The Lost Girls (32 page)

“I couldn't find her slippers,” she said. “It was too dark.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” I said.

We laid Emily on the bottom of the boat, where the fish I caught with Father flopped and died. Her dark hair floated in three inches of rainwater like the shadow of an aura. The moon was out again, shining full on her face. I'd closed her eyes, and in her white nightgown she looked strange and beautiful, like a water sprite brought up in a fishing net.

I took one oar, and Lilith took the other. Slowly we made our way, pulling in time. My nightgown dried stiff against my skin, my ribs stabbed me with every stroke, and the water in the boat sloshed around my feet. There were still no lights on the shore. I wondered if Abe was still there. I found myself hoping that he was, another soul awake in the night.

When we were a hundred feet from the pontoon I stopped.

“Here?” Lilith said. “It's not too close?”

“It's very deep.”

We pulled in the oars. The night waited, infinitely patient. The wind had died away, and the water glinted like obsidian between the dark shoulders of the forest. The sky was a cathedral of stars,
their reflections glowing like candles in the depths, held aloft by a silent, watching congregation.

The anchor was behind me, tied by a rope to a ring on the side. I untied the rope from the boat and handed it to Lilith, and she passed it beneath Emily and tied it around her waist. When this was done she sat with her hands in her lap until the boat quieted. Then she drew a deep breath, and leaned down.

“Wait,” I said. I closed my eyes and reached for the words. When I found them I kept my eyes closed and let them leave my lips and settle around us, both heavy and light, like birds.

       
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

       
Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

       
For I acknowledge my transgressions; and my sin is ever before me.

       
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

       
Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

       
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

       
Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

       
Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.

       
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

When I opened my eyes, Lilith was weeping. With one hand I smoothed the wet hair from Emily's cheek. I alone knew where
she was going. I alone knew the dark welcome, the eternal stillness, and the cold peace that awaited her. Silently, I promised her I would watch over her always. A poor promise, I know. But I have kept it.

Then Lilith and I lifted our sister, Emily Rose Evans, and laid her upon the water. She sank soundlessly, her nightgown opening like a flower. I took the anchor and lowered it by its rope beside her until my arm reached into the lake up to my elbow. She was already far away, a pale shimmer among the reflection of the stars. I released the anchor, and she was gone.

It was the darkest part of the night when Justine woke. Although it was quiet, her head echoed with the sound that had woken her. Her children were asleep. She pulled the quilt closer around them. The air was still, and in the light from the lamp everything in the little room was in its place: the photographs on the table, the jar with Lucy's hairpins, the bags of Lucy's clothes in the corner. All of it, like Justine, alert. Waiting.

As Justine watched, the doorknob turned with slow stealth. The door pushed against the deadbolt, then fell back. Just as quietly, Justine climbed over Angela's sleeping form and got out of bed. She stood in the middle of the room, her body rigid, watching the doorknob. Her skin prickled with revulsion. She knew what he wanted. He wanted to slip into bed beside her. To wrap his arms around her, to seduce her. He didn't know her daughters were in here.

“Justine!” Patrick kicked the door violently. Justine's muscles leaped beneath her skin. The old wood splintered but held. Melanie and Angela sat up, groggy and frightened. He kicked it again. “Justine, wake up! There's a fire!”

All around Justine, Lucy's things gathered themselves with a silent drawing in of breath. This was what they had been waiting for. Justine inhaled, too. She could make out the faint smell of smoke, like the memory of a dream. He didn't want to get in her bed.
The house was on fire.
Her mind fluttered wildly, like a panicked bird. Then it snapped into a bright, singing lucidity.

“What's happening?” Melanie said.

“The house is on fire,” Justine said. Her voice was calm. Angela covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes wide. Melanie's face drained of all color. Justine put on her shoes, tying the laces with slow thoroughness. Patrick kicked the door again, but she ignored him. She helped Melanie and Angela from the bed. She looked around, one last time, at all the helpless, waiting things. Then she scooped up the photographs, the jewelry box, and the
L
pendant from the bedside table. Everything else she left. She opened the bedroom door.

Patrick stood on the landing with the skin of his face tight against his bones. Smoke flowed up the stairs, tasted rather than seen, puddling just below the ceilings. “Get my mother,” Justine said. Her voice sounded far away to her own ears.

