“You done got that right,” Friday agrees, standing next to me. Her hair is in rollers, pinned tight to her head. The fire casts an orange glow on her skin, reflecting in the pools of her eyes. “Look like hell wasn’t satisfied with his body,” she says. “It done come and claimed your daddy’s house, too.”
I take a single step out onto the grass of the front lawn, my mouth hanging open, trying to figure out what could possibly have transpired in order that my childhood home is somehow on fire. And then I see the dark silhouette of someone standing in front of the place, a dark figure against the chaos and the light, and I know exactly what happened. Callan. Callan Cross happened.
I stumble across the cracked blacktop, my feet bare, Friday’s nightgown still billowing around me like a sail. The front gate clangs as it slams shut behind me and I step foot into the front yard for the first time in twelve years. Callan hears—his shoulder tense slightly at the ringing echo of metal that carries down the deserted street.
He doesn’t turn around, though. He continues staring into the flames, eyes locked on the open front door and the madness he’s created. “It had to happen,” he whispers. “You’re not angry.” He says this as a statement, just in case I was thinking about giving him grief. I don’t intend on it, however. I’m stunned as I stand beside him, looking up at the destruction taking place, devouring the building where I was tormented for so many years.
It’s raw and beautiful, savage and overwhelming all at once.
I can’t hold back my tears. Callan’s face is streaked with soot and his own tears. He looks like a wild animal. Distant. Lost. I ache from my very core—a radiating ache that burns me from the bottom of my stomach up to my heart, my throat, my hands, my legs, everywhere. I ache in my soul. It’s painful and freeing at the same time. God, I had no idea how free I could feel until this moment.
The house was never the problem. It was just the backdrop for the violence and the abuse. But now that it’s burning, groaning and splintering, falling apart, beams and walls tumbling down inside, it feels like I’m really and truly free. I have no idea how that could possibly be the case but it’s true.
I’m startled when Callan takes my hand in his. As I was tripping over here, legs not working properly, mind gripped in amazement, it occurred to me that Callan might have set the place on fire as an act of anger toward me. As a spiteful act of revenge, since the proceeds of the sale of the house was meant to come to me.
But no…I see when I turn and look up into his eyes that this had nothing to do with me. This was about grief, overcoming pain. Taking back control.
“I should have done this,” I whisper. “I should have done this a long time ago.”
“You couldn’t have,” Callan says. His hand tightens around mine ever so slightly, and then he pulls me closer so he can wrap his arm around my shoulder. “You were raised in violence, but your soul doesn’t crave it, bluebird. Despite everything, you’re still gentle inside. You’re still you.”
How can he see me that way? How can he see any part of me as gentle? It makes no sense. I cry harder, turning so I can bury my face into his smoke filled shirt. I can smell gasoline on him, the chemical bite of the accelerant clinging to his clothes almost as fiercely as I now cling to him. He runs his hand over my hair over and over again mechanically as he watches the house burn.
“I’m meant to go back to New York tomorrow,” he says quietly.
“Are you going to go?” Dear god, I hope he’s not. I don’t want him to leave now. He can’t. Thankfully, Callan shakes his head.
“No. No, I’m not going anywhere, bluebird. I’m staying right here and we’re fixing things. And when we go, we go together. It can’t be any other way. I won’t allow it.”
For once I don’t argue with him. He’s right; it can’t be any other way. There is no other way now. It has to be me and him. Me and him always, the way it was meant to be before the world ended.
Callan and I stand there and watch. After a while the sun starts to come up and the structure of the house fails. No one calls nine one one. By the time the fire trucks make an appearance, my old house has been razed to the ground and all trace of Malcolm Taylor is gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CORALIE
Goodbye Part II
NOW
The funeral takes place three days later.
I wear one of my mothers dresses—the black one I was planning on wearing the night Callan asked me to go to the house party with him. I remember thinking once upon a time that I wasn’t going to be able to fit into Mom’s clothes anymore, and that had made me immeasurably sad. However as I became a woman, my body leaned out, became lithe and compact, and when I opened up the boxes that Callan confessed he bullied out of Ezra, all of her things fit me perfectly.