The wind ripped the flames toward them from below. Emily teetered and slammed her back against the brick wall to steady herself, attempting to cover Skye’s back and head with her forearms and hands. The makeshift cushion the neighbors were constructing wouldn’t be enough. She could not throw her baby over.
“Where are the firemen?” Kathleen yelled above the noise of the fire and exploding glass. She was holding on to the fire escape railing, the fire only a few feet below them.
The metal of the fire escape was heating Emily’s bare feet. Panic enveloped her that she would need to trust her baby to the four flights of air and the hands of strangers. No!
Finally, Emily heard the sirens. Through the smoke, she glimpsed a flash of red. A fire truck. Even before the truck stopped, a ladder with a bucket swung around and up, toward them. The bucket bumped against the railing of the fire escape. A firefighter in a mask scrambled up the ladder.
Emily cowered against the brick wall as a new shot of flames burst from the window below. Emily could see the reflected red glow in the firefighter’s face mask. The firefighter reached out to take Skye.
Emily extricated Skye from her neck. Skye looked at the man and loosened her grip on Emily. She put out her arms. “Firefighter!”
The firefighter quickly passed Skye along to a second fireman who stood below him. The first firefighter turned back to the women.
His voice was muffled as he spoke to Kathleen. “Can you climb over?”
Kathleen had always seemed strong, but she was off-balance now. “I don’t know.”
The fireman left the bucket, climbed over, and picked Kathleen up. Emily climbed over the banister after them, the rough metal catching her gym shorts and scraping her already-raw legs. She landed off-kilter inside the bucket, her feet on cool metal. The firefighter steadied her with his body, still balancing Kathleen. “Hang on.”
The crowded bucket swooped through the air in a moment of vertigo, down and away from the building. It lowered to the street. People were clapping and cheering.
The second firefighter handed Skye back to Emily.
“Take her to the ambulance to get checked out. Watch for glass,” the first firefighter warned Emily.
When Emily’s bare feet landed on the ground and she tried to walk, her legs trembled with adrenaline, nearly giving out. A female EMS worker grabbed Emily’s arm to steady her.
A woman who worked at the corner bodega approached and handed flip-flops to Emily and Kathleen. The ground Emily and Kathleen walked on had become a minefield of broken glass from the windows above. The sounds of axes, breaking glass, sirens, and sobbing survivors had created a sound bubble. The whirring of helicopter blades approached. None of it felt real.
Unable to think, Emily followed instructions. She and Kathleen went with the EMS attendant. Emily sat in the ambulance with Skye on her lap. The paramedic checked Skye’s vital signs and looked at her throat with a flashlight. “She’s fine. Good job, mama.”
Emily found herself weeping.
The EMS attendant put ointment on a few specks of pink on Skye’s arms. She had fallen asleep in Emily’s arms. “Young kids sleep a lot after a trauma,” the EMS worker said. “It’s normal. There’s no sign of serious smoke inhalation. The burns are no worse than sunburn. Keep them clean. Now let’s take a look at your legs.”
“I’m okay. I’m not hurt. You should look at her,” Emily said, turning back toward Kathleen, whose legs were streaked with red where the sparks had hit them. Emily’s legs looked the same.
From the back of the ambulance, Emily saw another ambulance pull away, siren blasting. Kathleen signaled the departing ambulance. “How bad?”
The EMS worker replied, “Some burns, but nothing life threatening. We don’t know for sure yet whether others didn’t get out. The firefighters will go door to door.”
CHAPTER
33
SITTING IN THE glare of the ambulance, Kathleen let the EMS worker look at her legs. She didn’t need to go to the doctor. Her burns were minor. Red streaks ran down her legs, only a few blisters coming up, no worse than a minor kitchen accident, just more widespread. Emily was in similar shape. The baby was fine, thank god, asleep with a thumb in her mouth and an arm draped around Emily’s neck.
The EMS worker shined a light down Kathleen’s throat. “You’re red. If you develop shortness of breath or the coughing gets bad later, seek medical attention. The damage from smoke inhalation can take time to show up.”
