But why?
Hoping that some pieces of this mystery have escaped the flames, I use the ridiculously inadequate decorative shovel hanging on the hearth to scoop the ashes out of the fireplace and into a trash can. Maybe, just maybe, there are some intact bits of paper that will tell me a story.
There’s nothing, though.
By the time the fireplace is emptied, the hearth swept, the ashes dumped outside in the trash bin, my body is exhausted, but my brain is possessed by an almost frantic energy. I try to sit for a minute, but I can’t rest, and I move on to cleaning the rest of the house. I vacuum the carpet in the living room, scrub the kitchen floor clean of my mother’s blood, and dispose of her beloved cast iron frying pan, still holding what once might have been pork chops.
A call up to the hospital to check on my parents lets me know that Dad is sedated and sleeping. Mom is the same, no better, no worse. “Get some rest,” the nurse says. “You need to take care of yourself.”
I check in on Elle. She’s sprawled on her back, one arm above her head, palm open, the way she used to sleep when she was a baby. She stirs, as if she feels me watching her, but then settles back into her sleep. I’d had a thought of crawling into the bed beside her, but she has expanded into the entire space and I don’t want to wake her.
Which leaves me with a choice between the bed in my parents’ room and the couch. I’ve already stripped the bed, thrown my mother’s pillow in the trash, and put the laundry in the machine. But the thought of trying to sleep in the bed where she lay unconscious and maybe dying for three long days brings a bitter taste of nausea into the back of my throat.
Couch it is. I lie down and drop almost instantly into sleep.
Some noise startles me awake. I’ve been sweating. My clothes feel simultaneously stiff and clammy. My mouth tastes disgusting, and my lips are cemented together. When I pull them apart, a little piece of skin rips away, and I can taste the salt of blood when I touch the stinging spot with my sandpaper tongue.
It’s still light outside the living room window, but the shadows are long and slanted. Late evening, then. I should get up. Check on Elle. Have a shower. Try to scrounge up something for us to eat.
Disoriented and still only half awake, I sit up and swing my feet onto the floor. My right ankle brushes against something soft protruding from under the couch. I bend down to investigate and come up with my mother’s knitting bag.
Nothing fancy, just a soft fabric bag, faded by years and multiple washings to a dull, nondescript graying green. Surely some essence of my mother clings to it. She never could just sit, and all my memories of family movie night or entertaining visitors are infused with the soft click of her needles.
This, finally, is a talisman for the mother I know. The normal mother, who goes to church every Sunday and runs the PTA and organizes everything. Not the mother who has secret fractures of multiple bones, who tells my father to shred things and keeps a secret journal, who hides pink blankets in her closet.
But even the humble knitting bag goes all wrong. I hug it to my heart, wanting to bring her closer to me, and feel a dull weight swing against my ribs. Maybe a book, I tell myself. A lot of people carry a novel around with their knitting. Mom never did, but that’s the sort of habit that could easily change. Curious, I set the bag in my lap and feel my way past several skeins of yarn until my fingers run into something that is most definitely not a book.
Smooth. Cold. Metallic.
This can’t possibly be what I think it is. An odd-shaped flashlight, maybe. A novelty item.
But when I bring it up into the light, there is absolutely no doubt that I am holding a handgun.
It’s black. Sleek.
Lethal.
And completely incongruous.
Violence in any form was forbidden both in and out of our house. Even during my high school years, Mom banned me from watching thriller-type movies or TV cop shows. I snuck detective novels, even Agatha Christie, into the house under stacks of textbooks and hid them under my mattress, the way some kids hide cigarettes or porn. When I was fifteen, she grounded me from hanging out with my best friend for a month after we snuck into a theater to watch Pulp Fiction.
Now that I have Elle, I don’t blame Mom for the Pulp Fiction bit. I want to shelter my daughter from all the darkness in the world, in movies as well as in real life. The point is, I’ve never seen a gun in person. I’ve certainly never held or fired one. I don’t know if this specimen is loaded. What if Elle finds it? Elle wouldn’t play with a gun, surely, but there are those stories of people accidentally discharging guns. What if Dad finds it in a state of mental derangement and accidentally shoots somebody?
My heart is trying to beat a hole through my rib cage.
I sit there on the couch with the gun in my clammy hands, pointing the dangerous end away from me.
I can’t think what to do. I could put it away somewhere. Tuck it into the bottom of Mom’s cedar chest. The top shelf of the closet. But I can’t stop thinking about the crazy way Dad was tearing at the restraints in the hospital. I can’t stop the what if thought of Elle getting shot. I’ve seen enough movies to know I can’t just drop it into a shrubbery or something. A kid might find it. Or a criminal.
The phone number the fireman gave me is still crumpled in the pocket of my jeans. I pull it out and look at it. Tony Medina. I try to summon a memory of him from high school, but again come up blank. He seemed nice enough. If he’s lived in Colville all this time and works for the ambulance and fire department, surely he’s not a lunatic or a serial killer or something.
I haven’t stayed in contact with anybody from home, other than Greg. I don’t even know who might still live here, and I certainly don’t know who else I could call.
Before I have time to be frozen by my usual indecision, I grab my cell phone and try to dial.
The thing is dead. I’ve forgotten to charge it, despite Greg’s instructions. I stare at it, blankly, my thought processes about as active as slugs in a tub of salt.
Clearly I need to get my shit together before I’m functional enough to even call for help.
Very carefully, holding my breath in case the thing accidentally goes off, I tuck the gun into my purse. Taking purse and gun into the bathroom with me for safekeeping, I take a shower. Brush my teeth. Lubricate my eyes with eye drops.
Out of both ideas and excuses, I pick up my parents’ landline phone.
It’s 8:00 at night. I hope that’s not too late to call. Part of me—a big part—is hoping the call will go to voicemail. I’ll hang up. Maybe I’ll leave a message. Maybe I won’t.
“Hey, who’s this?” It’s a woman’s voice, and there’s a hint of laughter in it that negates the apparent rudeness of her greeting. There’s the sound of TV in the background. Voices, music.
Still. It’s a woman. I feel my face heating and know if I look in the mirror I’ll be red with shame. I’ve called a desirable man to help me, and he has a girlfriend. Or a wife. Of course he does. What was I thinking?
My thumb hovers over the End Call button, but her voice stops me. “Wait. Don’t hang up. Shit. I bet this is some sort of work call. You’re looking for Tony, right? I can get him. Especially if this is about work stuff. Do not hang up. I repeat, do not hang up your phone. I shall produce Tony momentarily. Wave of the wand and shazam!”
Shuffling, muted voices, and then a male voice comes on. I think it’s familiar, although I’m so upside down by now I can’t be sure. “Hello? If you have not yet fled to a galaxy far, far away, speak to me.”
“If this is a bad time . . .”
“This is a perfect time.”
“This is Maisey. From the fire that wasn’t.”
“I know who you are.”
“How on earth did you know?”
“I recognize your voice. How are your folks?”