Twice in a Lifetime (16 page)

“What about Amos?” she asked. “What will he think?”

“He won’t like it,” Drake answered, with a heavy sigh. “Amos is the closest thing I’ve got to family—hell, he’s been more of a father to me than my own managed to be—but I have to do this. It’s the right choice at the right time. I’ll do my damnedest to make him see it my way, but if he can’t or won’t, then after we run one last race to try to win back what we lost, I reckon we’ll go our separate ways.”

Clara remembered what Amos had said back at the hotel. She had no doubt that the mechanic would be furious about Drake’s decision; he would blame her, understandably, and he would be right, in a way.

“I’m ready for a new day to come,” Drake said.

Gently yet insistently, he pulled her toward him until their bodies touched. Clara knew he wanted to kiss her again; even though they were on the sidewalk where anyone could see them, she had no desire to stop him.

But then, just as Clara closed her eyes, their lips about to touch, a car horn honked down the street. It wasn’t directed at them, someone being smart, but a coincidence; still, it ruined the moment and they both stepped back.

Drake ran a hand through his dark hair. Clara walked over to look in the window of the bakery, empty except for a wedding cake.

“That looks good enough to eat,” Drake said as he joined her.

“It’s probably hard as a rock. It’s been in there for more than a week.”

“Hungry as I am, I doubt it would matter much.”

Clara suddenly had an idea. “How would you like to have dinner at my house tonight?”

He laughed. “I wasn’t dropping a hint.”

“I’m serious.”

“I don’t want to impose.”

“You wouldn’t be. My mother has a roast in the oven. There’ll be plenty.”

“In that case, sure, I’d love to.” His eyes narrowed and he gave her a little smile. “Your mother won’t pull another knife on me, will she?”

“No promises,” she answered, and they both laughed, but Drake’s laughter soon faded.

He reached for her and Clara again placed her hand in his.

“I meant what I told you,” Drake said. “I mean to give up racing, to settle down here in Sunset, to start a new life with you. But I want you to believe in me. I
need
you to believe in
us
.”

Clara’s eyes searched his. “I do.”

His easy smile bloomed. “I’m glad,” he said. “With you by my side, I’m headed for a bunch of bright tomorrows.”

She nodded. Drake’s life wasn’t the only one that was changing.

H
OW IN THE HECK
do you drive this thing?”

Clara laughed loudly in the passenger seat. After they’d walked back to the bank, Drake had asked if he could drive them to her house, expressing an interest in seeing how the old truck handled. She’d happily given him the keys and then watched as he struggled to get it started. Once he finally managed to get them going, it hadn’t gotten much better; at the first stop sign, the truck had sputtered hard enough to shake, nearly stalling out.

“I thought you were some sort of fancy race car driver,” she said, teasing him. “Shouldn’t this be easy for you?”

“No car I’ve
ever
driven has been as bad as this!”

Accelerating, he tried to shift into a higher gear, but the stick fought him, grinding loudly until he jammed it into place.

“You do this every day?” Drake asked with a laugh.

“It’s not any nicer to me, you know.”

“I tell you one thing, if I manage to open a garage in this town, I know who my first customer is going to be!”

Listening to him, Clara couldn’t believe how quickly her life had changed. Whereas a week ago she had been plagued with worry and apprehension, now, suddenly and unexpectedly, things were looking better.

And it was all because of Drake McCoy.

When they turned onto the street where she lived, he was still talking about the truck. “With a clunker like this, the only question is whether repairs are worth it. In the end, it might be cheaper to buy something else,” he explained. “The way I figure it, we could look around at—”

But before Drake could finish, Clara let out a short scream, a reaction to what she’d seen: black smoke billowing from her house and into the sky.

When Drake saw what had alarmed her, his reaction was swift; he made the truck go faster, working the gearshift forcefully, ignoring its protests. Within seconds, he braked hard in front of the house, skidding a few feet before bringing them to a sudden, jarring stop. The next thing Clara knew, she was standing on the sidewalk, staring as if in a trance.

My house…It’s on fire…

Though she couldn’t see any flames, smoke leaked skyward from the rear of the house. Clara could only imagine what was happening inside—the flames devouring everything in sight, burning up her belongings, taking away her memories until nothing was left.

Instead of being frozen with shock and surprise, Drake acted. He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the house. “Come on!”

Together, they raced onto the porch. Drake whipped open the front door and plunged inside, with Clara right behind. The smoke made her eyes water, but it wasn’t as thick as she’d expected. Wherever the fire was, it hadn’t yet reached the front of the house.

“Tommy…my mother…” Clara managed, frightened out of her wits.

Drake pointed at the stairs. “Go see if anyone is up there! I’ll check down here!” When Clara still hadn’t moved, he shouted, “Get going!” before disappearing into the smoke toward the rear of the house.

