Home Fires (2 page)

Chapter 2

I
mean, my God,” Gabrielle said, bracing herself against the kitchen counter. She had made Anne a plate of sliced apples and cheese, but she couldn't seem to deliver it to the table. Every time she thought of the fire, the danger Anne had put herself in, she'd feel the most dizzying combination of relief and fury.

“Everything is fine,” Anne said.

“Everything is not fine!” Gabrielle said, serving the plate with a forceful clatter. “What were you thinking, running back into a burning house?”

“I had to get something.”

“Something. You nearly died going in after a thing. A thing!”

Anne just sat there, staring. Gabrielle felt so helpless, completely unable to connect with her younger sister. Growing up, they had kept no secrets from each other. Adulthood and the dramatically different turns their lives had taken had changed that somewhat, but Gabrielle would have said they were still close.

Until Karen's death. Because now, no matter how much Gabrielle wanted to help, no matter how badly she wanted to ease her pain and protect her, she couldn't imagine exactly how it must have felt for Anne to see her four-year-old daughter die.

“I wish you had let us know you were coming to the island,” Gabrielle said, instead of what she really wanted to say.

“I didn't know myself until yesterday morning.”

“A spur-of-the-moment thing?” Gabrielle asked, hating the small talk.

“Yes.”

“Most people want to get off the island in February, not come to it. But then again, you're not most people.”

“No,” Anne said blankly. “I'm not.”

Great, Gabrielle thought. She'd been trying to pry a smile out of Anne, alluding to what she teasingly called Anne's “jet-set life.” But all conversational gambits led back to Karen. In the seven months since Karen died, Gabrielle had lost the ability to talk to her own sister. It was like talking to a shell. Like one of the channeled whelk shells Gabrielle collected on her daily walks on the beach: empty, cold, self-contained, and silent. Talk into one, and your words would echo right back to you.

“I'd been thinking for some time about coming out,” Anne said slowly. “To stay for a while.”

“How long is ‘a while'?”

“Until . . . I don't know. I just know I can't stay in New York anymore.”

Gabrielle wasn't sure whether Anne intended this as an opening, but she dropped the towel she had been folding and took the chair beside Anne's.

“It must be so hard for you,” she said, holding Anne's hand.

Anne squeezed back, hard enough to startle Gabrielle. Tears were running down her cheeks, but even now she wouldn't speak.

“I don't know how you've stayed this long,” Gabrielle said, completing the sentence in her mind:
in the apartment where Karen died
.

“I can't stand being in the same city as Matt,” Anne said.

“I was thinking more of . . .” Gabrielle began.

But Anne wouldn't allow her close to the subject of Karen. “I still love him, you know. It's ridiculous, but I do.”

“I'd like to get my hands on him,” Gabrielle said. Matt had left immediately after the funeral. He had been planning to move out anyway, apparently; Karen's death was just his excuse.

“Gabrielle?” Anne said, giving the name an inflection at once stern and plaintive.

“Anne,” Gabrielle said, finally exploding. “Is there anything I can talk to you about? We can't talk about Matt, you won't let me near Karen. I loved her, too, you know.”

“Everything's lost,” Anne said, her voice barely a whisper, her eyes focused on the untouched plate of fruit and cheeses.

“Not everything,” Gabrielle said emphatically. “You can't think like that.”

Anne didn't reply.

Frustration, the desire for closeness, had pushed Gabrielle over the edge, and now Anne had retreated even more. Gabrielle needed to be in control of her relationships, and when she wasn't, it drove her crazy. Her mind would start to sizzle; her body must have produced some sort of chemical, because she could actually taste frustration in the back of her throat.

Absently, Gabrielle plucked some lint off the sleeve of Anne's beige sweater. Cashmere, she thought, hating herself for noticing. Despising the fact that envy was creeping in.

