The Stars Are Fire(25)

Other stories compel her to read them again, such as the one of the man who wouldn’t leave without his horse and as a consequence died of asphyxiation. The reports of the cost of the fires make her feel helpless, all the more so because her loss is but a tiny part of the whole, and it might take years for investigators to reach her. But the report of the committee plan to build one thousand homes cheers her. She writes the name of the organization down.

Her eye drifts to a story of the couple who were forced to separate after fifty-one years of marriage because the wife could no longer care for the husband. She was to remain in Maine, while the husband was about to board a plane for California, where their son lived. It isn’t a story about the fire, but the human interest of the tale captures her imagination. In the picture that accompanies the piece, the woman, formidable-looking, stands a head taller than her husband, who wears rimless glasses and is rotund. Grace would like to know if the woman is relieved to part from her husband of half a century or is instead heartbroken but stoic in the face of the camera. Grace will never know.

She refolds the newspapers so that they resemble the neat stack she removed from the kitchen. Tomorrow, she and Matthew will likely go back to the church for another look at the bulletin board. Or ought she go straight to the police and inquire about the Mr. Doe? She has taxed Matthew’s generosity more than she should have and can’t ask for more. But she has to move forward—to locate her husband, to secure a job, and to find a way to rebuild her home.


Headlights play against the window and then stop. It seems the entire house holds its breath. Grace walks to the head of the stairs, and when the door opens she sees a familiar dark green coat.

“Mother!” Grace yelps, running down the stairs. It’s not her mother’s way to embrace in public, but Grace can feel the force of her relief. Claire leaps from Joan’s lap with a cry of “Grammy!” Behind her mother is Gladys, who has driven Grace’s mother to the Yorks. Behind Gladys stands her mother’s other friend, Evelyn.

“On the night of the fire, Gladys and Evelyn came with the car, and we headed toward your end of the beach,” her mother says in a rush, “but the road was blocked, and the heat from the fire so intense, we couldn’t get through. They told us that your part of the beach had been evacuated. Oh, Grace,” her mother adds quietly while looking at Grace’s flat belly.

It seems that everyone stares at her daughter’s flat belly.

“Any word of Gene?” Grace asks, as they move toward the kitchen and sit.

“Not yet, but men are still fighting the fires inland,” offers Evelyn, who then glances down.

The explanation, which is no explanation, silences the table. No one mentions Mr. Doe. No one mentions the police. Claire, hearing an inaudible cry in the air, slides out of her grandmother’s lap and makes her way under the table to her mother. Grace picks up her girl and holds her in her arms.

“Lovely cake.”

“Hmmm. Yummy.”

Through all of this, Matthew drinks a cup of coffee, answering the polite question that comes his way. Grace can’t read him. Perhaps he’s uncomfortable in this group of women. She remembers that he has to get up at four.

When the small talk dies down, Grace senses a question on the table next to the cake plate and its crumbs.

By rights, Grace and her children should go with her mother, who is kin. But her mother has lost her house, too, and is living with Gladys. Would Gladys take in Grace and the children? She can’t ask that question now, not with Joan and Matthew in the room. But after a second round of coffees has been poured and sipped, Grace’s mother addresses Joan.

“I can never thank you enough for rescuing my daughter and her children. We heard of the rescue at the church before we saw the note with your address. And then to have given them food and shelter is above and beyond…”

“Our pleasure,” says a blushing Joan.

“But we’ll take them now. My friend, Gladys, has an extra room at the top of her house where we can set up a bed and a crib and a playpen.”

“I’ll be sorry to see them go.”

“I’ll second that,” Matthew says. “But of course we all want to see the family settled.”

“We’ll take them tonight,” Grace’s mother says, and there, it is done.


Having said their goodbyes and thanked Matthew and Joan, Grace, her mother, the two other women, and the two children are about to pull out of the driveway, when a police car, lights flashing, blocks their exit. The policeman bends down and says to Gladys, who is driving, “I’m looking for Grace Holland. Is she with you?”

“I’m Grace,” she says from the backseat.

“Would you step out of the car, please?”

The policeman walks ten feet away from the car, and Grace follows.

“You left this note at the church?” He holds aloft the scrap of paper on which she wrote the address of where she was staying.

“I did, yes.”

“Has any of these persons returned?”

“My mother, Marjorie, is in the car, and my friend, Rosie, is on her way to Nova Scotia. I still haven’t heard from my husband.”

“That would be Eugene Holland?”

“Yes.”

He tips his cap higher on his forehead, as a farmer might a felt hat. “We’ve searched the entire area the fires covered and all the hospitals, and we have no one who answers to that name. We are officially listing him as a missing person.”