Unthinkable (13 page)

_{It was past midnight}
at the start of a new day, the
first day after the fire. Ryland’s prediction had come true;
the family was still more or less together, in a temporary apartment belonging to Soledad’s friend Jacqueline’s
church. Fenella was even still sharing a room with Miranda.

The apartment had once been a large garage and still
showed signs of its previous incarnation; one wall of the
lower level was a double garage door. This downstairs section contained a kitchen with a table and a sitting area with
a sofa bed. The upstairs, reached by a spiral staircase, held a
bedroom for Miranda and Fenella, along with a small bathroom. Soledad and Leo were in a bedroom in the church
rectory next door.

They would be able to stay here for a few days.
Fenella knelt in the dark on the cool white tile of the up

stairs bathroom. She was eavesdropping on Lucy and Zach,
using a spyhole Ryland had found. It was where the pipe
of an old-fashioned radiator entered the bathroom from
downstairs. Sound traveled right up the pipe. Also, because
the hole was wider than the pipe, it afforded Fenella a partial view of the room below.

There, in the dim light of a floor lamp, Lucy and Zach sat
facing each other on the thin mattress of the sofa bed. Dawn
lay on the bed with her parents, her arms flung outward,
surrounded by pillows.

Zach’s voice was tense. “I don’t want to. I need to keep
watch. I want to keep the light on, and keep Dawn near,
where I can grab her in one second flat. Not to mention
you.”

Lucy took a deep breath. “It’s going to be all right, isn’t
it?”
A pause. “Yeah. It’s only things that were lost. Nobody
was hurt. We’re together. We’ve been through worse, you
know we have.”
Fenella felt Ryland nudge her.
“But it was our home! It’s not only our things. It’s also,
well, I’ve never belonged anywhere else.”
“Oh, Luce. Come here. Home isn’t a building. Home
is us.”
Yes, thought Fenella fiercely. Please.
“Yes and no.” Lucy’s voice was muffled against Zach’s
chest. “At least Pierre was safe at the kennel. What if he’d
been in the basement?”
“Everybody is all right, including Pierre.”
The two figures below moved closer, clinging. Fenella’s fingers curled tightly into her palms. She hoped they
wouldn’t make love. If they did, she’d pull Ryland forcibly
away from the peephole.
No. Lucy was crying. Crying with great big hiccups. Zach
stroked her back and murmured something too softly for
Fenella to hear.
Out of nowhere, rage bloomed in Fenella. Lucy was getting comforted! Lucy with her loving husband and her
lively, curious daughter, whom she would never have to
worry about losing—her daughter, whom she could plan on
seeing grow up, day by day, year by year. Lucy would get to
watch Dawn become an adult and choose a life for herself.
Lucy would not have to watch her daughter be destroyed.
Lucy could afford to lose her home! She could afford to
lose more.
Open your eyes, Fenella.
Fenella hadn’t realized she’d shut them. She looked down
again reluctantly. She saw how Lucy leaned into Zach. How
his arms tightened around her, and hers around him. She
saw how Lucy instinctively reached out one bare foot and
nestled it gently alongside her child, to feel Dawn’s breathing. Fenella winced.
They were talking again, their soft voices rising easily up
the pipe.
“I heard Dad calling the insurance agent. His face just
sort of changed while he listened.”
“Changed in a bad way?” asked Zach.
“Yes. Maybe we can’t replace the house? Maybe there isn’t
enough insurance money?”
“Money.” Zach shrugged. “We’ll do whatever we have to.
Our parents have been carrying us for a long time. Maybe
this is a big wake-up call. I can work full-time and do college part-time.”
“Me too. Or I could quit school for a while.”
“I think I should be the one to do that. Look. We have to
stay positive. We have options. There are six adults involved
here. You can look at it as six people who need to be supported, or you can look at it as six people all pitching in to
take care of each other.”
There was a pause. “You’re counting Miranda in the six
adults?” Lucy asked. Another, longer pause. “And Fenella?”
Fenella’s stomach tightened.
“Yeah, well,” said Zach carefully. “Obviously Fenella
hasn’t been able to help much so far.”
Another pause, this one longer. When Lucy spoke at
last, Fenella had to strain her ears to hear. “Zach? About
Fenella . . .”
Utter silence below. The couple had pulled apart. They
were on their sides, facing each other, bodies still touching.
Lucy had tilted her head so that she could see into Zach’s
face, and he was looking back down seriously into hers.
I can’t stand it. Lovers who think they can read each other’s
minds.
Shut up, Ryland, Fenella thought. She dug her nails into
her palms.
“The firefighters said it was a gas explosion.”
“They’re still investigating the accident. Accident, Luce.”
“But you wonder too, I know you do. Fenella was all over
the basement looking at the plumbing and electrical and
heating systems. She followed the path of every pipe. She
pored over that book until it fell open to the right pages
automatically. I swear she understood everything.”
“I was even having a fantasy that she’d be able to get a job
doing stuff like that.”
“Jobs like that can pay really well.”
“Yeah. I was thinking she could go to school for it.”
“Me too. I was excited for her. And . . . and also sad for
Miranda. I was wondering if she would feel bad if Fenella
sort of, you know, bounced like a rubber ball after everything she’s been through. Went to school, got a job, was
earning great money. And even . . .”
“Even what?”
“Well, Walker likes her. Twice, she’s gone off with him
alone. Also, she looks at him when he’s around. You know,
under her lashes.”
Fenella glanced involuntarily at the cat, but he was peering down through the hole, his tail twitching slightly, and
he said nothing.
Lucy’s breath was ragged again. “We’ve drifted off the
subject. I guess neither of us wants to say it out loud. But
you’re thinking it too, right? At first, when we saw the
house—I thought maybe she had killed herself. But then
there she was, just fine, and now I wonder—”
“Me too. But why would she blow up the house?”
“I don’t know.”
Another pause.
Zach said, “Maybe the investigation will turn up a problem. A gas leak. Something.”
“How can they be sure? They whole house is gone. The
pipes are gone. Zach, she was all over the basement.”
“Coincidence. Or maybe when she was looking at everything, she pulled something loose. Accidentally.”
“Wouldn’t we have smelled gas?”
“From a small, slow leak?”

