Heartbroken (40 page)

“It’s okay,” said Kate. “We’re okay.”

The feel of Chelsea in her arms melted away all her panic and tension. There was a physical release in her shoulders and her chest, a lightening of her breath. All she wanted to do was get them out of this horror show. That was just what they were going to do. They were going to get on that boat, and she was going to take them away from this place. She pulled the girls along.

It was when they were outside the bunkhouse that they saw the first lick of flames through the trees. The smell of smoke was strong, the wind carrying it north toward them. They all stood there staring, disbelieving. A moment of unreality settled over Kate; she heard Chelsea start to cry again. Then Birdie joined them, silently coming to stand beside them.

“Oh my God,” said Lulu. “It’s burning.”

It seemed to Kate that she had been here before, watching the flames rise from the trees, listening to the girls crying, feeling Birdie steady herself against Kate’s shoulder.

Kate knew there wasn’t time for tears. She was surprised to feel
nothing for the house or anything inside it. Everything that was important to her was right beside her or, mercifully, out of harm’s way. She found she couldn’t care less if the whole island turned to dust as long as she’d gotten them safely off before it did.

B
irdie could tell that the main house was on fire. Though the rain had slowed to an almost imperceptible drizzle, the trees on the island were saturated with moisture, so maybe the damage would be contained. When she was a girl, her family had watched a fire rage on a neighbor’s island. Even though the season had been wet, the house was consumed. The fireboats arrived too late, and when the fire had burned out, the trees were nothing but black lines against the sky. The structure disintegrated; only the charred skeleton remained. It had always been her worst nightmare, a fire on the island.

Somehow she’d known that Joe would manage to take even the island from her. Watching the fire through the trees, she almost could have predicted it. The three girls stared, the glow reflected in their eyes. Birdie had a wave of déjà vu—the three of them staring in horror into the distance.

Hadn’t Caroline claimed there was a fire once, the original shack owned by her mother’s uncle that burned after being struck by lightning? Birdie had never really listened to her sister, who always seemed like she was speaking a different language, always looking for beauty and meaning where there was only the cold, dull ordinary. Caroline would have liked that the island—well, the new house that Joe built—was burning. Even Birdie could see that there was a kind of poetry to it.

“Mom,” said Kate. Her voice was strained with fear. “We can’t get back to the dock that way.”

It was true. Even if the fire hadn’t spread to the trees, which it may have, the smoke could overcome them. Or it might have spread
far enough to block their way to the dock. If that were the case, they couldn’t escape that way, either.

“No,” said Birdie. “You’ll have to swim around the perimeter.”

Kate looked out into the blackness. On her daughter’s face, Birdie read the fear she’d always seen when her child looked at the water. But this time some mettle Birdie hadn’t known Kate possessed settled into her features. Birdie wondered if they were so different after all. Kate had Caroline’s beauty and Joe’s expansiveness, but she had Birdie’s strength. Why hadn’t she seen it before?

“Good girl,” she said. She reached out to touch Kate’s cheek. “Get the children to the boat.”

Kate’s brow wrinkled into a worried frown. “What are you going to do? You’re coming with us.”

“No,” said Birdie. She looked back at the house. “I have to try to put out the fire.”

“Mom,” said Kate. Her eyes followed Birdie’s gaze. It looked bad enough that no sane would person would consider moving in that direction. Fire demanded that you go the other way. “No.”

“Please,” Birdie said. A sob in her chest surprised her, but she choked it back. “It’s all I have. This place.”

“You have
us
, Grandma,” said Chelsea. “You have your family.”

The look on her granddaughter’s face, bewildered and sad, almost moved her to go with them. Lulu was already walking toward the water. The girl was a survivor, at least. The other two would go down trying to save people who didn’t want to be saved.

“I’ll meet you at the boat,” Birdie said. “I promise. I have to see if there’s anything I can do to save the house.”

She tried for a smile, though she was sure it didn’t come off that way. Anyway, it was a lie. She wouldn’t meet them at the boat. She wouldn’t try to put out the fire, either. It was too late; she could see that. What did she plan to do, then? She honestly didn’t know. She just knew she couldn’t leave, not like this.

