Silence (31 page)

He hoped they weren’t heading in the wrong direction. He couldn’t be certain. He didn’t have time to check; Longland would come to number twelve. Now if only number twelve weren’t lacking anything remotely useful behind which he could hide. If, he thought grimly, hiding would do any good at al.

Longland wasn’t alone. He wouldn’t feel the need to be that cautious.

There were no bushes here; no obvious cover, no neighbor’s yards, and no roof that he was certain would bear his weight, if he could climb that far up. Eric glanced at the boards nailed in a he could climb that far up. Eric glanced at the boards nailed in a large X across what remained of the doorframe. He grimaced and started to pul them off.

They splintered from the inside as he worked, and he jumped back, puling daggers. He got both a face and an ear ful of pissed off Chase for his troubles.

“Chase, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Same old, same old,” Chase replied, looking past Eric’s shoulder. “Someone moved the fucking ladders. Where were you going?”

“In.” Eric bit back every other angry comment he wanted to make, because, in the end, he was happier to have Chase than to stand alone. “They’re not here yet, and outside is a total bust.”

The hair on his neck started to rise, and he swore. “Scratch that,” he said, pushing Chase back into the house, and flattening himself against the wal with its shattered windows. “They’re here.”

Andrew’s hand wasn’t solid. But even insubstantial as it was, Emma could reach out and touch it. She did, and he alowed it.

The house is on fire, he told her, the last sylable stretching out as if it were about to birth a scream.

“Yes, I know.” She kept the words simple and forced them to be gentle. Here, she missed Michael, because Michael could have distracted—or better, calmed—Andrew.

I want my mom.

“I know. She’s here, somewhere. But it’s smoky and she’s lost. Let’s go find her.”

He reached up for her, then, and she tried to pick him up. He stiffened, and the scream that she’d managed to subvert started in earnest. She didn’t so much hear it as feel it. As gently as she could manage, she put him down again.

Only Mommy.

She nodded. “Let’s find your mother. She’s been very worried.”

I waited for her.

Emma’s eyes were already closed, or she would have closed them. She held out her hand again, and when he placed his palm in hers, she closed hers over it gently.

This time, she reached for Andrew, while she held this smal part of him. She reached for him, and then, she reached through him. Al she felt was a little boy who was close to hysteria—on the wrong side. Four years old.

Since the day her father had died, so many years ago, she had accepted that life wasn’t fair. When Nathan died in the summer, she had hated it. Life. The grayness. The ache. The loss of future. Al of it.

Watching other people’s happiness, other people’s dreams, had been so damn hard, she’d withdrawn from most of her life.

Only Alison and Michael had remained a central part of that life because they wouldn’t let her go. Everyone else had made space for her grief; they’d given her the room in which to mourn.

They could give her years, and it would never end.

Are you crying? Andrew asked, in that curious but detached Are you crying? Andrew asked, in that curious but detached way of children everywhere.

“A little.”

Why?

“Because it’s dark, and it’s scary, and I’m lonely.”

Oh. The pause was not long, but it was there. Me too. Are you a grown-up?

Two years ago she would have answered yes without hesitation. Now? “Not quite. Almost.”

Can you get out of the fire?

“I think so.”

It’ll kill you, you know. If you don’t.

“I know.”

Where’s my mom?

“She’s here.” Emma took a breath and looked down at her non-hand. This time, when she reached out, she reached out for Maria Copis.

She felt the skin of the older woman’s hand in her palms, and knew that that was a real sensation; it was distinct, almost overwhelming in its sudden clarity. Andrew cried out, and she flexed her hands; felt Maria’s response.

Don’t go!

“No, Andrew. I’m not leaving.” She took another breath. It hurt.

“Emma?”

“Margaret?” She blinked. Margaret stood in the shadows, Suzanne by her side.

“Yes, dear.”

“Yes, dear.”

Emma hated being caled “dear” by anyone under the age of seventy. She grimaced but said nothing.

