The Blackstone Chronicles (29 page)

Turning her back on her daughter, Martha Ward strode out of the room. Within seconds the sound of Gregorian chants swelled through the house.

“She’s praying for you,” Rebecca said softly.

“No she isn’t,” Andrea replied. “She’s praying for herself. She doesn’t give a damn about me.”

“That isn’t true,” Rebecca said. “She loves you.”

Now Andrea too was on her feet. “No she doesn’t, Rebecca. She doesn’t love anyone.” Tears streaming down her cheeks, Andrea fled from the dining room.

As the house filled with the mysterious droning rhythm of the chanting, Rebecca sadly cleared the dining room table and wondered if it would ever be used again.

*  *  *

Rebecca wasn’t certain what woke her up; indeed, at first she wasn’t sure she’d fallen asleep at all. Though the doors to her small room were closed, she could still hear the music emanating from the chapel, just as it had been when she’d gone to bed. Rolling over, she glanced at the little travel alarm clock she’d brought down from Andrea’s room yesterday afternoon.

Three o’clock.

Three o’clock?

She sat up in bed, wide-awake now, and for the first time noticed something else.

There was a smell in the house; not the normal sickly sweet smell of her aunt’s incense, but the acrid odor of the smoke that had filled the living room the one time she’d tried to use the fireplace, only to discover that her aunt had long ago had the chimney blocked to keep the house from losing heat.

Smoke?

Getting out of bed, Rebecca pulled on her bathrobe as she went to the pocket doors that separated her sleeping room from the dining room beyond. Before the panels were even inches apart, the acrid smell grew stronger, and she choked as she drew in a breath of smoky air. Throwing the doors wide open, she ran to the foot of the stairs.

The smoke was far thicker there. She watched in horror as more of it billowed down from the floor above.

“Fire!” she yelled up the stairs. “Andrea, get out! The house is on fire!” When there was no reply, she started up the stairs, but the smoke immediately drove her back down, coughing and gasping for breath. Her mind racing, she shouted again, this time to her aunt, then ran back to the kitchen to snatch up the phone. Fumbling twice, she finally managed to punch 911 into the keypad. Dropping to the floor to avoid the smoke that was now pouring into the kitchen from the hallway, she yelled into the phone
the moment the emergency operator came on the line: “It’s Rebecca Morrison—please! Help! The house is burning. I live at—” Suddenly, Rebecca’s mind blanked, and she felt panic rising in her. Then she heard the operator’s voice.

“I already have the address,” the operator told her. “You’re at 527 Harvard. The engines are on the way.”

Dropping the phone, Rebecca ran out of the kitchen and back down the hall. At the foot of the stairs she shouted for her cousin once more, then charged through to the other side of the house, jerking open the door to her aunt’s chapel.

All the candles were lit, and her aunt was on her knees at the prie-dieu, her head bowed, her fingers clutching her rosary.

“Aunt Martha!” Rebecca shouted. “The house is on fire! We have to get out!”

Slowly, almost as if in a trance, Martha Ward turned her head and gazed at Rebecca. “It’s all right, child,” she said softly. “The Lord will look after us.”

Ignoring her aunt’s words, Rebecca grabbed Martha Ward’s arm and, with all her strength tugged her to her feet, then out of the candlelit room and into the foyer. Jerking the front door open, she shoved her aunt out onto the porch, then stumbled after her. Rain had begun to fall, but Rebecca ignored it as she pulled Martha off the porch and out into the yard as sirens wailed in the night. Rebecca looked up to the second floor, once again calling out her cousin’s name. But even as she shouted to Andrea, she knew it might already be too late: unlike any of the other windows in the house, Andrea’s were glowing orange from the flames that danced within.

Rebecca sank to her knees on the front lawn. Oblivious to the rain and the cold, with tears streaming down her face, she joined her aunt in prayer.

