Killer's Cousin (20 page)

I felt I could go on forever. I thought about jumping the fence and taking the pretty two-mile route around the pond, but even in my current mood, it was more than I wanted to risk in the dark. Instead, somehow, without any conscious thought, I found myself on Mass. Ave. heading straight north, toward home. No. Not home. The Shaughnessy house. I should have turned around, headed back toward the river and the Hyatt and my father.

I should have turned around.

But I didn't. I
couldn't
. I could not turn back. Instead, as if my body were in thrall to someone else's will, I
kept going up Mass. Ave. And my feet were pounding to a rhythm I knew very well. Faster and faster. Faster than I had ever run before.
Lilyhelplilyhelplily
.

I saw the reddening of the sky ahead, and I heard the sirens. And it wasn't just Kathy's will anymore; it was my own. Somewhere deep in my lungs I found a small reservoir of pure oxygenated air, which had been fighting to erupt from my throat in a scream. I forced it down and used it, grimly, to speed up, to race harder, faster. A quarter mile remained; an eighth. A few hundred yards. Another fire truck streaked by me; people spilled out of their houses in bathrobes, slippers, coats. And the whole endless time the scream stayed in my throat, and pounded in my temples, bulged from my eyes.

Crowds of people. I pushed past them frantically, trying to get close to the house, trying to see better against the glare that lit up the sky.

The entire top floor—the attic apartment—was ablaze. The fire must have started there. Below, the air was clogged with smoke. I pushed forward, looking around frantically. Somehow I got to the front of the crowd, to the fire engines, the heavily coated men with their hats and hoses, their ladders. One ladder was just being pulled away from the house. Two firefighters were aiming a hose.

Another got in my way; pushed me back. He snarled something in my face. I ignored him; searched the crowd. “I live here,” I snarled back at him. I called, “Vic! Julia! Raina!” I yelled, “Lily!”

I screamed,
“Lily!”

Ahead of me I saw Julia, draped in a man's coat. Her
cheekbones jutted out against the red sky, her gray hair frizzed around her head. She was staring at the house, shaking, her arms clasped about her. She moved, and I saw that Vic was beside her. I even saw Raina, a little distance away. She had two canvases with her, held upright by her arm.

“Where's Lily?” I shouted at the firefighter. “Where's the little girl?”

“She's around here somewhere,” he answered. “Now, get back! It's dangerous here!”

Kathy had gone. The pulse in my head was gone. I stared at the fire, terrified. Because I
knew
the firefighter was wrong. Lily was still in the house. The burning house.

I knew exactly where Lily was, and what she was doing, and even why. I also understood, finally, why I had come there, and what I must do.
Help Lily
.

I shouted aloud to Kathy above the roar of the fire:

“Yes. I will.”

I
sprinted for the house. I heard somebody shout, felt a grab at me that failed. Behind me as I reached the front porch, I heard more yells, but I knew no one could stop me, no one would pursue me—not even the firefighters. It was too dangerous. I pounded up the stairs to the second-floor landing, into Julia and Vic's apartment.

The heat hit me like a brick wall. I gasped, and nearly choked on smoke. I grabbed the hem of my sweatshirt and pulled it up over my nose and mouth. It reeked of sweat. I raced down the hall and through the living room, and nearly crashed into the door to the third-floor apartment. Behind my hand, behind the door, I could feel even more intense heat. I could hear the crackle of flames.

My heart felt like it would jump from my chest. My lungs ached. I pulled at the knob. The door was unlocked, but Lily had secured it on the inside—with the
chain I had so recently, so carefully, installed. I thought wildly about running at the door and shouldering it down. But the hinges were on my side; it wouldn't have worked.

There were only two hinges. I reached for the top one and snatched my hand back. Painted metal. Hot.

I pulled my sweatshirt completely off and used it to protect my fingers as I unscrewed the top hinge from its casing. Thank God Vic took good care of the house; the hinge was well oiled and unfastened easily.

I didn't bother to unscrew the lower hinge; I grabbed the higher one and pulled, until the door parted from the frame and I could get my fingers around the door itself. Then I brought my weight down, down against the bottom hinge.