“You’re almost there, dear, but I wanted to warn you—you don’t have much time. You’ve reached the boy, and the fire has slowed; you’ve got his attention. But…”

Coughing, Emma nodded. She reached for Maria Copis again, but this time, eyes closed, she reached out with her other self. With the self that had left her body in a chair in a hospital emergency triage room.

“Hold on, dear. Hold on for as long as you can.”

She would have asked Margaret what she meant, but she didn’t have time. Fire engulfed her hands, searing away skin, sinew, tendon. She bit her lip, tasted blood, stopped herself from screaming—but only barely, and only because she was also holding Andrew, and Andrew was terrified.

Andrew had never stopped being terrified.

The soul-fire came to sickly green life in the frame of the door, lapping around the sharp edges of newly broken boards.

They were out of its range, but only barely, and the floors here looked suspiciously unstable.

“Where did the fire start?” Chase hissed.

“Basement. Back of the house one over.” Eric roled along the floor against the wal. The wal would have provided more than enough cover had it not been for the large gap a windowpane had once occupied. Here, everything was blackened; paint had peeled and curled, and just beyond the windows, the carpets peeled and curled, and just beyond the windows, the carpets were the consistency of melted plastic.

But the soul-fire didn’t burn in that particular way. Something to be grateful for. “Chase?”

“I’m clear.”

Eric felt the soul-fire bloom just above his head. These damn homes with their huge windows. Even the cheap homes had them al over the place.

“I’d say they know where we are,” Chase added.

“No kidding.” Eric drew daggers.

Chase puled a mirror out of his shirt pocket. “You’ve got yours?”

“No.”

“Fuck, Eric, what were you thinking?”

“Never mind. It’l only piss you off.”

Chase angled the mirror so that it caught light through the ragged hole that was now the door in these parts. “Three.”

“Longland.”

“Yeah. Two others.”

“Dressed?”

“Street clothes. No robes.”

“They were already in Toronto, then.”

“Either that or the old lady’s getting lax.”

Eric winced. “Don’t cal her that, Chase. You know it pisses her off.”

Chase shrugged and puled the mirror back. “We’ve got trouble,” he told Eric grimly.

“How much trouble?”

“Longland has Alison.”

Emma had never been terrified of fire. It had always fascinated her. Candlelight. Fireplaces. Bunsen burners. Even the blue flames of the gas stove. But al of those other times, she’d been far enough away to feel only warmth.

Here, there was no warmth. Warmth was too gentle.

She’d broken her arm once, and that snap of bone had been quick and comfortable compared to this. She almost let go, but she realized that the fire burned only her hands.

No. Not even her hands, not her real hands. The fire had not yet reached this room. She dimly remembered that Andrew had died of smoke inhalation; it was possible that this type of fire would never reach these rooms.

Remembering Margaret’s words, she held on. It was like holding on to a stove element when it was orange. It was almost impossible, and she would have screamed and puled back in defeat, opening her eyes and faling back into her body and the grimness of reality, if it had not been for Andrew Copis, who waited by her side in the darkness, where the pain was strongest.

For his sake, she held on.

But it wasn’t enough just to hold on.

She realized it, tried to cling to the thought, until pain washed it away, again and again, as if she were the shore and pain was the ocean that reached for her. It wasn’t enough to hold on. Hold on. No, it’s not enough.

on. No, it’s not enough.

It was like breath, like heartbeat, this pain and this realization, but it wore grooves in her thoughts, until the pain couldn’t dislodge it anymore. And when that happened, she reached into, and through the fire, as she had reached into, and through the cold.

On the other side of the fire, she finaly found the warmth she hadn’t even realized she was seeking.

“Maria.”

The urge to throw herself into that warmth, and away from the fire itself, was so strong it was like the gravity that takes you— quickly—to the bottom of a cliff from its height. But she’d stood on the edge of a lot of cliffs, and she’d never once thrown herself off. She heard, in the distance, the sudden gasp of shock or pain in Maria’s voice, and she knew what the warmth was.