Silence.
“But either way . . .” Lucy’s voice was firmer. “Either way,
don’t you see, we can’t trust her. There are too many questions.”
Slowly: “Yeah.”
Lucy said, “We’ve been trying to treat her like Miranda.
But she’s not the same. She’s not really one of us. We don’t
know her.”
“No,” said Zach. “Even Miranda says that now. She
doesn’t know her.”
There it was. Fenella’s answer. She was not known. She
was certainly not loved.
The second task would not be easy after all.

_{When morning came,}
Fenella crept out of bed and
slipped from the room. Miranda was either still sleeping
or pretending to, with her back turned. Ryland silently
paced down the stairs beside Fenella, an inch from her
left foot.

Fenella moved quietly past the sleepers on the sofa bed,
and into the kitchen area. There she paused. She looked
around the strange room. Memories of things from the old
home attacked her: Soledad’s knitting basket. Leo’s piano
and his guitars. The schedule on the refrigerator. The worn
kitchen table.

She whirled as she felt someone watching her. Lucy was
leaning up against the wall three feet away. She wore the
same clothes in which she had run the race yesterday. There
was a crease on her face from a bedsheet.

“I was thinking of the house,” Fenella blurted. “Everything gone. It must feel so horrible.”

Over the next ten minutes, the others slowly, silently,
filtered in. During breakfast, Fenella could feel everyone
watching her. After breakfast, Lucy disappeared with
Soledad, and when they returned, Fenella was not surprised that Soledad abruptly announced that she, Lucy,
and Fenella needed to go food shopping.

They’re going to question you,
said Ryland. Don’t go. You
shouldn’t be with them when I can’t be there to advise you.
Fenella ignored him. She stood. “All right.”
Fine, muttered Ryland, sullenly.
The grocery store was only a few blocks away. Fenella
found herself walking between Lucy and Soledad. She kept
one hand in her pocket, touching her leaf.
She slid a quick look sideways at Lucy. She saw the furrow across her forehead, and the firm set of her chin, and
the world of questions in her eyes. She remembered how on
that first day, Lucy had reached out to Fenella, her whole
body alive with joy and welcome. Now Lucy’s arms hung by
her sides. Her hands were fisted.
Any second, the questions would begin. Fenella would
have to lie. But if only—
She felt desperate to make Lucy understand . . . understand something. She couldn’t tell Lucy and Soledad what
she was doing, of course. She couldn’t explain about the
three tasks. But maybe if she told about Padraig—if she explained what had happened to her—
Because if the problem was that they didn’t know her, if
they needed to know her to love her, then maybe they could
learn to know her.
Fenella still had a hand on her leaf. With the other, she
impulsively reached out and took Lucy’s hand, uncurling
the fingers. Lucy stiffened.
“I have to tell you something,” Fenella said. “Please.”
Lucy’s face was wary.
“I have to tell you about Padraig,” Fenella said.
She saw the shock and surprise in Lucy’s widening eyes.
Fenella gripped her leaf. She turned to include Soledad as
well as Lucy. Then the story came ripping out of her.

Once upon a time, Fenella laughed often. Her laugh would
begin with a creaky wheeze that turned into a snicker. Then
the snicker would get louder, transforming into a noise
perilously close to a horse’s whinny. A horse that had been
crossed with a duck, because the whinnying was interspersed with a certain amount of what could only be called
quacking.

Fenella had a laugh that could make everyone in a crowded
marketplace turn their heads and stare. As a small girl, her
laughter had embarrassed Fenella so much that she would
clap her hand to her mouth to try to keep it inside. But this
only compounded the problem; she’d have to clutch her stomach and sway back and forth with her red hair flying over her
face. If the laughter escaped anyway, which it often did, why,
then, Fenella would find herself stamping her left foot while
she whinnied and quacked and, yes, snorted. Because when
Fenella Scarborough laughed, her whole body was involved.