volcanoes, is that how you’ve stayed so thin?”

Marc shrugged. “Maybe. Getting the crap scared out of you can ruin an appetite.”

They laughed and talked their way through the rest of the meal, then finally headed back to David’s house.

“Rest for a while if you want,” David said. “I’m going to check in with Linda and see if they need us to bring anything.”

“I think I’ll stretch out on the bed and watch a little television. Just let me know when it’s time to get ready,” Marc said.

A couple of hours later, Marc was up and shaving, his mind on the family he knew he was going to see and wishing it wasn’t for such a sad reason. Even though his uncle Wayne was no longer suffering, his presence would definitely be missed.

This time when they left David’s house, Marc was driving, and as they wound their way through the city he couldn’t help but remember when he’d lived here.

“Hey, David. Remember the day we came home from school and Mom and Dad sat us down and told us we were moving?”

“Oh yeah. I cried, and you hit the ceiling. I didn’t want to leave my friends, and you didn’t want to leave that girl… What was her name?”

“Janie Chapman,” Marc said. “We’d spent the entire year together, and just as we were getting ready to go back to school, I had to tell her we were moving. Broke both our hearts.”