Tangled Ashes (28 page)

Jade leaned forward. “What stops it? What at least makes the craving bearable?”

Beck stood and walked to the window, looking out at the sputtering lanterns around the drive. “Depends. Sometimes just getting busy. But sometimes being busy makes me want to drink more. I don’t know. Most of the time, nothing makes it more bearable. I can run until I pass out and still wake up reaching for a bottle. It’s—” He paused, again unable to formulate the feelings into words. “It’s brutal,” he said.

Jade let the silence stretch. Then she asked, “How many days?”

Beck glanced at the project calendar thumbtacked to the wall above his bed. “Eight days,” he said, both pleased and threatened by the number.

“Is that as long as you’ve gone?”

“In the past couple of years, anyway.”

“Becker . . . ,” Jade began. Then she stopped herself.

“What?” Beck said, turning from the window. “What were you going to say?”

Jade sighed and met his eyes. “If you need to keep yourself busy in the next few days before your flight, you’re welcome to spend time with the children and me. We’re not very exciting, but we might be better than the four walls of your office.”

Becker was a little surprised by the invitation. “You sure?”

“It’s . . . the least we can do.”

Given the tenor of previous conversations, Becker knew the invitation had cost her dearly. “And that wouldn’t be infringing on any of your ‘boundaries’?” he asked, drawing imaginary quotation marks around the final word.

“You’re leaving in six days—I think I’m safe,” she said with a slight smile. “Besides, I don’t want your relapse on my conscience.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

She smiled more broadly. “You’re welcome. By the way, Mr. Fallon wanted to know if you’d be willing to come downstairs at the end of the meal. He wants to introduce you to his guests.”

Becker nodded his agreement.

“Good. I’ll send Philippe up when Fallon is ready for you.”

She turned and left the apartment, her high heels clicking on the hardwood floor.

Fallon stood in the doorway between the dining rooms, a glass of champagne in his hand, addressing the hundred guests he’d gathered for his wife’s fortieth birthday.

“My father brought me up to avoid mixing business with pleasure,” he said, “but on evenings like this one, the two are inseparably linked. There are, of course, different types of pleasure represented here tonight, the foremost of which is my beautiful bride’s fortieth birthday. Now, most women might prefer to keep their exact age quiet for fear of being labeled ‘old,’ but I think you’ll agree that Sylvia’s pregnancy is doing what no amount of plastic surgery and fibbing about her age could—it’s keeping her young and vibrant and more exquisite than ever.” As the audience chuckled and agreed, Fallon lifted his glass toward his wife. The guests followed suit. “Thank you, my love, for being born forty years ago and for spending the last ten with me. All that I knew and dreamed was empty before you.” Tears shimmered in Sylvia’s eyes as he concluded by saying, “Happy birthday, Sylvia.”

There was a chorus of well wishes from the diners through which Eva’s “Happy birthday, Mom!” cut brightly. Sylvia acknowledged her guests with a nod and bent over to kiss the top of Eva’s head before blowing a kiss to her husband.

Fallon raised his hand to request silence and continued. “I must also acknowledge that this celebration marks the end of the long and tedious renovation project that transformed this castle into the banquet site you see tonight. There’s more to come, of course. The hotel rooms upstairs are well on their way to completion, and the stables will be renovated after that. But this—this masterpiece,” he said, pointing his glass at the grandeur of the dining rooms, “is something to be celebrated.”

There were sounds of agreement from the guests.

“When Sylvia and I first dreamed up this evening,” Fallon continued, “it was with the sad certainty that our plans were probably too grand to actually be accomplished. And then . . .” He paused dramatically. “And then I met a man by the name of Gary Tyler at a conference in Connecticut. Imagine my astonishment when he turned out to be one of the two owners of T&B construction, an up-and-coming company from the United States’ east coast that happens to specialize in historical renovations! Gary gave me his card, assured me that our dreams were not unrealistic, and suggested I send him a more detailed outline of my French ambitions. And the rest, as they say, is history.”

Motioning for Becker to join him, he added, “It is my pleasure to introduce Marshall Becker to you, the other half of the T&B team, the man whose vision made my dreams a reality and whose expertise in the field made of Lamorlaye’s tired old castle the luxurious landmark it is today. Mr. Becker,” he said, raising his glass, “I thank you.”

Becker didn’t hear the murmurs of appreciation or the smattering of applause. His eyes were riveted on the glow he could see through the French doors—a flickering golden light that seemed to be coming from the windows of the stable’s first floor. Before the applause had died down, he’d made it to the French doors and thrown them open, now certain that something was seriously amiss in the castle’s old stables. He grabbed the fire extinguisher that hung on a hook beside the curtains flanking the doors and looked over his shoulder at Fallon. “Call the fire department,” he said.

Becker ran toward the stately building with the extinguisher, seeing as he approached that the door at the center of the building was ajar. By the time he reached it, the smoke pouring through it loomed thick and black. Becker shrugged out of his jacket and ripped some of the buttons off his shirt in his haste to open it. Then he pulled the neck of his undershirt up over his nose and pushed the door farther inward as he entered the building.

The fire had engulfed most of the wooden stairs just inside the door, its flames devouring wood and old carpeting as it went. Becker began to spray white foam on the flames with the extinguisher, but the fire was too vast and too well-fed for the small measure to hinder its destructive power. Outside the door, he could hear Fallon yelling orders to some of the men. “Get the hose from the garden shed, René! François, keep everyone back!” Becker knew there was a tap just outside the dining rooms that had been used in the past to water the flower beds, and he hoped the garden hose would extend from there to the stables to check the flames’ progress until the fire department arrived.