“Okay,” Kathleen said, but she was only half listening. With Emily and Skye safe, her mind was on her tenants. She just wanted to make sure the others were okay.
Kathleen joined Emily outside the ambulance. The tenants gathered in the cordoned-off street, staying out of the path of the firefighters entering and exiting the building. The group watched and waited for lack of anything else to do or anywhere to go. It was clear that none of them would be returning to their homes tonight, or anytime soon. Kathleen felt such sorrow for them. She’d lost her home too, but she hadn’t raised children, shared a life with long-gone parents, or slept beside the love of her life for decades here. Her losses could be replaced.
A fireman came out of the building holding a small dog with a white coat turned mostly gray with soot.
A man exclaimed joyfully, “Coco, Coco, mijo.”
“The Red Cross will be coming with a bus soon,” Kathleen heard a cop say. “They’ll put you up.”
Kathleen considered that for the first time. Where would she stay? She didn’t want to go to a Red Cross hotel.
“Thank you for helping me,” she said to Emily. “For saving my life.”
Emily let out a long, shuddering breath, unconsciously rocking the baby on her hip. “You had me worried.”
“Do you want to come with me? To a hotel?” Kathleen asked.
“I’m going home. There’s space for us.” Emily’s eyes were watery. “Truthfully, I really want my mother. I know it sounds stupid.”
“Not at all.” Kathleen felt a deep melancholy, wishing she could be a part of that. Times like this drove home the truth of how alone she was. “I’m going to stay here until the firefighters are done, in case I’m needed. You go on and put Skye to bed.”
Kathleen kissed Skye on the head and hugged Emily around her shoulders. Emily gave her a strange look.
A man with a freckled face and an Afro approached Kathleen. He wore an FDNY uniform. “May I speak to you privately?”
They walked a few yards away from the tenants and Emily.
“I’m told you’re the landlady?” he said.
“Yes.”
“It will take a few days to get a preliminary report on the cause of this fire, but the way it burned, the speed it burned at, I’d lay odds on unnatural causes.”
Kathleen’s stomach tightened. “Arson?”
“I’m sorry to say.”
“Who would do that? Why?”
Of course, he couldn’t answer.
* * *
A drizzle began to fall, coating the ash on Emily’s clothes and the ground. She stared at the building from the middle of the street. The sky spun with rotating red police lights. The windows at the front of the building had become charred black tunnels. The memory of Kathleen came back to her: Kathleen looking out at her from behind her window, terrified, trapped, as the room filled with smoke. The fireball coming toward them. The mattresses under the fire escape, four flights below. Emily’s heart galloped again, her chest tight as she put her face against Skye’s hair and forced herself to breathe.
“Does anyone have a phone I could use?” Emily asked her neighbors.
Coco’s owner tapped in his passcode and handed Emily his phone, and an older woman reached for Skye to free up Emily’s hands. “Dejame.”
“Thank you.” Skye didn’t stir when the woman took her. Emily dialed her mother’s number, and her voice shook as she greeted her. “Mom. There was a fire in my building. We’re okay, but I need to come home. I don’t
have money or my phone.”
“Oh my god, okay. I’ll get you an Uber.”
Fifteen minutes later, Emily’s Uber pulled up to the entrance to her mother’s building. The rain had turned to a fine mist.
Lauren was outside waiting for them. She hugged Emily, Skye between them. “God, you smell like fire. I didn’t realize you were in the fire.” She kissed the limp toddler and held Emily at arm’s length, examining them for injuries. “You’re both okay?”
Emily collapsed into the nape of her mother’s neck, sobbing. She just needed to get it out. All the fear and shock. “If anything had happened to Skye …”
“Okay, okay. You’re all right. You’re both fine,” Lauren said soothingly.
Emily felt better within a moment and wiped away stray tears under her eyes. She and Skye were alive, amazingly unharmed. Nobody had died.
