The car is not on fire.
I know this like I know my name. My age. My social security number, and that I have brown eyes. I am certain of these facts, and yet I forget them. The black leather interior fades away. The divider between the driver and me is up, and I’m alone in the strange red glow that is coming off the instruments in the backseat. I blink harder and harder, and I know that I’m not crying. My eyes are just trying to wash away the smoke that isn’t there.
I bang my head back and slam my hands over my ears, but still I hear the cries.
“Grace, honey! No!”
“No.” I toss.
“No!” I yell.
“Grace,” my mother’s voice comes again. “Honey, run!”
“No. No. No.”
The limo’s windows are black, like mirrors in the night, but I can see through them into the small shop my mother ran back in America. Rows and rows of antiques and first-edition novels. Dusty and cramped.
A tinderbox.
That was the word the fire marshal had used.
So much old, dry wood. So many flammable things.
She never stood a chance. Not after the second-story balcony collapsed. Not once the fire moved into the walls.
“Grace, run!”
“No!” I yell.
I can hear the glass cracking. I can feel my fists begin to bleed. Oxygen crashes through the broken window and the fire booms, knocking me to the ground, burning my hair and my lungs.
“Stop!” I yell, clawing through space and time at the blaze that started three years ago and, in a way, never has gone out.
“Stop!” I yell and start to scream.
“Are you okay?”
I look up at the driver. The limo isn’t moving and the divider is down.
“You did yell for me to stop, didn’t you? You’ve got to lower the divider for me to hear you. Or press the intercom.”
“Yes. Yes. I want — I need —”
I don’t bother to finish. I just climb out of the car and start down the street, holding up the skirt of my puffy pink ball gown, the train cinched within my fists. Running.
My shoes are gone, forgotten in the floorboard of the car, and I feel the damp cobblestones through the pantyhose that cover my bare feet. Feeling is starting to return to my toes. They go from numb to cold to bleeding, but I just run faster.
Gas surges through the streetlights overhead, growing brighter, then dimmer, then brighter again. The flames flicker and I have to stop.
My breath is coming harder than it should. My dress is too tight and so, so heavy. My head is spinning, too. When I slam myself against a wall, the gasp that comes is too shallow, too quick. I need a paper bag to breathe into but all I have are acres and acres of fluffy pink fabric.
I close my eyes and tell myself that I will not have a panic attack. I will not let them find me. I will not say a word.
Overhead, the streetlight flickers and goes out and all breath fails me. I slide to the ground. It must have rained because the stones are damp. My dress will be not just ripped, but ruined. But breath is more important to me. All I can care about is trying not to die.
When I close my eyes I hear the gunshot. I see the small circle of blood that starts in the center of my mother’s chest. Just a drop of something dark — like she should have used a napkin. But it has already started to spread. She stumbles back, unsteady.
And then the balcony falls. The sound is so loud. There are so many sparks — so much dust and flame and damage.
“No!” I think I might yell.
And then the man is on the street. He looks at me with cold indifference. He smells like smoke. Soot and ash cling to his brown leather jacket.
I retreat backward, away from the growing heat of the blaze. I stare up at him.
“My mother,” I say. “She’s dying!” I scream.
But the man just looks at me. “She’s dead.”
And then he turns and walks away so slowly.
In the distance, there are sirens. Someone will have seen the smoke. The shop has a security alarm. People are coming to help, but the man is not here to save anyone, least of all me.
He stops when he reaches a dark sedan, turns and looks back at the burning building. The whole street is orange and red. I need no other light to make out the massive scar that covers the left side of his face. I swear that I will never forget that face as long as I live.
I swear that, someday, I will see that face again.