The hinge ripped away from the frame. The door crashed open. I ducked out of the way. Heat descended in a rush from above; a fierce roar pounded at me.

Before me was the old steep wooden staircase. Smoke roiled down the passage and enveloped me. I coughed. I shoved the sweatshirt over my face again and breathed in the stink of my own sweat and fear. I knew this place; I didn't need to see. I ran up, directly into the smoke and haze. The snap of the fire filled my ears.

I reached the attic. I pulled the shirt away from my eyes.

The walls and the windows at the front and back of the apartment were thoroughly engulfed; the roof was half gone, open to the night. But the side of the attic was still whole, though the flames were eating their way across the floor.

Still holding my shirt over my mouth, I made my way to the bathroom. And there I found Lily exactly where I knew she'd be—lying down in the tub, faceup, immersed in water.

Only her nose was above the water line. She was holding herself entirely rigid, but her chest lifted with her breath. She was alive. She was waiting. For Kathy?

For me?

Her head lifted and her eyes flew open. She raised her head farther out of the water and began to scream.

“Get out! Get away! Leave me alone!”

I fell to my knees and hauled her out of the water and into my arms. It was like the torture-museum dream. I could barely breathe. My eyes smarted from the smoke. The skin of my bare back felt as if it was melting. For an instant I put my face against Lily's wet neck and breathed. I put my mouth up close to her ear.

“I'm taking you out of here!” I yelled.

“No! No! No!” She flailed frantically, trying to scramble back into the tub.

Lily was strong, but I was stronger and more desperate. We had very little time before the flames consumed that ancient staircase. With one hand I grabbed a big bath towel from the rack behind me and soaked it in the tub. Somehow I got it around my shoulders, around Lily. It was a good thing she was already wet. She yelled again and squirmed. “Shut up,” I told her. “Shut up and be still!”

She kicked viciously. I got up anyway, and staggered back into the living room.

In the few minutes I'd been with Lily in the bathroom, the fire had spread. It had formed a sheet of
flame over the entire front of the living room. The sheet had just reached, and covered, the open doorway to the stairs down. I couldn't see past it. The stairs—our only escape route—were surely only seconds from going up in flames.

In my arms I felt Lily turn. She saw the sheet of flame before us, and for an instant she stilled. Whimpered. Her arms tightened around me. “I have to die,” she said urgently. “I killed Kathy. And I meant to do it. I'm a murderer.”

“I know,” I said. For a bare instant our eyes met, hers now wide with astonishment and—something else. Something I didn't have time for. “But your punishment isn't to die. It's to live with it. Like me, Lily.”

Like me.

She gasped. “Hold on,” I said. I pulled the wet towel completely over her head. I'd lost my sweatshirt somewhere. I buried my own face in the towel for an instant and took a deep breath. Then, holding Lily tightly, I ran directly into the sheet of flame that blocked the stairs.

In the middle of fire, time changes; elongates, shortens. Pain is everywhere and nowhere, but there is no room for fear. Whoever conceived of hell as fire understood its nature.

But also didn't.

We passed through the fire, Lily and I. It took less than a second; it took forever. Then we were on the staircase that—God be praised—was not yet fully consumed. I felt one of the boards crumple beneath my foot, but our combined weight had already shifted on and down. Down.

Down.

I have no memory of running through the Shaughnessy living room, or the hall. I do not recall the other staircase, the one that took us safely to the ground and out of the building just as the entire third floor, and part of the second, collapsed behind us. I do not remember stumbling on the porch and tripping down the stoop onto the small front lawn. I never saw the firefighters, though I'm told they were ready for us with a fire blanket that they threw over my head and back—an act that probably saved my life, since my hair and back were aflame. I do not recall that first surge of breathable air in my lungs. I have no memory of throwing myself on the earth, of rolling, rolling blindly in that blanket, still holding Lily, still clutching Lily, still protecting Lily.

