Mrs. Saint and the Defectives

She wanted to say, “I’m like a daughter!” or “I’m a close friend!” But she realized the absurdity of both claims. For the entire time she had lived next door, she had tried not to be a friend to Mrs. Saint, not to be anything close to a family member.

“Just tell me if they got everyone out!” she said, craning her neck to see around him.

“I’m sorry. I can’t give out any information—”

“Well, run around to the front, at least, and make sure they’ve checked the basement!” she said, shooing him. “And the master bedroom, and the guest room!”

“My orders are to check the perimeter, ma’am, and—”

She pointed to the radio on his belt. “Then call them!”

“They’re very capable responders, ma’am. They know how to check a building, and they don’t take their time at it. Now, I need to ask you again to leave the premises and return to your home.”

“But where will they go once the fire’s out?” she asked. “They can’t stay in there! They should come to my place. Can you tell them I’m up and waiting for them? They’ll need you to walk them with your flashlight. They’re elderly, and the ground is uneven.”

“Ma’am,” he said, waving her toward her house, “please.”

“Can you do that? Bring them over?” She took a conciliatory step backward, hoping her obedience would garner this favor from him.

He pushed the air with both hands to get her to continue moving backward, and he didn’t answer.

“Can you at least come over?” she asked. “When you’re finished? To let me know everyone’s okay?” She continued backward, still craning her head to try to see around him. “I’ll put coffee on,” she added.

“Afraid I can’t do that, ma’am. You’ll have to wait and hear from the family.”

“But her only family member was inside the house with her!”

He stopped and took a pen and pad from his breast pocket. “And what’s the name of that person?”

“Simone. The woman who lives there is Angeline St. Denis, and her sister is Simone . . . I don’t know her last name. But if you’d go over and check to see if they’re all out, you could ask yourself, and then you could just wave to me to let me know they’re fine.” She gave him a last pleading look, but he was busy closing his notebook and didn’t notice.

He returned his pad and pen to his pocket, and with an expression that showed he was losing patience and she was pushing her luck, he pointed again to the wooden fence and kept pointing until she turned and retreated.

“I need to check the rest of the perimeter, ma’am,” she heard him say behind her. “Please don’t come over here again until you’ve seen all the trucks are gone and the environment has been rendered safe.”

He must have lifted his flashlight then, because a lighted pathway appeared from the fence to the bungalow’s side door, and it remained until she stepped inside. Peering out the window, she watched him turn and walk toward the garage, checking over his shoulder every few steps to ensure she didn’t come back out.

Inside, Jesse and Patty were standing at the kitchen window, trying to figure out where the fire might have started, what rooms it had reached, and whether Mrs. Saint, Simone, and Frédéric had been injured trying to get out. A frantic Angel, aware that all was not right, raced circles around the kitchen, barking. Lola had come downstairs—whether under her own power or in her mother’s arms, Markie wasn’t sure—but miraculously, the girl was sleeping through it all, huddled under her blankets on the family room couch.

Jesse wanted to stand on the corner across from Mrs. Saint’s and watch with the other neighbors from a better vantage point, but Markie was against it. There was a difference between concern and gawking, she told him. Plus, she didn’t know what he might witness. It would be wonderful if he got there in time to watch Mrs. Saint, Simone, and Frédéric all walking out under their own power. But what if he saw something else?



Two hours later, Bruce appeared at the door. Patty and Markie were on the couch, Lola snuggled beside her mother, and Jesse and Angel lay together on the area rug. Everyone but the still-sleeping Lola jumped up when Bruce knocked. He stepped inside but wouldn’t take the spot on the couch Markie offered or the chair Jesse fetched from the dining room. Angel tried to lick Bruce’s hands, but he held them high, out of her reach.

It was clear he wasn’t in the mood.

“Jesse,” Markie said, nodding to the dog.

Jesse grabbed the animal by her collar and pulled her to the middle of the rug, making her lie down. He sat on the floor beside the dog and looked up at Bruce expectantly. Markie and Patty, back on the couch now, did the same.

Bruce shifted from one foot to the other and cleared his throat. He removed his ball cap, something Markie had never seen him do before, and ran a hand over his head. Gripping the cap between the fingers of both hands, he bent his head down, and as he began to speak, he watched his fingers as they worked to rotate the cap in circles as though it were a rosary, the words he was uttering a prayer.

Frédéric had called him, he said. From the hospital. The older man had been short of breath around eleven the night before, and because Mrs. Saint was already in bed asleep, Simone had insisted on driving him to the ER. The doctors wanted to keep him a few hours for observation, and he told Simone to go home without him, but she insisted on waiting. She was nodding off in a plastic chair when Frédéric’s phone, which Simone had offered to hang on to for him, rang: it was the battalion chief from the fire scene, calling in search of Mrs. Saint’s next of kin. Frédéric’s was the only number she had set on speed dial.

Bruce looked up from his cap, and Markie had time to see his eyes welling up and to feel her chest go cold before he bent his head down again.

“We lost her,” he cried, his voice breaking, and when he lifted his eyes from his cap again, they were overflowing.

“What?” Patty cried, leaping to her feet again. “No! That can’t be right! It was only a house fire!”

It was a nonsensical thing to say, of course, but Markie, who stood and put her arms around the sobbing Patty and whispered, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” knew what she meant. It had been more horror than they could bear for a night, watching the house burn, seeing the clouds of smoke surround it, the flashing lights and the running shadows and the first responders taking over the property. They had assumed that would be the most terrible part because the alternative, that it could get so much worse, had been too dreadful to consider.

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