“Don’t do it,” said Kate. There was pleading in her tone that
Birdie wasn’t sure she’d ever heard. She tried to hand the gun to Kate, but Kate pushed it back; she handed the flashlight over as well. “They’ll both be ruined in the water. We’ll take our chances. If we can’t get to the boat, we’ll swim to Cross Island.”

The water was frigid. They’d have to swim fast and hard. And Kate had never been a strong swimmer; plus, she was badly injured.

“The key is in the ignition,” said Birdie. “You’ll have to move fast.”

Kate had that look again, the one that Birdie was sure she reserved for her mother. Her expression managed anger, sadness, and bafflement, as if Birdie were impossible for her to fathom. But that was all. There were no more words of protest or argument. Kate had learned long ago—she must have—that there was no arguing with Birdie once she’d made up her mind. Kate started pulling Chelsea toward the water.

“Grandma!”

“Chelsea, let’s go.”

“We can’t just leave her.”
The girl was shrieking, and it broke Birdie’s heart.

She heard Kate’s tone, soothing and measured. But she didn’t hear her daughter’s words, because Birdie was already walking away from them toward the main house. A captain didn’t leave his ship just because it was sinking. Birdie wouldn’t leave Heart Island—not to fire, not to intruders, not for any reason except her own.

chapter thirty-four

“M
om,” begged Chelsea. “
Please
go after her.”

Kate stripped off her jacket and shoes, then pulled off Chelsea’s coat. The heavy outer layers would drag them down in the water. Her daughter was sobbing, and the sound of it was causing Kate physical pain.

“I can’t, Chelsea,” she said. She put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “Not yet. When you and Lulu are safe, I’ll go back for her. I promise.”

How could she explain to her daughter that in the choice between whose lives to save, her children would come before anyone, including Sean, including herself? No one but a mother could ever understand. Kate wouldn’t—she couldn’t—risk herself for Birdie, not unless she knew Chelsea was safe. Her children needed her. Her mother, clearly, did not.

“She’ll
die
.”

Chelsea sounded like she had as a little girl, her sadness so total, so despairing and innocent. Kate thought of a moment a lifetime ago when Chelsea had carried a dead fish from the shore and set it into the ocean. “I’m giving it back to the universe,” she had said in a sweet mimic of something Kate had once said to her. She stood up, looking despondent. “I don’t like it when any creature gets dead.”

“No,” said Kate now. She couldn’t allow herself to believe that. The water felt frigid to her feet as she inched toward it, pulling Chelsea
with her. “She won’t die. There’s nothing and no one tougher than Birdie.”

“Chelsea,
come on
,” said Lulu. She was sobbing, shivering in the cold. She had her hands on Chelsea, too. They were pulling her toward the water while she looked back after Birdie. “She wants to stay on this island. Let her.”

Finally, the girl relented and came of her own volition. Lulu shrieked as she forced herself into the water. Kate, too, felt the painful shock of cold against her skin, tried to ignore the fact that the blackness seemed to stretch into eternity. She knew how that could take you down, how heavy it was, how total was its darkness. She forced those thoughts out of her mind.

“Swim as fast as you can, as hard as you can,” she said. “Don’t look back for me. I’m right behind you. If there’s fire on the dock, or if you see anyone there when you round the island, swim across the channel.”

It would be best if they could get to the boat. If they couldn’t, they’d have to try to get across. The water was rough but, luckily, somewhat sheltered in the channel between the two bodies of land.

Kate had always found that in caring for her children, anything that she was afraid of, or any shortfall she had, simply became irrelevant. She would be what she had to be, do what she had to do, to get them through any crisis, large or small. Adrenaline held all the pain in her head and body at bay. She hardly noticed that she was being tossed by the water, taking in huge gulps as the waves hit her. She ignored the heavy fatigue settling in her limbs.

She watched the two bobbing heads of the girls as she kicked and stroked with all her strength. The water was likely around sixty degrees; it wouldn’t take much longer then ten minutes for their core temperature to start dropping.