I remember only one thing. I remember that from the moment I pronounced her punishment and joined it with mine, Lily held me. She held me as we passed through that sheet of flame. She held me through that nightmare run through the house. She held me in the frozen winter air, as the Cambridge fire department extinguished what remained of the fire that had tried to destroy us. Through all of it, Lily held me, and I held Lily. Together, we survived.

We lived.

“
F
ace it,” I said with careful nonchalance to my parents from my hospital bed. It was three days later; I lay on my stomach in a private room while a lovely intravenous needle channeled painkillers through my system. “Fate never intended me to complete high school. Can't I just take the equivalency test?”

Frank Delgado laughed. He was pacing idly back and forth at the foot of my bed, his presence making the room feel even smaller. I was glad he was there.

“No, you can't,” said my mother, with a swift reproachful glance at Frank. Frank had shown up the day before, slipping past the security guard my father had hired to keep the reporters out.

I wanted to see Lily—desperately I wanted to see Lily—but that hadn't yet been permitted. I was biding my time. I hoped she knew I was thinking about her. I thought she did.

She was in the hospital too. Although she had not been physically harmed, there was no concealing the fact that she had set the fire, that she had run back in after seeing her parents and Raina to safety. She was classifiable now: a fire-setter. Suicidal. She was where I had always thought she should be: in the hands of trained psychiatrists.

At one time I'd have felt good about that, but I was no longer sure. I needed to see her. Talk to her.

But I had to wait.

My father was saying, “I've already arranged with Dr. Walpole for tutors. They'll bridge the next month, and then the doctors say you'll probably be ready to go back to St. Joan's.”

Oh, really?
I thought, diverted momentarily from thinking of Lily.
And just where am I going to live?
In the Hyatt where Vic and Julia were now staying? I doubted it. They had come by exactly once, thanked me stiffly and insincerely, and left.

I knew they blamed me for the loss of their house, their illusions, and—in a way—their second daughter. I knew they would not forgive me, ever.

A small hard voice in me said that I didn't forgive them, either.

My father's words penetrated. “We're still working on living arrangements for you, David, but we have something in mind. We need a couple more days.”

I stiffened, and then controlled myself. I didn't want a fight. But the thought of another parent-conceived living arrangement made me feel distinctly queasy.

“There's a spare room at my house,” said Frank idly. “My mom would be okay with it.”

I blinked, interested. I raised an eyebrow at my father, but my mother was looking at Frank in ill-concealed dismay. “Thank you,” she said hastily. “But as my husband says, we're working on something else.”

My mother was unsure about Frank. In particular, she didn't care for his solution to my hairstyling problem. I had let Frank loose with scissors and an electric razor that day. My parents had arrived later to find me just as bald as he was.

“It will all grow back, won't it?” my mother had asked urgently, unnecessarily. After all, my scalp had not burned, only my hair. It was my back that would need a skin graft.

“But it's not so bad, on the whole,” the specialist had said, changing the dressing. “You were very lucky, young man.”

I was lucky in another way, too. Nearly all the reporters had finally given up; moved on to other, more important, stories. But the day after the fire, there had been cover stories in all the local papers. The stories, my father told me, had featured still photos taken from a video that a neighbor shot. The video itself had made both the local and national news. I had seen none of it, and I didn't want to. I'd heard enough from the nurses, the doctors. Everybody seemed to think I was a hero. It was more pleasant than the previous year's tide of hate, but just as wrongheaded, just as misinformed.

I closed my eyes just for a moment. My mother noticed and leapt to rush everybody out of the room. I needed peace, she said. I needed to rest. They'd be back later.

I was tired. But even so I didn't much like being alone. I couldn't stop thinking, worrying, about Lily. I didn't want to. We weren't finished, Lily and I.

I wondered what Kathy would think about what had happened. I wondered if this was the kind of help for Lily she'd had in mind. I wondered what the psychiatrists would make of Lily, and she of them. I wondered and I worried.

The next morning I asked once more to see Lily, and once more my parents exchanged glances, and told me I would have to wait. I said then, bluntly, “Has Lily asked to see
me
?”