? ? ?
“Are you going to walk me home?” She stretched on her very tiptoes and kissed his chin. Outside, a drop of rain caught in the branch overhead, fell and landed on her scalp, and the wind whipped her hair all around their faces. “I mean, I’m leaving for the East Coast soon. You have only so many days left with me.”
“I. . . ,” he started, then shook his head, unable to say the words out loud, out in the open like this. He reached up and smoothed her hair behind her ear. “I can’t.”
“Whisper it,” she said. “So soft, so close only I can hear.”
Bending low, he pressed his lips right up against her ear. His words sounded like static, like air and the vibration of his voice deep in his throat: “I’m meeting with Hinkle today to talk about college.”
Delilah pulled away, looking up at the trees overhead—a new instinct. But the world stayed settled: The earth didn’t split open; the tree branches didn’t thrash out to separate them.
“Really?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Frowning, she asked, “It’s not too late?”
“It is for some, but he thinks we can swing something. My grades are pretty good.”
“Do you have my list? You’ll find something close?”
He nodded.
? ? ?
Delilah was so focused on the various scenarios—walking into a brick-and-ivy college building hand in hand with Gavin, setting up a home with him in a tiny apartment building, lying on a wide bed, her head on his chest and his voice rumbling against her as he talked for hours—that she failed to hear the fire.
Or maybe that wasn’t quite right. She heard it, but it sounded like crackling leaves and then a flock of birds and then, finally, a haze of gunshots overtaking the town. This was when Delilah looked up and saw the choking black smoke rising over the Hendersons’ house, which meant either their house was on fire. . . or hers was.
She took off in a sprint, her backpack bouncing heavily on her shoulders, slowing her progress. When she turned the corner, she pulled up short, crying out. It was her house on fire, flames flogging the back wall, looking as if it had started on the second floor and spread lower. The blaze didn’t yet reach the ground; it poured from her window like liquid and was only inches from snaring the broad oak in the backyard.
Sirens screamed behind her, and she was nearly knocked over by the force of the fire engines hurling past.
It was mayhem. Firemen everywhere, water and smoke clogging every inch of air. She could feel the soot on her face as the first blast from the hose lashed the house, could feel the water ricocheting back at her.
“Stand back!” A huge hand grasped her shoulder, guiding her behind the fire engine. She looked up into watery blue eyes, an enormous face with red stubble, a nose red from too much alcohol over the years, and breath smelling of nicotine and mint. “Is this your house?”
Delilah strained to look around him, to the house in the distance. “Yes.”
“Where are your parents?”
“I don’t. . .” She closed her eyes, swallowing to catch her thoughts and line them up into some sort of order. The smallest ones first: It’s Wednesday. Mom is volunteering at the library. Dad had a job interview in Emporia. They weren’t home. They were safe. And then the larger ones: How did the fire start, and why is it only my room? She had nothing in there to spark a fire—no curling iron or candles she could have left lit. Not even a night-light left plugged into the wall.
Delilah slapped a hand to her mouth, but a sob broke free, raw and sharp. “The money. Oh my God. All of the money we’ve saved.”