She could see the flames topping the trees, and she was almost overcome by fear and sadness. The orange of the fire glowed on the
black water. The moon was white and high, the cloud cover clearing. A million stars winked, oblivious. She kept her eyes on Chelsea and Lulu. The dock wasn’t far; she could see it now. It was empty, free from flames. The cuddy bucked and bounced, waiting for them. She almost yelled out at the sight of it.

It was then that Lulu started to struggle. Kate saw her head go under, then come up, then disappear again.

“Mom!” She heard Chelsea’s voice, panicked and faint on the air.

Pure adrenaline allowed Kate to double her speed and come upon them quickly. Chelsea was trying to hold on to Lulu, who had stopped moving. She wasn’t unconscious, but her eyes had a glassy stare, and she was coughing up water.

“Stay with us, Lulu,” Kate said. “We’re almost there.” She took the girl, turned her, and held an arm under her neck, keeping her face out of the water as best she could.

“Swim,” she yelled to Chelsea. “Swim.”

L
ife’s not so precious
, Birdie was thinking as she watched the flames eat the main house from the inside. Everyone always seemed so convinced that it was. Maybe it seemed precious to people like Caroline, who were prone to magical thinking and believed that every moment was a
gift
and that we were all part of some
spiritual net
, our actions affecting every other soul on the grid. For Birdie, the world was rock-hard. What you saw was what you got. And she truly believed that when the time came for lights-out, there was nothing. No heavenly light. No “other side.” Just the end. Why was that such a bad thing? Who would know the difference? When she would say this to people, notably her husband, they would look at her blankly, as though the thought had never occurred to them.

She’d pulled the collar of her turtleneck up over her nose. Even so, she could taste the smoke at the back of her throat. She’d never
liked the main house, not really. It belonged to Joe; it was a monument to his gigantic ego. It was right that it should burn, that its burning should be the direct consequence of his philandering, his myriad infidelities.

There were fire buckets near the well, a manual pump that would operate even when the generator was down. Inside the house, there were fire extinguishers in every room. All of this assumed that you were there when the fire started, that you could keep a cool head and act quickly. Even if she ran to the well and ran back with two buckets, which was reasonably all she could carry, it wouldn’t matter.

She saw the lights of the police boat approaching. It must have taken them this long because of the weather. Though the rain had ceased, the water was rough, the winds high. They would radio for help from the fire department, but they would be too late to save the main house. Perhaps the other structures could be salvaged.

She found herself running up the stairs of the front porch. The photo album lay on the dining table. It was all she had left of her childhood, the only photos of her parents, of her siblings. Gene and Birdie hadn’t talked in over a decade. He was dead to her and she to him. Still, she didn’t want to lose the last remnant of her childhood, even if her parents did have a sham marriage.

The screen door was hot to the touch, but she pulled it open and walked inside. Flames climbed up the drapes on the far wall, were already licking at the landing of the loft. The house was groaning, picture frames cracking and popping in the heat. She saw the album on the table. And then she saw the girl on the floor.

She grabbed the album and clutched it to her chest. Her eyes were watering, and she started coughing from the smoke. She could see that there wasn’t much time, how quickly she might be overcome. The portrait over the fireplace, a younger Joe and Birdie standing stiffly together on the dock, began to burn.

I love them
, he’d wept to her a lifetime ago.
Martha’s a woman
,
a real woman. There’s blood running through her veins. She laughs, she cries, she doesn’t stiffen at my touch. Christ, Birdie, I wanted to love you like that
.

How she had hated him at that moment. Every breathless moment of love between them—there had been those, hadn’t there?—was a distant memory. She couldn’t remember what it felt like to want him. How she had wished he would leave her and never come back. But no, she couldn’t have allowed it. She couldn’t allow the shame, the disgrace. The very idea that he’d leave her for a shopgirl, someone who worked in a boutique, was intolerable.

And what are you? The fucking aristocracy?
he’d wanted to know.
What did you come from?

She’d come from more and better than he had. All the wealth belonged to Birdie; the real money was hers, inherited from her father’s real estate investments. Even in the split with Gene and Caroline, there had been millions, though she never would have known it when they were young.