My stomach a ball of nerves, I moved on to the third article. The final fire had happened a month after the incident at the dress shop. No one else had been home at the time, but the fire marshal said a very intense heat had originated from her bedroom, so intense they had trouble finding human remains. But they found melted dental fillings and determined Sylvia had been the source of the fire. At the time of the article, they were still investigating, but the author speculated she must have doused herself with gasoline or some kind of accelerant. Neighbors suggested that she’d been depressed, and one had found her hysterical a week prior to the last fire.
There was a photo of her, a candid that they must have gotten from someone. The woman in the photo was smiling and looked happy. Definitely not someone who’d set herself on fire, yet then again, most of us hid our true faces from the world. But something else stuck out at me. She looked familiar. Was it just a resemblance to my grandmother and mother?
“What has you looking so pensive?” Nana Stella said at the entrance to the kitchen.
I glanced up at her, running my teeth over my bottom lip. “I’m reading a newspaper article about your mother’s death.”
Her face froze.
“Did Great-Grandma Sylvia’s hair turn blond?”
“I told you I don’t know anything about what happened, Darcie. We’d moved away for your grandfather to take a new job. I hadn’t seen her since Christmas, and after all of this started, my father refused to let me visit. He said it would be bad for her. That it might make everything worse.”
“Setting fires, you mean? I found a couple of articles talking about that.”
“They weren’t her fault,” she said adamantly.
“Did you know about them at the time?”
“My father called to tell me about the arrest. I wanted to go home to see her, but he thought it would upset her.” She made a sound that was almost a growl. “If she did what they say she did, it wasn’t her fault. Mother would never have hurt anyone on purpose. I managed to sneak a letter off to her, through her friend, just to tell her I loved her and would come to see her as soon as I could. She sent me a response saying it was all a terrible misunderstanding. But she didn’t want me to come home until it was all cleared up.”
Taking my hands, she looked in my eyes and said, “It’s one of my greatest regrets, Darcie. Not coming home when I should have. I wouldn’t have listened to my father, but I’d just gotten a hysterectomy. The recovery took longer than I’d hoped.”
“Wait,” I said. “You had a hysterectomy?”
She nodded. “Broke your grandfather’s heart. He’d still hoped we might have another kid. Always wanted a houseful of them.” She gave me a sad look. “Two was plenty for me.”
“Mom had a hysterectomy when she had me.”
She gave me a look that suggested I was slow. “I know, honey. I was there.”
“Did you have your ovaries removed?”
“Oh, yes. They didn’t know as much as they do now. They took it all.”
“Did Mom have her ovaries removed?”
“Yes. She’d had issues with ruptured cysts, so her doctor took them clean out.”
“Neither of you went through a natural menopause?” I said.
“No, I guess not. Part of me was relieved,” Nana said. “Obviously, I struggled when it happened, but I didn’t feel so bad about it once my friends started having hot flashes. I worried I wouldn’t be able to help Gertrude when she went through the change, but she had hers removed too, so it was a moot point. Even if she hadn’t, I doubt she would have wanted advice from me. She tends to keep her business to herself.”
No one knew that better than me.
“Did you know your mother’s friends?” I asked. “Did you know Dorothy?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, fondness filling her eyes. “I babysat her children. She and Mother were as thick as thieves.” She gave me a curious look. “How do you know about her?”
I considered lying, worried she’d shut down, but I needed more information. “She was with Great-Grandma Sylvia during the first fire.”
A shadow crossed her face.
“Did you talk to Dorothy about the fires after your mother’s death?”
“She tried to talk to me about what happened to Mother, but I was too torn up to listen. I told her I didn’t want to know any details. I wanted to remember her the way I did. But she came to your grandfather’s funeral, and we’ve kept in touch ever since.”
I gasped. “Dorothy is still alive?”
Nana laughed. “She was younger than Mother by almost a decade. She had what they used to call a shotgun wedding, and her first baby was born when she was just sixteen. I think Mother took her under her wing.”
“Do you have her address?” I asked, trying to hide my excitement for fear she’d go silent again.
“Well, of course I do. We have tea at least once a month.”
“You do?” Which was when it hit me. I knew Nana met a friend named Dorothy once a month. One who wasn’t as wild as Sally Jo. I couldn’t feel too badly about not immediately making the connection between the two women, though; it had never occurred to me that Great-Grandma Sylvia’s friend could still be alive. “Do you think she’d be open to talking to me?”
Nana frowned. “Oh, Darcie.”
I took my hair down and fluffed it out. “I have another streak, Nana. Something is happening to me, and I need to know as much as possible.”
Fear filled Nana’s eyes. “Darcie.”
I understood why she was afraid. At the time, she’d believed her father, or at least mostly believed him. My situation was bringing all of that back, plus she had to feel some burden of guilt. If her mother hadn’t been crazy, then she’d been treated abysmally. But at this point, it didn’t matter. I needed to understand everything. I needed a strategy to stop this.