R
ebecca sat trembling in the waiting room of Blackstone Memorial. She was doing her best to answer all the questions she was being asked. Most of what had happened was still clear in her mind. She recalled waking up and smelling smoke, then calling out to her aunt and cousin to warn them that the house was burning. After that, as events started moving faster and faster, her memories were jumbled. She remembered calling 911, and getting her aunt out of the house. But then it became a blur. The fire engines began arriving, and a police car, and people had come out of the other houses. That was when they started asking her questions, but there were so many people and so many questions, she couldn’t keep them sorted out. Finally, when Andrea was carried out of the house and put in the ambulance, Rebecca had begged to be allowed to go to the hospital with her.

She’d crouched on the floor of the ambulance, trying to stay out of the way of the medics, who were putting an IV in Andrea’s arm. When she got her first good look at her cousin, she almost screamed out loud. Andrea’s face was badly burned; her eyebrows were gone, and flesh was peeling from her cheeks and nose. The skin on her arms and shoulders was blackened, and all her hair was gone, except for a charred stubble on her blistered scalp. Though Rebecca quickly looked away, she felt a terrible hopelessness flood over her, wondering if Andrea would survive even long enough for them to get to the hospital.
But when the ambulance had finally screeched to a stop, her cousin was still breathing, and Rebecca scrambled out of the ambulance fast enough not to delay the medics. A few seconds later they pushed past her with the stretcher bearing Andrea’s body, and Rebecca thought she heard a faint moan.

Rebecca had been clinging to that sound ever since, while the waiting room quickly filled with people and the questions began all over again. This time, though, it was the deputy sheriff, Steve Driver, who had put his hands on her shoulders to stop her trembling, and was gazing down intently at her.

“Is there anything else you can remember, Rebecca? Anything at all?”

She shook her head. “I’ve told it all.”

Driver shifted his gaze to Martha Ward, who was sitting next to her niece, her rosary clutched in her fingers, her lips working as she silently recited her prayers. “What about you, Mrs. Ward? Did you hear anything? If you were awake—”

“She was praying,” Rebecca said quietly. “When she prays, she never hears anything at all. She didn’t even hear me when I came into the chapel to get her out of the house.”

Steve Driver reached out and touched Martha’s arm. “Mrs. Ward? I need to talk to you. It’s really important.” When Martha only kept on praying, he squeezed her arm and shook her slightly. “Mrs. Ward!”

As if jerked out of a deep sleep, Martha suddenly looked up. There was an odd, empty look in her eyes, but then her hands dropped into her lap and she shook her head sorrowfully. “It was God’s will,” she pronounced.

Steve Driver frowned, glanced at Rebecca, then turned his attention back to Martha. Leaning forward, he took her hands in his. “Mrs. Ward? Can you hear me?”

Martha seemed to gather herself together, taking a deep breath and straightening in the plastic chair on
which she was perched. “Of course I can hear you. And I’m telling you what happened. God has punished Andrea for her sin.”

The deputy’s frown deepened. “Her sin?”

“She killed her child,” Martha said, her voice strong now, and carrying throughout the waiting room. “And God has stricken her down.”

The deputy sheriff cast a questioning glance at Rebecca.

“Andrea had an abortion,” she explained. “Aunt Martha didn’t approve of it, and—”

Martha drew up still straighter, and now her eyes fixed angrily on her niece. “God didn’t approve,” she declared. “God judges, not I. All I can do is pray for the soul of the child she murdered.” Her fingers tightened once more on her beads. “We shall pray. We shall—”

Before she could finish, the door separating the waiting room from the emergency room opened and a nurse appeared. Spotting Rebecca, she hurried over and knelt down. “Your cousin’s awake, and she’s asking to see you,” she said.

“Me?” Rebecca asked, her voice puzzled. “Shouldn’t Aunt Martha—”

“It’s you she’s asking for, Rebecca,” the nurse said.

“How is she?” Steve Driver asked, rising to his feet. “Is she going to make it?”

“We don’t know,” the nurse said quickly. “She has third-degree burns on most of her body.” She shook her head. “She must be in terrible pain.” She turned back to Rebecca. “But she’s awake, and she’s asking for you. It’s going to be very difficult for you, but—”

“It’s all right,” Rebecca assured her. “It can’t be nearly as bad for me as it is for Andrea.”