“I have to get you—”

“We're fine. Get my mother.”

His mouth opened and closed. Then he went to Maurie's door.

“Take your sister outside,” Justine said to Melanie. Melanie took Angela's hand and they ran down the stairs into a darkness lit by a faint red glow. Justine waited until Patrick had disappeared into Maurie's room before walking after them. The foyer was blurry with smoke, dark ropes of it moving like snakes across the faces in the photographs. Down the hall, in the kitchen, flames swam around the cupboards. As Justine watched, the gingham curtains went up like twin torches. She thought: I liked those curtains.

She opened the closet and gathered their coats and snow boots. Then she walked out, closing the door behind her. On the porch she helped Melanie and Angela put on their coats and boots. She put on her own coat, too, tucking the things she'd taken in the pockets, and then she led her daughters out to the road. There, calf-deep in fresh snow, they turned to face the house.

From here they could see no sign of the fire. The house looked as it always had, heavy and regretful. Slow, fat snowflakes fell, the
only things that moved in the whole world. Justine stood between her daughters, holding their hands. One minute went by. Two.

In a violent crashing of doors, Patrick and Maurie burst from the house. They stumbled down the porch steps, and Justine, still calm, met them at the bottom. Patrick was gasping. Maurie had the quilt from the lavender bedroom around her. Her hair was a black nest, and her eyes were blank and confused. She slipped to her knees, and Justine smelled the bourbon as Patrick lifted her in his arms and carried her toward the road. The quilt fell and Justine picked it up. She would wrap her daughters in it. They would go to the lodge and call the fire department. The firefighters would come and put out the fire. It was a small fire. It was just in the kitchen.

Then something passed her in a blur: Melanie. She ran up the steps, across the porch, and into the burning house. The door slammed behind her, and the glassine calm in Justine's mind shattered in to a million pieces.

“Melanie!” She lunged after her daughter but tripped on the quilt, fell, scrambled to her feet, then ran up the steps. As soon as she got in the house she knew it was doomed. The fire had already swallowed the kitchen. Now, tasting fresh oxygen from the door, it leaped into the hallway. The heat of it slammed her backward. Too fast, she thought wildly. It was burning too fast.

Melanie vanished into the smoke upstairs, and Justine stumbled after her, choking on the hot and swollen air. Flames from the kitchen below flickered outside Emily's window, and the little room glowed like the inside of an ember, waiting to burn. Justine ran into the green bedroom and closed the door behind her. It was dark, a thick dark suffocated with smoke, but there was Melanie, silhouetted against the lesser black of the window, scrabbling in the bedside table drawer.

“Melanie! Get out of there!” Justine shouted. Melanie's head jerked up, her hair flying over her shoulder. Justine coughed so
hard she doubled over. The air was poisonous, it would kill them, they had to get out right now. She grabbed Melanie's arm and yanked her back to the door. But as she reached for the knob a roaring crash shuddered the walls, and the cracks around the doorjamb flared with angry red light. The whole back of the house had gone up—Emily's bedroom, the dining room, the kitchen, all of it. A high keening split the air as the house's dry wooden bones writhed and snapped. Above it Justine heard Melanie's thin scream, choked off by the smoke.

She shoved her back to the window. Melanie sank to the floor as Justine wrestled the sash through the warped frame.
Open!
Justine begged it, but after two inches the window wouldn't budge, so she picked up the bedside lamp and hit the glass. Not hard enough; again. Every breath was a knife in her lungs. Finally the window shattered, and cold air rushed in. Justine gave a sob, pulled Melanie up, helped her crawl through the jagged glass in the frame onto the porch roof, then followed. Her arms sank to the elbows in snow. Melanie's blood spotted the white. Above them, black smoke poured from the window in a thick column.

She dragged Melanie to the edge of the roof and they knelt there, Justine's arms clutching her, both of them sucking in lungfuls of icy, clear air. The snow in front of the house glowed a dull red, and Justine saw Angela in the road, her mouth open in a scream. Maurie crouched beside her, her face a rictus of terror. Behind them, Patrick walked in a tight circle, his hands on his head. Matthew Miller was coming down the road in a stiff-legged run, his coat half-buttoned. Justine tried to call him, but her voice rasped uselessly. Then Angela saw them and her mouth moved—“Mommy!”—and Matthew saw them, too. He ran past Patrick and up the walkway.