Beck set to work again with the fire extinguisher, putting out the flames on the bottom steps and slowly climbing, hoping the stairs would hold his weight. He thought he glimpsed one of the lanterns from the drive lying sideways on the landing above and wondered if that was the source of the blaze. He was only five steps up when he heard the sobs. At first, he thought he’d imagined the sound, but when it came again, he stopped firing the extinguisher and stood still, ears straining. Though the fire’s noise was growing, Beck could hear a whimpering at the top of the staircase, and much as he tried to convince himself that it was a trapped bird or rat, he knew it had to be human.

“Hello?” he called. He listened again, but this time he heard no sound over the crackling of the fire. “Hello? Is someone up there?”

Fallon, his jacket held over his mouth and nose, appeared at the foot of the stairs, his eyes defeated but purposeful. “Get out of here, lad,” he said, gripping Becker’s arm. “The fire department’s on its way.”

Becker shook his head, his eyes watering from the smoke, and pointed upward. “I think there’s someone up on the second floor,” he yelled over the sound of the fire.

“Someone . . . ? How do you know?”

“I heard something. I’m almost sure I did!”

The two men listened for a moment. “Probably just a—” Fallon stopped abruptly as unintelligible whimpers rose above the chaos once again. “I heard that,” he yelled. “There is someone up there.”

Becker pulled his employer out the door where they could hear each other better. “What’s the layout on the second floor?”

“It’s a long hallway with bedrooms on either side, but it’s been sealed off at the ends.”

“Is there another way up there?”

Fallon pointed toward the stables’ entrance. “Just those stairs. I’m afraid they’re beyond use already.”

At that moment, the cries from the second floor grew loud enough to reach the men where they stood. They might have been the guttural, frantic call of a caged animal, but they ended with a desperate “Help me!” that made both men pale.

“There’s got to be another way!” Becker said, his eyes on the flames blackening the windows of the floor above. His lungs felt scorched from the smoke he’d inhaled. He coughed and nearly threw up from the exertion.

“I don’t think so,” Fallon answered, his face gaunt with dread. “With the communicating door boarded up, the only way to the second floor is up those stairs!”

Jojo appeared so quickly that he startled Becker. He grabbed him by the arm and started to pull him toward the far end of the building.

“Wait!” Becker said, trying to pry his arm free, stunned at the power in the smaller man’s grip as he dragged him away from the flames. “There’s someone up there! We need to—”

“There’s another way,” Jojo said in French, spearing Becker with a look that afforded no discussion. “Follow me.” With that, he let go of Becker’s arm and set off at a trot toward the entrance at the far end of the building, an axe gripped in his hand. Becker might have hesitated or argued, had he been given the time to think, but there was something so authoritative about Jojo’s words that he launched into a run without question and yelled back at Fallon to keep using the fire extinguisher on the stairs. He thought he heard the sound of water gushing from a hose and hoped he was right.

When they reached the end of the building, Jojo tried the door and found it locked. He made short work of breaking the lock off with his axe and pushed inside, quickly moving through two rooms of dilapidated living quarters to a narrow staircase at the back. He took the steps two at a time, so quick and agile that Becker was hard-pressed to keep up, but the memory of that whimpering voice pushed him on, up the stairs and into a hallway that was filling with smoke.

“Step where I step,” Jojo instructed, his voice the sandpaper equivalent of his appearance. “You step anywhere else, you fall.”

“The hallway’s blocked!” Becker yelled at Jojo. “They barricaded the door to keep people out of this part of the building!”

Jojo trotted off into the smoke, holding up his axe in answer to Beck’s concern. Beck mimicked every move the older man made, staying just a couple paces behind him. There were segments of the floor that had completely rotted away and others where the ceiling had collapsed into a heap of plaster and termite-weakened wood. But Jojo didn’t pause. He made his way down the hallway as if he were walking on rocks in a stream, knowing exactly where to step next and which areas to avoid.

When the two men finally reached the boarded door, Jojo motioned for Becker to step back and swung his axe—again and again—until he’d obliterated a large portion of the wood, allowing even more smoke into the narrow corridor. Then he used the butt of the axe to whale on the boards on the other side that had anchored the door closed. Using his powerful hands, he did away with the remaining obstacles until a large-enough opening had been made for him to pass through. He turned back to Becker and handed him the axe, yelling, “Make a wider space!” Then he disappeared into the smoke.

Becker, once again, didn’t dare question the man’s instructions. He set to work widening the opening in the door, trying to keep his T-shirt over his mouth and nose and using his bare hands to tear away the last of the boards that blocked access to the other side of the hallway. Once the barricade had been removed, he ventured deeper into the smoke, praying that the floor under his feet wouldn’t send him plunging into the flames below. “God,” he murmured out loud, his voice rough from inhalation. “God, help me.”

The smoke was so thick and black that he nearly collided with Jojo. “Get back!” Jojo yelled. “The floor’s giving out!” He pushed past Becker without another word.

Jojo held a motionless woman draped over his shoulder. He carried her as if she weighed nothing at all, holding her in place with one arm across her legs and using his other hand to feel along the wall, as the smoke was too opaque to see through. Even in the blinding, painful billows, he placed his feet as precisely as if he were playing a game of hopscotch, his unerring memory of the space a salvatory gift.

As he followed, Becker recognized the canary-yellow fabric of the dress the woman wore, but there was no time for questions now. The sound of sirens pierced through the crescendoing roar of the flames as the two men stumbled down the stairs and out into the clearer night air. Jojo deposited Thérèse’s unconscious form on the grass under a patch of lilac trees with a gentleness that astonished Becker. Then, rather than disappearing into the darkness as Beck expected him to, the old man sat on the grass next to Thérèse, took her hand in his, and began to stroke it.

“Becker, my lad!” Fallon exclaimed as he hurried to his employee’s side. “Is everything all right?”