There Was an Old Woman

Chapter Fifty-eight


Twice in a row Mina had fooled Dora, using a trick she’d learned from Annabelle, and transferred that horse pill from one hand to the other and then only pretended to put it in her mouth. Sure enough, her head had started to clear. Otherwise she’d have slept right through the sirens.

She’d gotten out of bed and felt her way past the familiar pieces of furniture. When she pushed aside the window shade, she’d seen a beacon of rotating red light and more lights flashing blue and white in the street below.

Now she stood at the window in Annabelle’s nightgown, her feet bare, her hands pressed to the glass. Fire was blazing across the street. It looked like someone had set a bonfire in Frank Cutler’s driveway. Dark figures—probably firefighters—were swarming the street.

Mina heard more shouting, but this time it sounded as if it was coming from right downstairs. The windowsill shook as what sounded like the front door slammed.

“Stop!” Dora’s voice. “You can’t go up there.”

“Get out of my house this instant!” It was a man. Not Brian.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Mina shrank into a corner of the room as the door slammed opened. A figure stepped into the room.

“Mrs. Yetner?” Mina recognized Evie’s tentative voice. “Mrs. Yetner! You’re here! Thank God, you’re all right. I thought . . . I thought . . .” The girl wrapped her arms around Mina, sobbing.

Mina hugged her back. The poor thing was trembling, and she smelled of smoke.

“What on earth are you doing here?” Evie asked.

“Where else would I be?”

“In your own house. That’s where I was afraid you were.”

“Isn’t that where I am?” But even as Mina said the words, she knew she was not. Ever since she’d run into the wall, trying to get back to bed from the top of the stairs, she’d felt as if she’d fallen down the rabbit hole and landed somewhere else—a place that was almost the same as her upstairs bedroom but not quite, a parallel universe the mirror image of her own.

“You’re across the street in Mr. Cutler’s house,” Evie said.

“But isn’t that my bed? And all my things? ”

After a pause, Evie said slowly, “It is. It looks like they moved everything—the furniture, the rugs, the bedding, plus everything you had in the closet. They even moved the woodwork. Except for the new bath of course, this is a perfect replica of your upstairs. And then they must have moved you.”

Mina shuddered at the thought that she’d been picked up, carried out of her own house and across the street, and installed there without being any the wiser.

“As long as you stayed in this room,” Evie went on, “as long as you didn’t have your glasses, you’d think you never left home. They left only one thing behind.”

Mina took the cane that Evie handed her. “I guess they didn’t think I’d need it any longer.”

“You almost didn’t.”

“Then—” Mina turned and pointed out the window where emergency lights flared and flames shot toward the sky. She felt as if she were about to collapse. But she pushed Evie away and steadied herself with her cane. “The fire. That’s not Mr. Cutler’s house burning. That must be my house.”

“I’m sorry,” Evie said. “I’m so sorry. By the time I got there, the paper and lumber alongside your house had caught fire.”

“What lumber?”

“From the construction. I thought they were building you a bathroom. But that lumber is probably the old woodwork from this room.”

Mina remembered the sound of band saws and drills she’d heard coming from Mr. Cutler’s second floor. He hadn’t been putting in a roof deck or a Jacuzzi. He’d been preparing the room for her. Those workmen hadn’t been putting a bathroom upstairs in her house. They’d been removing all the woodwork so they could install it across the street.

“Smoke and mirrors,” Mina said, the taste of the words bitter in her mouth. “Tell me, how many days ago did we talk about the Empire State Building fire?”

“Day before yesterday.”

The news went through Mina like a shot of adrenaline. She hadn’t lost an entire week, after all.

“Come on,” Mina said, exhaling and standing up straight. “Let’s get out of here.”