Clara didn’t hesitate long before doing as he said.

Something about this doesn’t add up…

When Drake had yanked open Clara’s front door, he’d expected to be assaulted by a wave of heat hot enough to burn exposed skin. He had assumed that the smoke would be chokingly thick and dense. But neither had been true.

Even now, as he pushed through the living room and toward an open doorway at the back of the house, he only needed to keep his face pressed against his sleeve, his eyes squinted, and his breathing shallow.

Don’t relax, not for a minute!

His hope was that they’d arrived before the fire grew out of control. If he could reach it in time, stop it before any real damage was done…

Drake stepped into the kitchen and finally got some answers.

Bright orange and yellow flames leaped from a cast-iron skillet on the stove where something crackled and burned. Smoke billowed from the conflagration. Fortunately, the door just off the kitchen was open; it allowed smoke to pass through the screen of the inner door and up into the sky; that was what Clara had seen when they drove up.

Drake stepped to the sink, filled a glass with water, and was just about to throw it on the fire when he suddenly stopped; he had no way of knowing what was burning. If it was grease, then tossing water on it would send it splattering in every direction and make the situation worse than it already was.

Instead, he rummaged through Clara’s cabinets, searching for something he could use. Finally, down among the pots and pans, he found a dented metal tray. Carefully, his arm extended far from his body, he dropped it onto the skillet with a bang, covering it completely and choking out the fire’s air; without any fuel, the blaze was spent in seconds. Once he’d shut off the burner, the danger was no more. But even as he threw open windows to hasten the smoke’s departure, Drake kept asking himself the same question, over and over.

What happened here?

With a sickening feeling in his stomach, he wondered if he didn’t already know the answer.

Clara raced up the staircase as fast as her feet could take her, rising through the smoke, causing it to swirl around her. On the landing, she turned left and pushed open the door to Tommy’s room. Shouting his name, she frantically searched for some sign of her son, fear and desperation gripping her tight, but he wasn’t there. She hurried back in the opposite direction, past the bathroom and her own bedroom, both of them empty, before reaching her mother’s door. Clara stepped inside and gasped at what she saw.

Christine lay sprawled across her bed. She was on her side, completely still, her hair covering her face. At first glance, she looked peaceful; Clara’s thoughts were anything but. Fearing that her mother had been overcome by the smoke, terrified that Christine could be dead, Clara rushed over and began roughly shaking the older woman’s shoulder.

“Mom!” she shouted, her voice panicked. “Wake up!”

At first, there was no response, so Clara shouted louder and shook harder. But then Christine sputtered awake, her eyes narrow slits, unfocused and disoriented.

“What…what’s going on?” she mumbled.

“There’s a fire!” Clara yelled. “We have to get out of here! Quick!”

“Fire? What fire? What are you talking about?”

Before Clara could respond, Christine became aware of the haze of smoke filling her room. Her eyes went wide as she turned to her daughter, then away, raising a trembling hand to cover her mouth.

“Oh, no,” she moaned. “Oh, God, please no…”

“What is it?” Clara asked, her stomach twisting into knots.

“I…I didn’t mean to…I just came up here and…”

“Mom,” Clara said softly, almost pleading. “What happened?”

When Christine looked at her, her eyes were wet. “I…I started cooking dinner…” she explained. “I put a pan on the stove…I was going to fry some onions to go with the roast…” But it was there that her story ended.

She didn’t have to say more. Clara knew what had happened next: her mother had forgotten about the stove, come upstairs, lain down, and fallen asleep while what was in the pan burned to a crisp, filling the house with smoke.

“Oh, Clara,” Christine cried, punctuating her words with a sob.

An awkward silence stretched between them, broken when Drake shouted from downstairs. “Fire’s out!” he shouted. “I’m going to open up the windows!”

“All right,” Clara answered; her voice sounded as out of sorts as she felt, as shaken by what had happened as her mother.

The worst part was the way Christine looked at her; her gaze was pleading, as if she was a child, helpless to deal with the circumstances in which she unexpectedly found herself.

“It was an accident,” Clara offered, wiping away a tear.

Her mother shook her head. “I could’ve burned the house down!”

“But you didn’t.”

“But I
could have
!” her mother insisted. “What if you hadn’t come home when you did? What if Tommy had been hurt? What if I got up in the middle of the night, put a pot on the stove, and killed us all in our sleep?”

Clara didn’t answer.
What can I possibly say?

Suddenly, the sound of a fire engine’s siren rose in the distance; no doubt it was headed for their house. More than likely, a neighbor had called in because of the smoke. With every fevered beat of Clara’s heart, the noise grew louder.

Christine started to cry. If the fire truck was coming, that meant there would be questions; if they answered truthfully, Clara’s mother would be humiliated. For those who knew about Christine’s troubles, it wouldn’t be just a simple accident, but rather another indication that she was losing her marbles.

