The morning was too quiet for Jack Turner. For thirty years, the sound of trucks, alarms, and metal tools had filled his days, but now there was nothing except the hum of his refrigerator and the ticking of the old clock above the kitchen counter. He sat by the window with his coffee, watching a thin line of smoke rise from the neighbor’s chimney, and thought about how strange it felt to have nowhere to be.

He had signed the final papers the day before, closing Turner Fire Safety Systems for good. The business had started with one van, two extinguishers, and a stack of handwritten receipts. Over the years, it grew into a small team that served half the county. They installed alarms, checked sprinklers, and saved more than one building from going up in flames. Jack used to joke that his work was to stop fire from being born. Now, at sixty-four, he felt like a man who had been living beside the flame for too long and suddenly stepped into the cold.

His daughter, Claire, had called last night from Denver. She congratulated him, said he deserved rest. She also asked the question he dreaded most—what now, Dad? Jack had laughed and said maybe he’d fix the garage door or repaint the porch. But when the call ended, the silence in the house grew thick again.

He opened an old photo album from the firehouse days. There were pictures of him and his crew, young and proud, covered in soot after a night call. He stopped at a photo of himself standing beside his first truck. Behind him, the dawn was pale orange, smoke curling like ribbons. He could almost smell the mix of gasoline and ash. Back then, every day had a reason.

Now, he wasn’t sure what reason meant anymore.

At noon, he drove into town. The wind carried a late-winter chill, sharp enough to make his fingers ache. He stopped by the small diner near the old station, the one that still had his photo framed near the register. The waitress, Nancy, smiled when she saw him.

“So it’s real,” she said. “You finally retired.”

Jack nodded. “Guess so.”

“You’re the last one from the old crew,” she said. “Feels strange without your truck driving by every morning.”

“Strange for me too,” he said, stirring his coffee without drinking it.

They talked for a while about local news, about how the city was replacing the old hydrants, about how Nancy’s grandson had joined the volunteer fire department. Jack listened, smiling, but part of him was far away. He wondered if maybe he had stayed too long in one place.

Back home, the afternoon light fell through the blinds like narrow bars. He went to the garage and looked at the red toolbox he had kept since his first job. Inside, everything was neatly arranged—wrenches, nozzles, a faded company badge. He touched the metal and felt something tighten in his chest.

That night, he sat in front of the TV, flipping through channels. A travel documentary caught his eye. The host stood in a white landscape where the sky shimmered with green and purple waves. The Northern Lights, the narrator said. Jack leaned forward. The screen showed silent snow, then people staring upward, their faces glowing in the reflected light.

He had seen a lot of things—fires that swallowed roofs, storms that knocked power lines, cities waking before dawn. But he had never seen that kind of light. Something pure, something alive.

The program ended, but he couldn’t turn off the TV. He imagined himself standing there, the cold biting his cheeks, the sky moving above him like water. It was ridiculous, he thought. He was too old, too slow, too settled.

Yet when he went to bed, the image stayed behind his eyelids. The green waves moving quietly through the dark. He dreamed of snow under his boots, of air so cold it burned like memory.

When he woke, the house was still. He walked to the window. Outside, the world looked ordinary—the same street, the same cars, the same gray light. But inside him, something had shifted.

He didn’t know what it was yet, only that for the first time since he locked his workshop door, he felt a spark.

And that small, almost forgotten warmth would soon lead him north.