The doorbell rang, and Travis stopped laughing, because Captain Reyes was on the other side of it, and what I put in his hand at Station 14 that afternoon had already been read by people who do not laugh at cut bootlaces.
For years Travis got his version of me to Dad first, the kid who owed everybody, the one who lived in Dads house so he belonged to whoever needed something. This time Dad and the family had mine first, and mine came with the legal pad Captain Reyes told me to fill.
What Captain Reyes had me write down, once I sized up my own house the way we size up a building, was that Travis had been forging Dads signature on his checks for two years, draining the account my late mother left for Dads care, and that the money Travis kept asking for was money he was already stealing.
The thick envelope I gave Reyes held all of it. The checks with the forged signature. The account statements. The texts where Travis demanded money. Dated, backed up, and now in the hands of a captain with twenty-six years on the job who knew exactly who to hand it to next.
Travis cut my laces and my pull straps in front of his own crying kids and called me hero. He did not know the envelope was already delivered. His wife looked at him when the doorbell rang and asked what I was talking about, and Travis said nothing, because the truth had beaten his version to the door.
Dad finally set his fork down. He read what was in the copy I left on the table, the forged checks with his own name on them, and the man who kept eating while my brother destroyed my boots went very still.
I did not stay for it. I drove to a firehouse buddys place, and at six the next morning I ran the CPAT in my spare boots, the stair climb and the hose drag and the ladder raise, in full gear against the clock, and I passed every event.
I start the fire academy next month. The forgery is with the police now, and Travis is answering for two years of Dads stolen money on paper, where you will figure it out, hero does not help him.
Dad called me that night. He was not defending Travis. He was asking how he had not seen his own account being emptied. We went through it together, father and son, for the first time in years.
We look before we go in, Captain Reyes told me. I sized up my own house, wrote it all down, and handed it to someone who could act. And Travis stopped laughing before the doorbell finished ringing, because for once the truth walked in the front door first.