“I’ll take care of it,” Clara said, putting a comforting hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Don’t worry.”

But by now, Christine wasn’t listening. Her body shook as she sobbed into the mattress, overcome by shame, fear, and sadness.

Clara stepped out of the room, shutting the door behind her. The siren drew closer; within seconds, the truck would be parked right outside. Even with the slowly dissipating smoke, she took a deep breath.

She had a lie to tell.

For the next hour, Clara weaved an explanation for what had happened that didn’t place the blame on her mother, but on herself. She spoke with the firemen, wearing a sheepish smile, and told them she’d put a skillet on the stove but forgot about it when she and Drake went for a drive. When they came home, they’d found the house filled with smoke. Clara tried to look embarrassed, but worried that all it did was make her appear guilty. When Sheriff Oglesby arrived, the lights on his police car flashing, she repeated her story. The lawman took it all in, then started asking questions; when he inquired about whether Tommy or her mother had been home, Clara dug her hole a little deeper, admitting that she wasn’t sure where Tommy was, but then claiming that her mother had gone to the library. Guilt ate at her, but she managed to convince herself that her lie hurt no one; in fact, it went a long way toward protecting what little was left of her mother’s pride. She saw her neighbors watching from across the street and up on their porches, but no one came over to talk, for which Clara was thankful; she didn’t want anyone to contradict her.

Drake went along with her story, even trying to claim responsibility by saying that he had asked Clara to show him more of town. At first, she thought that Sheriff Oglesby was eyeing Drake suspiciously on account of his being a newcomer to Sunset, but the more they talked, the more it seemed as if the driver’s charm put the lawman at ease.

For her part, Christine remained hidden in her room.

“Let’s make sure this here’s the only accident we have,” the sheriff said with a wink as he got in his car and drove off.

Once everyone had left, Clara and Drake exchanged looks of relief.

Back inside, Clara went up to her mother’s room to tell her that everything was fine, but the door was locked. When she knocked, there was no answer.

Clara walked onto the porch. Night had fallen, wrapping the neighborhood in darkness; a few lights shone inside houses and from the streetlamp on the far corner, but they couldn’t hold a candle to the brilliance of the countless stars that filled the sky. Crickets chirped. Weary, she lowered herself into the porch swing and absently began to push herself back and forth, causing the hinges to squeak.

She and Drake had eaten a hasty dinner; he had gone to the grocery store and bought the fixings for sandwiches and a six-pack of beer. Together in the still smoky kitchen, they said little. Christine had yet to leave her room, so Clara had taken her a plate, setting it on the floor outside the door. Tommy still hadn’t come home. Once their meal was finished, and as Drake began to clear the table, Clara had wandered from the room and soon found herself outside. It wasn’t because she was trying to get away from Drake, or even that she wanted to be alone, but only that she had drifted, drawn by the dark and silence.

The porch swing was a familiar place for Clara to seek refuge. In the months and years after Joe’s death, after Tommy had been put in bed, after she had managed to survive another day, she would often come outside and sit. She would cry. She would remember better times. She would even talk to Joe, hoping he could still hear her, just like when she visited his grave. But of course, she’d never gotten a reply, though it was comforting all the same.

“You mind a little company?”

Clara looked up and found Drake. He held a beer bottle in his hand. When she nodded, he sat down on the railing opposite her.

“Nice night,” he commented, taking a swig.

“It is,” she answered.

After that, neither of them spoke for a while. Across the street, a couple walked by hand in hand, too far away for Clara to hear what they were saying; whatever it was, it must have been funny, since the man burst out laughing.

“When I was little,” Clara finally said, breaking their silence, giving voice to a memory that she couldn’t keep inside, “there was a girl in my class at school named Evelyn Price. Every day, she waited for me on my walk home, and no matter how fast I ran, no matter how hard I tried to get away, she always caught me. She would push me down, pull my hair, throw my books into a mud puddle, that sort of thing. I’d come home bruised and crying my eyes out, complaining about Evelyn to my mother, begging her to do something.”

“Did she?” Drake asked, taking another drink.

Clara shook her head. “Not the way I wanted her to,” she answered. “Instead of talking with my teacher or with the Prices about what their daughter was doing, she told me that I had to stand up for myself, that she wouldn’t always be there for me and that if there wasn’t another choice, I had to fight.”

“So what happened?”

“The next time Evelyn came after me, I stood my ground. She grabbed my hair and I socked her in the nose.”

Drake chuckled. “Sounds like you were a regular Joe Louis.”

“It’s the only time I’ve ever thrown a punch. It made me sick to my stomach, but it was worse for Evelyn. She took off running as fast as she could. It was the last time she ever bothered me.