Gabrielle, who had adored Anne since the moment their parents had brought her home from the hospital, couldn't stand the way she felt. But here she was, married to her perpetually debt-ridden high-school sweetheart and living on the same godforsaken island she had grown up praying would sink into the sea, while Anne was living the good life.

Anne and Matt, so gorgeous and in love, so rich! Every year his business just got better, necessitating more and more exotic business trips, always with Anne along, of course. Every postcard of the Taj Mahal, the northern beaches of Thailand, the Baie des Anges, another trigger for Gabrielle's envy.

And who would have thought that Anne's silly childhood hobby would bring her fame and an income all her own? That Anne could have become well-known for the delicate little collages she fashioned of images cut from postage stamps? Her quirky collages hung in galleries in New York and Tokyo, and the unique pieces had recently been used on the covers of a line of classical-music CDs.

The great irony being that as a child, Gabrielle had been the better artist, had won prizes for her work all through childhood and college—even in contests against Anne.

Now, gazing down at her sister who had “lost everything,” Gabrielle felt poisoned with resentment and the guilt it brought. But life on the island was hard. Especially in winter, when the construction business would stop dead.

She would see Steve drinking beer and watching TV, and instead of screaming at him to get his feet off the goddamn table and his butt out of the easy chair and help her do the dishes, she would stand at the sink wishing Anne's galleries would dump her. Gabrielle would imagine her own teenage daughter, Maggie, making high honors and getting into Harvard while secretly hoping that Karen, who'd been enrolled at some fancy New York kindergarten, would grow up into a troublemaker and a dropout.

Thinking of the bad luck she had imagined for Karen, Gabrielle had to turn her face away from Anne. Karen had died a month before she would have entered kindergarten.

“Can you smell the smoke?” Anne asked, raising her wrist to her nose. “One night in the hospital and two showers, and I can still smell it and taste it. The poor house. I burned down our childhood home.”

“Steve says the damage isn't too bad, considering. Three rooms upstairs are ruined, and the roof. And the wiring was a disaster waiting to happen. He'll fix it.”

“It's nice to have a builder in the family,” Anne said, smiling for the first time since coming to Gabrielle's house.

“Yes, well . . . the insurance check will be a welcome, welcome sight.”

“Your business must be slow this time of year.”

“That's putting it mildly. Although we'll get a boost at Valentine's Day.” The Seduction Table, her catering business. Gabrielle was aiming for the love market, and although it went over big with the summertime yachties, the year-round islanders were too practical and unromantic to buy it.

The telephone rang. Gabrielle saw Anne close her eyes wearily, probably hoping that the call would bring a reprieve from Gabrielle's ministrations.

“Hello,” Gabrielle said, all business, planning to cut short whoever was calling and get back to Anne.

“Gabrielle, hi. It's Thomas Devlin. May I speak with your sister, please?”

“Just a second,” Gabrielle said, covering the mouthpiece with her hand and jostling Anne. “It's for you.”

“Who?” Anne asked, hope shimmering behind the frown in her eyes. She probably thought it was Matt.

“Thomas Devlin. The fireman who went in after you.”

Anne's frown deepened, and she waved the call away. “Tell him I'm asleep.”

Gabrielle hesitated, wishing Anne would make the simple gesture of thanking the man for saving her life. Wouldn't that be the healthy, life-affirming, getting-back-to-normal thing to do?

“Please,” Anne said, sensing that Gabrielle was about to push. “I don't feel like talking. I'll send him a note later.”

“I'm sorry, Thomas,” Gabrielle said directly into the receiver, turning her back on Anne. “She seems to be asleep. But I'll tell her you called.”

“How is she doing?” he asked.

“She's going to be just fine,” Gabrielle said, without a trace of conviction in her voice.

T
HOMAS
Devlin hung up the phone in his workshop and tried to put Anne Davis out of his mind and get back to work. Cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, gold watches, Swiss chimes, inner works without faces covered every inch of wall space and every available tabletop. He had inherited his father's tools and some of his knowledge, but he considered clockmaking a hobby, not a trade.