Heat pressed against Justine's back. She looked over her shoulder—the fire was in the green bedroom now, devouring the twin beds and the thin lace curtains, which exploded into
plumes of sparks. The snow on the porch roof began to soften and slide. Horrified, she looked down to where Matthew now stood in the snow that had drifted up against the house. The drop was twelve feet or more.

She took Melanie by the shoulders. “You have to jump.”

Melanie's eyes were blank with fear. She had one of the Emily books clutched to her chest. “Give me that,” Justine said. Melanie shook her head and held the book tighter. Justine ripped it from her grasp and threw it off the roof, pages flapping. “Get on your stomach.” Melanie was quaking so hard she could barely move, but she managed to get onto her belly. Justine lay down, too, her legs stretched back toward the house, her hands rigid with panic, gripping Melanie's wrists as her daughter slid backward, her legs dangling over the snow.

“Grab the edge,” Justine said, and one by one Melanie locked her shaking hands around the old metal gutter. “Now let go.” Melanie clung to the gutter, half on and half off the roof, straining against gravity, her eyes pleading. Justine, her voice breaking, said, “Please. You can do it,” and Melanie clenched her teeth, and then, with a strangled cry, she dropped. Her fingers strained on the gutter for a split second before they slipped away and she fell. Justine crawled to the edge, and when she saw her daughter safe, Matthew's arms around her, relief made her so dizzy it felt like the porch roof was spinning.

Then the window of the green bedroom exploded. Justine covered her head as flames belched through the window's jagged mouth. Matthew pushed Melanie back, horror in both their faces, and Justine knew Lucy's window was gone, too, and the living room; the house was going up like kindling now. Fire seared her back and the snow under her feet slid away. She stood up and launched herself off the roof, hurtling into the red-black night, her arms opening like wings, soaring on the hot breath of the fire. Down she fell, through
the roaring air, until she hit the snow hard, sank up to her knees, and crashed face-first into the silent, blessed cold.

A moment later Melanie's and Matthew's hands were upon her, turning her to face the sky. She stared up at it, stunned. The fire blotted out the stars, yet it made no sound. Snowflakes, melted by the heat, fell on her face like rain, but she didn't feel them.

Melanie's face bent over hers. “Mom! Mom!” Justine coughed, blinking the snow from her lashes. Sound returned, and with it, sensation. Cold. Heat. She moved her arms, then her legs, feeling them move thickly in the snow. She was okay. Nothing was hurt. She laughed out loud at the miracle of it, and Melanie's face loosened with relief. Then Matthew took her arms, and he and Melanie pulled her away from the flames that sprang from the living room to the porch swing to the porch roof, pulled her to where Angela's and Maurie's hands, too, reached and clung.

They watched from the road as the house burned. It didn't take long. They wrapped themselves in the quilt from the lavender bedroom, their faces warmed by the fire and their backs chilled by the cold air pushing in from the lake. Just before the fire trucks came, the roof fell in and the green bedroom and the yellow bedroom and the lavender bedroom crashed into the kitchen and the elm table and the parlor with the Christmas lights and the guitar and the ice skates that fell in their turn upon the photo albums and the dust-covered furniture in the basement, all gone already, of course; just as the Emily books and the little girl's clothes and the picture of Melanie and Angela at the Padres game were also gone. When the house collapsed, it gave a long, rolling moan, and a thousand billion sparks swirled into the night like fireflies. Ash drifted down all around, mixing with the snow that also fell.

Justine laid a hand on Melanie's head where it rested under her
chin. The edges of the Emily book she'd saved, locked once more in her arms, dug into Justine's ribs. Maurie buried her face in Matthew's coat and he put his arms around her while Patrick stood beside them and watched, without a word.

There was no fire hydrant, and the only water was frozen in the lake, so when the firefighters came they gave them oxygen to breathe and bandaged Melanie's arms where the broken window glass had torn them. Then they, too, stood and watched the burning, the lights of their trucks swirling and blending with the light from the fire until the whole world pulsed red.