Carl met Emily inside the apartment door and hugged her. He stood aside to let her and Lauren in. She looked back before she followed her mother to her bedroom to borrow a change of clothes. Carl was walking better, no hesitation in his steps.
Seeing Emily’s reaction, Lauren said, “He’s already scheduled to return to work. He just needs to get final clearance from the FBI doctor. His appointment is this week at Federal Plaza.”
Emily felt a deep joy and gratitude for that bright spot.
The black-and-white cat rubbed Emily’s legs when she sat down to eat a meal of leftover baked chicken and rice. Emily was still damp from her shower, wearing a pair of her mother’s sweats and a T-shirt without underwear or a bra. She’d washed her underwear in the sink and hung them up, but she doubted the smell of smoke would come out. Skye was fast asleep in the crib her mother had added to Emily’s old room when Skye was born, for sleepovers.
“I have to buy clothes and a new stroller tomorrow,” Emily told Lauren and Carl, who kept her company at the table.
“I have no cases scheduled,” Lauren said. “We’ll go to the Department of Health first to get you a birth certificate. They’ll give it to me with my identification. Then we can go across the street to the Federal Building to get you a new social security card. I think, after that, you can get a new driver’s license, if you want to get it in person. But you could order it online.”
The stress knotted in Emily’s chest again, and she put down her fork. “This is so overwhelming. Every minute, something new comes to mind that I need to replace or that I lost, and things that I have to do.” She picked up the cat to pet him, a thought occurring to her. “And there’s a cat here. They won’t let me take Rusty next weekend if I stay here with you guys. The volunteers can have other dogs in the house but not cats. Damn. Rusty’s already had a switch in weekend trainers. He’s so close to graduation. It’s the worst time for an upheaval.”
“We’ll figure something out,” Lauren said.
“Call the puppy people tomorrow,” Carl suggested.
Emily felt a welling in her chest. Gratitude for her mother and Carl. “Okay. After I call Skye’s pediatrician. I want to make sure I do whatever I’m supposed to do to deal with the trauma. I can’t believe she’s had to go through something like this.” Emily sniffed back tears. “All I wanted was to give her a normal, safe childhood … and now this.”
CHAPTER
34
AFTER MIDNIGHT, KATHLEEN walked into the frigid air of a hotel lobby on West Seventy-Fifth Street and Broadway. Marble floors and gold banisters contrasted richly with the lobby’s cherry-paneled walls. Without a watch or phone or home, she felt as if she were floating without time or place: brain fog. It must be the shock.
The hotel manager, barrel chested with a widow’s peak like Eddie Munster, opened his mouth in an O and closed it primly. “Kat, my god. You’re covered in soot.”
She swallowed, close to choking up for the first time since the fire. “Stan … a fire … my building. I grabbed my keys, but the fire traveled so quickly, there was no time to take anything else.”
Stan ushered her to the reception desk and handed the person on duty his credit card. “I’m booking her a room on my card. She’ll bring hers tomorrow when she replaces it. She’s a friend.”
The receptionist smiled and gave Kathleen a key card. “I’m so sorry. Let me know if there’s anything we can do for you.”
“Put your clothes in a laundry bag,” Stan said as he walked Kathleen toward the elevator. “We have bathrobes upstairs. I’ll have your clothes washed and dried, so you’ll have something to wear in the morning until you can buy something. Do you need any money to tide you over?”
“No, I’ll be okay. Thank you for making things so easy for me.”
“It’s going to be hard enough.”
* * *
The next morning, just before nine, the sun topped the apartment buildings on Central Park West. Kathleen squinted as she walked toward the park on a brownstone-lined side street. The sun bored into her eyes, aggravating a headache she’d treated with a couple of Tylenols that hadn’t kicked in yet. She had a sore throat, too, and her legs felt as if she’d spent a July day at the beach without sunscreen.