She followed the nurse through the double doors and into the emergency treatment room. Andrea was lying on an examining table. There was a large bottle attached to the IV that the medic had put in her arm while she was
still in the ambulance, and there was another tube in her nose. Dr. Margolis and two of the medics were carefully picking what looked like dead skin from Andrea’s body, but as she drew closer to the bed, Rebecca realized it wasn’t skin at all, but the remains of the nylon nightgown Andrea had been wearing when the fire broke out. Rebecca winced as one of the medics lifted a scrap of the material loose, taking a small patch of burned skin as well.

“I—I’m lucky,” Andrea breathed, her voice barely audible. “I can’t feel it yet.”

Rebecca started to reach out to take her cousin’s hand, stopping herself just in time. “Thank God you’re still alive,” Rebecca whispered. “And you’re going to be all right.”

She saw a barely perceptible shake of her cousin’s head. “I don’t think so,” Andrea whispered. “I just—” She fell silent, winced as she tried to take a breath, then managed to utter a few more words. “My fault,” she breathed. “Fell asleep with … cigarette. Dumb, huh?”

“It’s all right, Andrea,” Rebecca told her. “It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.”

“No accident,” Andrea whispered. “Mother said—” “It doesn’t matter what Aunt Martha said,” Rebecca told her. “The only thing that matters is that you’re alive, and you’re going to get well.”

For a long time Andrea said nothing, and Rebecca thought she must have gone to sleep. Then she spoke one more time. “The dragon,” she breathed. “Don’t let—”

Rebecca leaned forward, straining to hear what her cousin was saying. Andrea struggled, then her charred lips worked again. “M-Mother,” she whispered. “Don’t—” But before she could finish, the sedatives that had been added to the IV took hold and Andrea drifted into unconsciousness. She lay so still that finally Rebecca looked up at the nurse.

“What happened? Did she—”

“She’s asleep,” the nurse said. “If you’d like to go back to the waiting room …”

Rebecca shook her head, her eyes never leaving Andrea’s ruined face. “Can’t I stay here?” she asked. “What if she wakes up again? If I’m here, maybe she won’t be so frightened.”

The nurse hesitated, then indicated a chair close to the door. “Of course you can stay with her, Rebecca,” she said. As Rebecca lowered herself into the chair, the nurse went back to work, helping the medics and Dr. Margolis clean the worst of Andrea’s wounds and treat them with Silvadene ointment to try to prevent infection.

Rebecca, feeling utterly helpless, could only watch in silence.

Oliver Metcalf stood up and stretched, then stepped outside to suck a few breaths of morning air into his lungs. He’d been at the hospital for four hours, arriving minutes after Rebecca had been taken in to see Andrea.

He’d collected every scrap of information about the fire he could get. He and Steve Driver had come to the same conclusion. The fire had undoubtedly been an accident, caused by Andrea’s habit of smoking in bed. The crew that had put the fire out had found an ashtray next to the bed, and though it was overturned, there were half a dozen sodden cigarette butts scattered around the floor in the same area. The only thing that saved Martha Ward was that she’d been praying in her downstairs chapel, and even that might not have saved her if Rebecca hadn’t awakened.

“It could have been a lot worse,” Driver said as he and Oliver finished comparing notes.

With nothing more that could be accomplished at the hospital, Driver had left. As the night wore on, the waiting room slowly emptied, until only Oliver and Martha Ward were still there. Though Oliver had tried several times to speak to Martha, she utterly ignored him
as she concentrated on a seemingly endless repetition of her prayers. Eventually the rain stopped and the day dawned, the sun shining outside.

Half an hour before, Philip Margolis had come into the waiting room to ask Martha Ward if she wanted to see her daughter. Martha shook her head.

“I am praying for her,” she said. “For her and her child both. I don’t need to see her.”

The doctor, nearly exhausted after hours of trying to save Andrea’s life, turned away in disgust and started back to his patient. Oliver stopped him.