“I’ve started fires too. Three of them. One of them was in Mom’s kitchen the other night. You and the kids were in the very next room. Please, Nana. I need to know what happened to your mother.”
She studied me for a long moment before nodding slowly. “It’s time I stopped running from the truth.” A sad smile tipped up the corners of her mouth. “I’ll go call her now.”
Chapter Twenty-One
An hour later, we were both buckled up in my car, headed across town to see Dorothy. Nana sat perfectly still with her hands in her lap, and I felt like I was about to fidget right out of my seat.
“Maybe I should have stayed home to wait for the twins,” Nana said. “They’re going to come home to an empty house.”
“Don’t you even try that,” I said. “They come from school most days to an empty house. You need to know the truth, Nana. We both do.”
She didn’t say anything, just stared out the window.
“All this time you’ve spent with her, you haven’t asked her about your mother?”
“We’ve talked about her, yes, but not the fires. Dorothy knew it was a sensitive topic.”
“And you’re sure she’ll be open to discussing it?” I asked.
“I told her it was the reason for my call.”
I was wearing a lightweight knit hat that Harriet loved to wear, something I could use to hide the blond without looking too noticeable or out of place.
“Do you know anything about the mirror you gave me?” I asked.
She hesitated, then said, “No. I remember seeing it when I was a girl. She did tell me it was important to the women in our family, but that’s all I know. I’m sorry.”
I gave her a soft smile. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I saw you were suffering, but I kept all this to myself as though pretending it wasn’t happening to you would make it go away.”
“Well, you’re telling me now,” I said reassuringly. “That’s what matters.”
When we reached our destination, I parked in front of a white clapboard house that looked to have been built over a half century ago. Even though there
were still a few inches of snow on the ground, I could tell both the yard and the house were well maintained.
“You should see this place in the summer,” Nana said, opening her car door. “It’s bursting with flowers.”
We walked up to the front door together, me slowing my long strides to match her shuffle. It hit me that my grandmother was aging and I wouldn’t have her forever. Instinctively, I knew this—she was in her mid-eighties—but this was the first time the truth had hit me full in the face.
The front door opened as we reached the small porch, and a short older woman poked her head through the opening. “Stella, Darcie. Come in. Come sit by the fire.”
We walked into a small but cozy living room with furniture that looked like it had been new in the eighties. A fire was burning in the brick fireplace and the smell of something delicious hit me right in the face.
“You’ve been cooking,” Nana said in an accusatory tone.
“Oh, you stop,” Dorothy said with a wave of dismissal. “You know how much I enjoy it.”
“It smells wonderful,” I said, my stomach rumbling.
“It’s just a pot of chicken tortilla soup. I thought we could sit in the living room and eat on TV trays by the fire.” She pulled her cardigan closer. “I can’t seem to get warm these days.”
From what Nana had said, I suspected Dorothy was in her early nineties. She walked with a slight hunch and had the same shuffling gait as my grandmother.
“I still need to dish up the soup and set up the TV trays,” she said, heading for the kitchen.
“Why don’t you let me do that?” I asked. “It’s the least I can do after we barged into your home on such short notice.”
She looked up at me with her eyes made cloudy by cataracts. “I’m just so grateful for the chance to discuss this with Stella—and you, of course. I would have gotten up in the middle of the night if you’d asked.”
“No need for that,” I said with a chuckle. “But you and Nana can catch up while I dish up the soup.”
“Why, that would be lovely,” she said, then braced her side against the counter and proceeded to direct my every move, from which bowls to use—“The blue smaller ones, dear. Not the white. They’re much too big.”—to which spoons to how to set up the TV trays.
Ten minutes later, we were all settled in with our soup, drinks, and slices from a loaf of white bread that looked suspiciously fresh considering it had been in her cabinet two weeks past the expiration date.
After Dorothy and Nana made some small talk about what they’d been doing over the last few weeks, Dorothy shot Nana a smug glance. “So you finally want to know what really happened with your mother?”
“Yes,” Nana said, but she seemed to choke on the word.
“She’s indulging my curiosity,” I said, giving up on the soup. While it was delicious, my stomach was too tied up to get much down. “I want to know more about my great-grandmother, and there’s a chunk that’s missing from the months before her death. A piece we think you might know about. It’s come to our attention that the commonly accepted story probably isn’t true.”
She nodded, setting her spoon down on the plastic TV tray. “Of course. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“I found some newspaper articles,” I said. “Two were about fires that happened before the one that killed her. One was at a dress shop and the other was at her neighbor’s house.”
She frowned. “Alberta was an awful, awful person. But your great-grandmother always helped everyone. Alberta had been ill and Sylvia insisted on bringing her family dinner. Sylvia was one of the sweetest people I knew. It didn’t matter if that witch liked her or not, Sylvia was going to help her anyway.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
She paused, looking from me to my nana and back again. “I know this is going to sound crazy,” she said, “but going through the change unlocked something in Sylvia. When she had hot flashes…they caused fires. She wasn’t an arsonist. It was supernatural.” Nana Stella let out a slow breath of air, like a balloon with a pinprick puncture, but I didn’t react. I’d expected this. I suspected Nana had heard something about this before, but she’d never believed it in the past. That had changed. After giving us a moment to process her revelation, Dorothy said, “That was what happened at Alberta’s house. Sylvia had a hot flash, and she caught the drapes on fire.”
