The Homewreckers(56)

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A crowd of rubberneckers had already gathered at the entrance of the driveway. Half a dozen cars were pulled alongside the shoulder of the road. Bicyclists clustered together, chatting and pointing. A pickup truck was parked on the other side of Chatham Avenue, with gawkers piled into the truck bed. A bare-chested teenager had positioned himself in the middle of the driveway, cell phone held in the air to video the conflagration.

Hattie beeped furiously at the kid, who turned and flipped her off before slowly ambling out of the way. She drove past and parked on the shoulder a few yards away from the nearest car. Trae parked the Lexus behind her, got out, and joined her in the front seat of the truck.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Tears streamed down her smoke-blackened face. She nodded, then buried her face in his shoulder. “If I lose the house…”

He patted her back. “You won’t. It’s literally just a dumpster fire. I think we got there just in time. Five minutes later…”

She sniffed and nodded, wiping at her runny nose with her sleeve. “Oh my God. Maybe if we hadn’t had dessert—”

“Shh. There’s no telling when that fire started. It could have been smoldering for hours.”

Someone was tapping on the driver’s side window. Hattie looked up and was momentarily blinded by a camera flash. A twenty-something woman grinned and held up her phone. “I knew that was you, Trae!”

“Get the fuck away from here,” he growled. “Just go!”

The woman backed away slowly.

“Unbelievable,” Trae muttered. “People are unbelievable.”

They heard a distinctive whoop whoop whoop of sirens, followed by a pair of Tybee police cruisers, blue lights flashing.

“What now?” Hattie craned her neck to watch, as one cruiser sped down the driveway toward the house. The other cruiser stopped, backed up, and parked diagonally across Chatham Avenue. A uniformed cop got out of the cruiser and began walking up and down the roadway, motioning to the onlookers. “Come on now, move along,” he yelled.

There was another knock at the window. Hattie rolled it down. “Officer…”

“Y’all need to go on home now,” the cop said, bending down to look inside the truck.

“It’s my house,” Hattie blurted. “That’s my house that’s on fire.”

“Oh.” The cop shrugged. “Sorry about that. I guess it won’t hurt if you stay. Just keep your vehicle pulled completely off the roadway, in case we need to get an ambulance in here.”

“We will,” Trae said, leaning forward. “Is there any news? Why were the police called?”

“SOP for a house fire,” the cop said.

“Have you heard anything? Is the fire out yet?” Hattie asked.

“I’ll radio the other officer and let you know what I hear,” the cop said. “Hang tight.”

The cop reappeared what seemed like hours later to Hattie. “Ma’am? The fire has been extinguished, but y’all can’t go back there yet. They’re soaking the dumpster and the ground around it. My captain’s on his way here, and he’d like to speak to you.”

“Okay,” Hattie said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

Ten agonizing minutes passed. “I can’t stand not knowing what’s happening,” Hattie said, opening the door and hopping out of the truck.

“But the cop said…”

“I don’t care,” Hattie said. “I’ll stay out of the way, but I have to see for myself if my house is still standing.”

Trae let out a long, annoyed sigh.

She was halfway down the driveway when she finally caught sight of the house, backlit in the flashing red lights of the fire truck, visible in a haze of grayish-white smoke.

Hattie coughed and rubbed at her eyes. It wasn’t a mirage. The house was intact.

She spotted the first firefighter, who was leaning against the trunk of an oak tree in the front yard, guzzling from a bottle of blue Gatorade. He’d removed his heavy protective gear and was dressed in a sweat-soaked T-shirt and gym shorts. He looked up at her and nodded, guessing her next question.

“We got it out,” he said. “My guys are just wrapping things up back there. All things considered, you got damn lucky.”

“How bad?” she asked.

“Not as bad as it could have been. You’ve got some smoke damage to that wooden siding and the back porch, but we knocked it back pretty quick.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much,” Hattie said.

“Looks like it could be a cool old house,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “I ride my bike past here all the time, but I had no idea something this nice was way back in here, what with all the weeds and junk out front.”

“It’s nearly a hundred years old,” Hattie said.

“Somebody said y’all are shooting a movie or something here?”

“It’s a television show. About fixing up an old house. It’s called The Homewreckers.”

He laughed, turned his head, coughed, then spat something into the grass.

“Y’all need to talk to your contractor, ma’am. They ought to know better than to throw those oily rags and stuff into an open dumpster like that. If we’d gotten here ten minutes later than we did, you’d be looking at a big old pile of cinders right now.”