CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Tenleigh
I went back to the trailer later that evening, exhausted and dusty. I still hadn't wrapped my mind around what Shelly had told me. Initially, I had been unable to help the low current of joy and relief that had flowed through my body. But now . . . now I was angry and hurt again. If he hadn't really gotten Shelly pregnant, if he hadn't even slept with her, why would he hurt me like that? He had shattered me, obliterated me—my heart, my trust. It had taken me years to get over what he'd done to me—truth be told, I still wasn't completely over it. And why? Just so I'd take the scholarship and leave? Just because I'd suggested I'd give it all up for him? Was that why he'd done that to me? Did he really want me to get out of town that badly? Was he that worried I'd attempt to make a life with him here in Dennville, Kentucky rather than take the opportunity I'd been given? Clearly, what he'd done had worked. I'd practically left town the day he'd broken my heart. Could I forgive him for that part of it? For the pain that still lived just below my skin at the betrayal . . . the betrayal that didn't even exist? And if it didn't exist, then why did it still hurt? Because he'd wanted me to go—he hadn't loved me enough to try anything to come with me.
I got in the small, cracking, plastic shower and attempted to cleanse the day away. Then I put on a nightshirt and settled myself on the couch. I didn't think I'd be able to sleep, but I must have been even more tired than I thought because I was asleep in minutes.
The next thing I knew, I heard yelling outside my trailer. I bolted up, trying to orient myself. The trailer was utterly dark, but outside something glowed brightly and I smelled smoke. Oh God! Something was on fire. I flung the door to the trailer open and looked around wildly. There was a fire blazing in the front part of the trailer across the road where Ginny Neil lived with her two kids. I ran out the door to join the other people standing in the road in front of the trailer.
"Did someone call the fire department?" I yelled. "Is everyone out?"
"Said they were on their way!" someone answered. Holy shit, this was the worst nightmare for folks like us who lived up in the mountains. The roads were narrow and steep and the nearest fire department was eight miles away. A shack or a small trailer could burn down in a fourth of the time it'd take for them to get here.
"MaryJane! Where's MaryJane?" I heard a woman shriek.
MaryJane? My mind scrambled to place MaryJane, but I couldn't.
I saw Buster standing among the others and ran over to him. "Buster, who's MaryJane?" I called.
"Little two-year-old girl belongs to Ginny Neil and Billy Wilkes," he answered, pointing over to them, his eyes widening. "She's out, right?"
I looked around wildly, my eyes landing on Kyland as he ran up to the group, breathing hard. "Is everyone out safe?" he asked over the voices of the crowd, as shouts for MaryJane started to fill the air.
"Kyland, there might be a two-year-old girl in there," I yelled, racing over to him.
Billy Wilkes started back toward the fire, but Billy Wilkes was on crutches, lord knew why. Kyland ran behind him. They conversed briefly as they moved toward the smoky trailer, flames licking out the front.
My heart raced and I brought my hands up to cover my mouth as Kyland flung the door open and smoke poured out. He and Billy both leaned back and Kyland took off his sweatshirt and put it over his mouth while Billy pulled his T-shirt up over his face. Kyland disappeared inside, Billy standing vigil by the door. I could see him shouting inside, but I couldn't hear what he was saying over the loud roar of the flames and the peoples’ voices next to me.
Impossibly, my heart started pounding even harder. I moved back with my distressed neighbors as the smoke in the air became thicker. Time seemed to stand still as I imagined what was going on in that trailer. The flames seemed only to be in the front where the kitchen was, but the smoke was so thick in the rest of it. Could anyone survive in that? And for how long? Ky.
I gripped my fists tightly down by my sides, helpless to do anything other than pray.
Suddenly, a figure came bursting through the smoke, holding something large and covered in a blanket. I sucked in a huge smoky breath and moved forward. It was Kyland. Billy Wilkes hurried beside him as fast as he could move on crutches and when they were a safe distance away, Kyland handed the blanketed item over to Billy and bent over, heaving in big gulps of air and coughing. The blanket in Billy's arms fell back to expose a small blonde head.
Billy laid his daughter down on the grass and went down on his knees beside her. We all rushed forward.
"Is she breathing," her mother sobbed, kneeling down on the grass beside her.
"Someone go get some water!" I yelled, and Buster answered, "Be right back!"
"She has a heartbeat," someone else said. "I think she's breathing."
The next few minutes were a frenzy of her parents crying, Buster returning with water and washing her face of the soot, and people yelling.
Finally, finally, we heard a siren coming up the mountain. A few minutes later when the fire trucks got there, they were able to put the fire out with a large extinguisher. It was mostly contained to the front of the trailer, but with the smoke damage, the trailer was ruined. Every possession that family had was gone—and I knew better than anyone that they hadn't had much to start with. Now they had nothing. Despair filled me, for them, for all of us. I sucked back a sob, feeling like I might shatter at any second.
They loaded MaryJane into an ambulance. She was breathing and crying, which had to be a good sign. Apparently, from what I could gather of the conversations, she'd been sleeping in the back of the trailer and each parent thought the other had gotten her. In the fear and mayhem of Billy trying to put the fire out in the kitchen and both of them getting the other two children up and out, little MaryJane had been left behind. I hadn't even known Ginny was living with Billy Wilkes or that they had a little girl between them. Ginny's husband had been one of the men who died at the mine eight years before. I was glad to know she'd found some happiness. And now this. Suddenly, I felt badly for not getting more updates on what was happening on the mountain from Marlo while I'd been away. But it had just been less painful not to talk about home at all.
I stuck around while everyone discussed what they had to offer the family when they came back from the hospital. Cora Levin was going to take the two older children in and Cheryl Skaggs had room for the parents and little MaryJane.
Standing there listening to everyone band together made my heart squeeze. These people, as destitute as they were, had always attempted to help their own if they knew they needed assistance of some kind. They were good people—good people who barely had a pot to piss in. And yet they were offering up anything they had to give.
"I have a little money in the bank," I said. "I'll go into town in the morning and buy the kids some clothes."
They all nodded. "Thanks, Tenleigh."
I looked over at Kyland and he was focused on me, only me. I couldn't think about him right now. I couldn't think anymore about the lie he'd told me. I didn't have the strength.
I turned around and walked back to my trailer. When I was a few hundred yards away, the emotion came full-force and I wanted to fall to my knees. I stumbled. The emotion came for all the pain and hardship these people had to endure, some their entire lives. It came for the family who had just lost every single possession they owned—the ones who would struggle to replace even a few of those items. It came for the way it hurt to be back here . . . and the way it felt so right at the same time. I was weary, so very weary. And yet a release felt just out of reach. I'd held it back for so long. I didn't know how to access it now.
I sat down on my front steps and put my head in my hands. No one could see me from here.
"Hey." I startled and looked to the side to see Kyland standing there with his hands stuffed in his pockets.
"Hey," I said quietly. I was sure I looked like a complete and utter mess. But Kyland looked pretty bad, too—soot on his face, his shirt torn and dirty. He looked kinda like a man who had just run into a burning trailer to save a little girl.
I scooted over on the step and tilted my head toward the space I'd just made. He looked briefly shocked, but then moved immediately toward me and sat down, our bodies close. I could feel his warmth. I remembered his warmth so well, the way it'd felt at my back in the middle of the night, the way it'd surrounded me.
I turned toward him and leaned back against the rickety handrail. "That was brave, what you did."
He shook his head. "Those people, they would have done it for me, too."
"Yeah," I said. "They would have."