“Not so crazy,” I said with a soft smile. “Did it start with the incident at the dress shop?”
Dorothy frowned. “Yes, and if I hadn’t been there to see it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. It took us a while to figure out what was going on. Sylvia said she was feeling flushed and her entire face turned red. She was clutching a dress on the clothes rack, and the next thing we knew, it burst into flames. The police and the fire marshal questioned us, of course, but they couldn’t figure out how the fire had started. So while we were persons of interest, we were never arrested. But the police had their eye on us, and when Alberta called them about her curtains, they were eager to pin it on Sylvia.”
“To say it must have been difficult is an understatement,” I said. “How did her husband take the police interest?”
I had a feeling I already knew.
A sad look crossed Dorothy’s face, and she darted a glance at Nana Stella before answering me. “She told him what was happening, and he thought she was crazy. He told her she belonged in an institution. That she was acting like a hysterical woman.”
The good old hysterical woman bit. Classic.
I swallowed my anger, which tasted like bile.
“That must have been hard for her,” I said, glancing at Nana Stella too. She looked upset but resolute. She was ready to hear this. “The last article I found suggested that she was depressed.”
Dorothy made a face. “I read that article. That was Alberta’s doing. I told you she was a nasty piece of work.”
“Was Great-Grandma Sylvia depressed?” I asked.
“No. At the time of the last fire, she was worried but not depressed. She’d learned to anticipate the flashes and knew how to handle them. She had it under control.”
Fear knotted in my stomach. I’d hoped I had an advantage over Great-Grandmother Sylvia, but perhaps not.
“Did she get burned in any of the previous fires?” I asked.
“No,” Dorothy said, her already-wrinkled forehead creasing more deeply. “That’s why I never understood why she’d go down in the house fire. It didn’t make any sense.”
“What did her husband say about her death?” I asked.
“He refused to talk about it,” she said, shaking her head. “No great surprise there. He probably felt vindicated in a sense. But he wasn’t a truly bad man, just not an understanding one.” Lifting her gaze to my grandmother, she said, “Sylvia loved you more than life itself. You and your babies gave her so much happiness.”
“Why didn’t she tell me what was going on?” Nana asked, her voice breaking.
“She didn’t want to worry you, dear, and she knew it would be hard for you to believe what was happening to her. It would have been hard for anyone to believe it, and you’d always had such a practical mind.”
“So she died,” Nana said with a hint of anger. “And left me clueless and heartbroken.”
Sadness filled Dorothy’s eyes. “I tried to tell you she wasn’t crazy, but you refused to listen to the rest. In the end, I figured it was better that way. I suspected you’d think I was crazy too. So I stopped pressing. You had two children and plenty of worries of your own.’
“I should have been there for her after it started. My father didn’t believe her. Didn’t help her. I should have been there.”
What could you have done, Stella?”
“I don’t know,” Nana said. “But I wish I’d seen her just one more time. I should have come home after her arrest.”
“Oh, Stella,” Dorothy soothed. “None of us had any idea she would end up that way. If we had known, we would have sear
ched harder for a way to make it stop.”
My chest felt like it was caught in a vise, slowly squeezing my lungs. I could barely breathe and my heart beat like a thumping jackrabbit. There was no denying it now. The exact same thing that had happened to my great-grandmother was happening to me.
Which meant I was going to spontaneously combust.
“Did anything happen to her hair?” I forced out, sounding breathless.
Dorothy turned to face me. “Her hair?”
“Did her hair change colors?”
Her face went blank. “It had always been very dark, but it turned to corn silk. One section at a time. She hid it under scarves and didn’t tell another soul other than me. Your grandfather knew, of course, but he was convinced she was dyeing it. How did you know?”
I slowly took off my hat.
Dorothy gasped, her eyes wide with fear.
“The same thing is happening to me.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nana Stella looked like she was about to pass out.
“When was the last time you saw Sylvia before she died?” I asked.
“Oh, honey,” Dorothy said, still distressed over my presumed fate.
“Dorothy,” I said, more harshly than I’d meant to sound. “Focus. When was the last time you saw her?”
“The day before she died.”
“How was she feeling?” I asked. “What was her state of mind?”
“She felt strong. Although the arson charges were a source of stress, she felt she had some higher purpose. That all of the changes she’d been going through were leading to something. She was controlling the fires that came with her hot flashes, and she…she seemed excited.” Tears filled her eyes. “That’s why I found it so hard to believe when I learned she was gone.”
“Was her hair completely blond the last time you saw her?” I asked.
“No,” Dorothy said. “But she was mostly blond.”
Let it All Burn: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (From the Ashes Book 1) Page 17