Burn Our Bodies Down(30)

I can still hear the sirens, though. Faint, like an echo. Just the smallest cry, thin and wailing.

I sit up. It’s not sirens at all. It’s a person. I swear it’s a person. For a heartbeat the fire sweeps across my sight, and there she is, my own body curled on her side, but I blink and she disappears. It’s not that. It can’t be that.

Still. I get out of bed, the floor cool against my bare feet. When I peer out into the hallway, the only light is coming from the landing, where the windows are letting in the moon. The opposite hallway, where Gram’s room must be, is shut up, the door closed.

I tiptoe out to the landing. I can still hear the crying. And that’s what it is, crying. Like an animal. Like a girl out there alone.

One set of windows overlooks the back of the farm, the acres I could see from the kitchen. I think that’s where it’s coming from. Glancing over my shoulder to be sure Gram isn’t out here with me, I kneel gingerly on the window seat and peer outside.

The corn is nearly blue in the night, the breeze leaving meandering patterns across the top of the plants. The apricot grove I saw before is out on the horizon, maybe a mile away. That’s it. Nothing out of the ordinary, just the wind on my skin and the lure of the moon.

I wait for a moment. Count the cries as they come, hitching and plaintive, drifting through the air like smoke from the fire. I can taste it still, lingering so thickly that sometimes a cloud of it will hold the moonlight inside, hovering in midair like breath in winter.

Too suddenly the cries go quiet. I jerk back from the window. My heart catching in my chest, breath coming quick. Whatever was making that noise, I don’t think it’s living anymore.

“Gram?” I say, into the emptiness around me. “Gram? Are you awake? Did you hear that?”

She must not hear me. She doesn’t answer. And the dark stretches on, filling the gaps left in the silence until I’m sure I must have imagined them.

I go back to my room. Sit on the edge of my bed and wait for my nerves to knit themselves back together, but they don’t.

It’s a long shot. But I open the nightstand drawer and root through it, looking for a lighter. Matches, a candle. Anything. I need the calm of the apartment in Calhoun, the fan on low and the window open, the flame steady as I pour my whole self into it.

I get lucky with a banged-up lighter and a thin candle, the kind you hold at church during a vigil. My hands shake as I light it, and the orange glow wavers across the walls, casting strange twisting shadows.

There, I think, breathing easy at last. That looks more like home.





twelve





i swear morning comes earlier at Fairhaven. It tumbles through the window at the top of my room, crawls up the bed to open my eyes. My body aches, tired so deep down that I’m not sure it’ll ever go away, and I dreamed about the crying I heard, about the moment it stopped dead. Next to me on the nightstand, the candle is piled up with fresh wax.

I didn’t imagine it. Not any of it. Not the girl, and not the story of my mother, of what it means to be a Nielsen. Gram said family is honest with each other. But she hasn’t really answered any of my questions. And I wonder if maybe I’m on my own. With this, just like with everything.

Take the easy explanation, that’s what I should do. Of course Mom’s been keeping secrets. Of course Mom stayed away from Phalene because of the daughter she left behind. And Gram’s part of this because Mom asked her to be. That’s what makes sense, but I can’t help feeling like it isn’t right. I know Mom better than anyone, and I know that if daughters were what made her run from Phalene, she would never have kept either of us. Something happened here.

I get up already too hot as I slide open the dresser drawers, sorting through the piles of clothes in each. I’m not exactly looking forward to dressing in more of Mom’s hand-me-downs, but anything’s better than my dirty clothes.

In the top drawer, I find a little long-sleeved dress, lace tacked onto the hem, Mom’s name written inside the high collar. I hold it up to get a good look, my chest going tight. It’s familiar. Of course it is. I saw one just like it on the girl in the fire. A girl with Mom’s face, dressed in Mom’s clothes. I’d bet anything Mom’s name was pressed to the nape of her neck when she died.

This is where she came from. It has to be. I can picture her here, sleeping in this bed. Just like me.

I put the dress back in the drawer. Gram said this room didn’t belong to anybody, but Fairhaven told me the truth. Maybe the rest of it can tell me more.

I head to the top of the stairs. I mean to try the door to the other hallway, but before I can, I spot a police cruiser out the window at the front of the house. I watch as it rolls up the driveway, back toward the highway. They were here. Talking to Gram. Pressing her for answers just the way I want to. And I bet she didn’t give them any, but I won’t let her stonewall me. I have proof now, solid and real and something she can’t get away from.

Fairhaven restless around me, creaking floors and peeling wallpaper. I go downstairs and pass through the entryway, hesitating by the front door. There’s a pair of rain boots tucked in the corner, on top of a muddy towel and a ratty glove. I don’t remember them being there yesterday, but then I don’t remember much of yesterday at all that isn’t the sight of my own face and the heat of the fire.

Gram’s not in the kitchen when I get there. She was—the chair’s pulled out, a mug of coffee still warm on the counter. I push open the screen door and step out onto the back porch. The wood is still cool, sun only just starting to reach under the roof. I stand there for a moment, breathing in, the air sweet with summer, spiked with a touch of smoke. It looks like it rained in the night, broke the heat and left the sky clear, left the plants glimmering and glossy. Maybe it put the rest of the fire out, tamped down the drift of the ash.