Every time he entered a burning building, he'd prove it to himself over again: he was a firefighter through and through. The fact amazed him. After the bad fire in Boston so many years ago, the one that had burned off half his face and all of his joy, a betting man would have said that Thomas Devlin was finished as a fireman.

Thomas had believed it himself.

He'd taken refuge on the island, set himself up as a clockmaker, and one day astounded himself by joining the volunteer fire department. Most of the calls they got were routine: grease fires at the Fish House, kids playing with matches behind the school, barbecues run amok. Then there were calls like the one they'd had this week, the house on Salt Whistle Road.

He kept seeing the woman.

His first sight of her, when she was standing in the snow, was vivid in his mind: the fierce beauty in her dark eyes, her clenched fists and the tension in her shoulders, her nightgown molded to her body by the wind.

He remembered how his heart had pounded when he saw her enter the house, even more when he followed her in and realized how hard it would be to find her in the smoke. She had been moving with hurricane force, full of some life-or-death purpose, so it had seemed doubly shocking to find her crumpled on the floor. She had seemed somehow invincible, a woman of superhuman strength. He had lifted her with so little effort: she was light as a feather. Her body had been supple in his arms, and cold, from her standing barefoot in the snow.

Now, working on Emma Harwood's mantel clock, Thomas Devlin pushed the glasses up his nose. The left earpiece rubbed on his scars, making them itch. The wind howled outside, but all he could hear was the clock. Strange that someone who had chosen to work on clocks half the day couldn't stand the sound of ticking. It made him feel trapped. Six-foot-four and using doll-sized tools. Hot and uneasy, he pushed back his chair, knocking over a cigar box full of springs.

“Damn it,” he said, watching the minuscule springs roll under the desk, into floor cracks, behind the bookcase. He just stood there scratching his scar. His concentration was useless.

Time for a ride. Anything for some open air, maybe take a drive out to the dunes and watch the waves build. The wind had shifted east, and some good breakers should be rolling in. Stop thinking about the mystery woman who had come to the island. She had upset his balance in a way he couldn't quite define, and that made him feel nervous and ornery.

He threw on his parka and grabbed the truck keys. Just as he stepped outside, damned if Peggy Lawson wasn't pulling down the driveway. She climbed out of her red Neon holding Mac's gold watch at him like a hypnotist on the stage in a New Bedford dive.

“Loses ten minutes every other day,” Peggy said, her voice raspy from cigarettes.

“I'll give it a look,” Thomas said.

“Sure you have time? I hear you're pretty busy being a hero these days.”

“Oh, the Salt Whistle fire?” he asked casually, recalling that Hugh Lawson, Peggy and Mac's nephew, had been at the scene.

“I hear you saved the lady of the house,” Peggy said in a way that made it clear she had a story to tell.

“Anne Davis. Do you know her?”

“Of course. She's an island girl, born and bred, just like me. Though she certainly tried to put it behind her. Know what I mean?”

Thomas Devlin knew that nothing but sorrow could come from listening to rumors, so he started to edge toward his truck. But Peggy's car was blocking him.

“I went to school with her sister, Gabrielle. You know Gaby Vincent, don't you? Steve's wife?”

“Sure,” Thomas said, amazed all over again. He couldn't quite picture it, the woman he had rescued being related to Gabrielle. Gabrielle had big bones, big red hair, a big Ford van, and a laugh he swore echoed from here to Nantucket. Nothing seemed to faze her. Anne was small. Entering the house, she had moved like a linebacker. But later, when Thomas had laid her down and she opened her eyes, Thomas could see that something inside had broken. That whatever had hurt her was worse than the fire.

“She was a wild one, Anne was. And trouble has certainly followed her. Money can't always buy happiness.”

“No, well . . .”

“She married it, and a lot of good it did her.”