Emma had never tried anything like this before, but she had a pretty good idea that throwing yourself entirely into another person’s life—any other person, no matter how you felt about them—was not a good thing. But it was hard. She’d tried it once before, and then? It had been joy, until it was loss, and pain.

Finding boundaries, with Nathan, had been so difficult; accepting the boundaries he sketched for himself, more so.

She didn’t love Maria Copis. She didn’t even know her.

But not loving, not knowing, she was stil drawn into parts of her life. The parts were good, because she had asked Maria to think about happy things—as if she were the Disney channel— and Maria had done her best to oblige. Emma could feel love, fear, and frustration for her children, and al of these were mixed fear, and frustration for her children, and al of these were mixed and intertwined. She couldn’t, in her own mind, see what the joy of changing a dirty diaper was, but apparently, Maria could.

She could hear Andrew’s first words, although she couldn’t understand them at al. Maria could. Or thought she could.

Parents with smal children were often stupid like that. She could see Andrew take his first steps. See him run—and fal, which he didn’t much like—and see him insist on feeding himself.

Cathy came next, but Andrew was entwined with Cathy, and a brief glimpse of someone Emma had never met and yet now both loved and hated intruded. He was taler than Maria, and he was young, even handsome, his hair dark, his eyes dark, and his smile that electric form of slow and lazy that can take your breath away. The children loved him. Maria loved him.

And him? He loved them, maybe. He loved himself more.

Emma watched the expressions on his face when he thought no one was looking. Saw the phone cals that he took, the false joviality of casual conversation no blind at al to Maria. The easy way he lied.

The hard way the truth came out.

Shadows, there. Anger. Loss. The slow acceptance of the death of need. Or love. It was complicated, and Emma tried very hard not to look at it, and not only because she was afraid of walking unannounced and uninvited into the Copis bedroom.

But she could see the man leave—and that stil hurt—and she could see the struggle to be a reasonable, sane parent with almost no money and two children with a third on its way. The struggle to find the joy in the townhouse, with its narrow wals struggle to find the joy in the townhouse, with its narrow wals and its crowded, cluttered rooms, was both hard and somehow rewarding. Emma felt it, but she didn’t understand it.

But she saw the turn happen, and she knew that she couldn’t withdraw; she folowed Maria, holding on as lightly as possible and riding her back like an insect. Andrew was walking. Talking.

Arguing. Saying a lot of unreasonable No. Andrew was trying to stick six slices of bread, side by side, in the toaster. Andrew was grabbing Cathy’s toys, and Cathy was puling his hair, a trade that didn’t seem fair to his outraged, little self.

Andrew was trying so hard to be a Big Brother, even if he didn’t quite understand what that meant when it came to toys.

Andrew was standing in the line-up to junior kindergarten, glancing anxiously back at his mother before the doors opened to swalow him and the other twenty-six children. Andrew was — Andrew was—

Dead.

Just like that, the warmth twisted; Emma held it, but it was hard. Because to hold it, she had to hold on to the fire, and the smoke, and the screams of her daughter and her son; the baby was sleeping, thank god, the baby was hardly awake. She had to pass through the smoke, the thickening of it, the heat of the floors, the sudden, horrible realization that she had slept through death, and death was caling.

But Emma had done despair, and loss, and guilt. She’d lived with grief until it was silent unless she touched it or poked it.

She’d lived with its shadow, lived at its whim, gone through the day-to-day of things that meant nothing to her anymore—the gray, pointless chatter of her friends, the endless nothing of her future.

Emma knew these things wel enough that she could endure them, because she already had. Even if this was worse.

The baby was sleeping in her room. Cathy was down the hal —at the farthest end—in her crib. Andrew was in his bed in the room midway down. She grabbed the baby, and she ran, covering her mouth, the panic sharp and harsh. She woke Cathy, she grabbed Cathy, lifting her in one arm, lodging her on her left hip; the baby was cradled, awkwardly and tightly, on her right.