Once inside the park, Kathleen took in the hush of the car-free zone and the cool shade scented with blossoms. The masses of tourists hadn’t yet converged on Strawberry Fields, with its Beatles lyrics etched into the ground. Jovial groups of tourists had still filled the hotel restaurant when she left. She was grateful for the relative solitude: just her, the dog walkers, joggers, and speeding cyclists.
Twenty-five minutes later, she walked into a glass-walled establishment off the lobby of an office building on Lexington Avenue. She greeted the receptionist at the black lacquer desk. Kathleen gave her the box number and entered her password on a tablet the woman turned to her.
A deeply tanned security guard who looked like a CIA retiree—at least the way they looked in the movies—escorted Kathleen down a black-carpeted hallway. They reached a room with walls lined with safe-deposit boxes. She unlocked the box with a key she’d kept on her key ring, the only key on her ring that would fit any lock now. The guard unlocked a second lock on the box and left her.
Inside a small privacy room with a table, two chairs, and unadorned walls, she took her birth certificate and an expired passport from the box. She could use the passport for photo identification to get her credit cards and passport replaced. She next took out a rubber-banded packet of one-hundred-dollar bills and a second packet of twenties, wondering what Lauren would think about the contents of the box. She might be coming here sooner rather than later. Kathleen had left an extra key with her attorney and given him Lauren’s contact information in case anything ever happened to her.
Kathleen had never forgotten her child, not for a single day. And now Kathleen’s life felt precarious, riskier than it had felt for many years.
* * *
At the Apple store on Fifth Avenue, across from the Plaza Hotel, a sweet young man—pimples and short hair except for a bun on top of his head—helped Kathleen download all her information from the cloud. She breathed a small sigh of relief. Her life was housed online as much as in her building.
Next, she sat in a Starbucks to order a Windows laptop. She looked around, hoping no one in the store was waiting for a chance to hack anyone stupid enough to do payment transactions on an unsecured network. There was a mom with a toddler. A tourist family, rosy cheeked and blond haired. She guessed they were from Idaho or Indiana. A couple of college kids studied in a corner. It was early in the day for nefarious hackers.
One thing she couldn’t get out of her mind, though, was the fire inspector telling her the fire hadn’t been an accident. From what she’d seen on the news over the years, mental illness or domestic violence revenge was often the precipitating factor when it came to arson in occupied buildings. She didn’t think any of her tenants were in that sort of fix, but one never knew.
Her mind returned to her visit with Wayne and his veiled threat. I don’t want to see something bad happen to you, he’d said.
You’re screwing with the wrong people, Kat.
She felt a tightness in her chest as she brought the thought to full consciousness. Could Wayne have told someone she was asking about Sharon? Someone dangerous? Emily had thought cars were following her. Could Emily have told the wrong person that she was the only witness in Sharon’s murder investigation? Was there a connection between the cars and Wayne’s warning? And were both those things connected to the fire?
She chided herself for her fantastic imagination. If there were people who wanted to kill her or Emily, there were more efficient ways to do it than setting a fire.
She breathed in, filling her belly. She tried to breathe out her anxiety. She looked around, centering herself. She had to deal with insurance, police reports, finding a place to live, and buying clothes. It was odd how her mind could make an overwhelming situation worse by spinning conspiracy theories in her head, probably to avoid facing the real situation. No matter how unpleasant reality was, she refused to make it worse by entertaining paranoid suspicions. She scoffed at her musings: silly season.
She called her building manager, Greg, a sweet young man who seemed to know far more about building management than anyone could have learned during so few years of adult life. He’d once talked about a fire in another building he’d managed that had spread at lightning speed because the apartment doors didn’t automatically shut behind the residents when they fled. At his suggestion, Kathleen had agreed to install automatic latches on every apartment door, which meant they’d slammed shut when people fled the fire. So why had the fire spread so fast? She wanted to hear what he thought about that and touch base with him about all that needed to be done, but he didn’t pick up the phone. She left him a voice mail.
Next, she began searching for an Airbnb. By the time she’d finished her coffee, she’d booked a two-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights for two weeks. She’d propose a longer, cheaper rental period if she ended up liking the place.
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