by Evelyn Glass
I hadn’t heard from Mona since she’d left, and frankly, I wasn’t surprised. I had pushed her firmly away from me, convincing both her and myself that the only way to get Ella back was to obsess to a dangerous degree. The cops tried to assure me they were doing all they could, but that couldn’t be true, otherwise they’d have answers for me by now. I saw her face behind my lids when I closed my eyes, and ached to hold her again. I cried a lot, not even knowing that I was doing it—as though my body had started mourning before my brain had. I did my best to pay it no attention, and focused instead on wracking my brains for what to do next.
I was asleep on the coach when the scent came wafting through my door—I recognized it at once, and snapped upright in an instant. My eyes were still bleary with sleep, but my brain was wide-awake, in full panic mode, blood whooshing loudly around my head. My first thought was of Ella, and getting her out of that burning building before anything happened to her—but once that instinct dissipated painfully, I knew I had to investigate. I leapt to my feet and ran over to the cooker. It wasn’t as though I’d used it much in the last week, but still—and nothing; it was off. I couldn’t find the source of the smoke anywhere, until I heard a loud smash from next door.
I hurried outside, and found myself confronted with it. The smoke was choking now, getting in my eyes, filling my lungs, obscuring my vision—but I could still see it through the thick black fog. Mary and Paul’s house. Burning.
I sprinted towards the building without a second thought, heart pounding—where they still in there? I had no idea what time it was, but if they were asleep in their beds—
“Jazz,” I heard a tired voice come from beside me, and turned to find myself faced with Mary. She was wrapped in a threadbare robe, her face drawn. “We’re fine.”
“What happened?” I put my hand on her shoulder, half-comforting and half-panicked—Ian had been in there, what if Ella had somehow got caught up in all of this?
“We don’t know,” she replied. Her voice was soft, as though she couldn’t quite register what had happened as reality. And who could blame her? Paul stood to the side of Mary, a few paces behind her, dumbfounded. I wondered how long they’d both been out here—I could see some curtains twitching, and a few other neighbors began to emerge from their houses. Before long, the place was swarming with them, offering Mary and Paul tea and comfort and food and a place to stay. It would have been a heartwarming display of community if it hadn’t been brought on by something as hideous as this.
I stood in front of the burning building for longer than I could recall, staring into the flames. Eventually, they became almost soothing in their repetition—it wasn’t until the firemen turned up and roughly jerked me away from the house that I snapped out of my reverie. I watched as they doused it with water, as the flames fizzled into nothing—and revealed the hollowed-out shell of the house beneath. There was nothing left but the skeleton of the place, the furniture and carpets and everything else eaten up by the fire. I had never seen anything like it before in my life, and I couldn’t drag my eyes away from it. How did something like this just…happen?
It didn’t.
The words flickered through my brain before I had a chance to get a hold of them, but I knew at once that they were true. I didn’t want to have to consider the possibility, but there was no way something like this happened out of chance. Someone did this—torched this house, let it hollow out from the inside. Maybe Paul and Mary were pulling some kind of insurance scam or something like that? But no—the look of blank shock on both of their faces couldn’t have been faked, no matter how fantastic at acting the both of them were.
They might not have been involved with this, but someone was. Shit like this didn’t just happen in the suburbs. Everyone was too careful. Too considerate. No, this felt like the work of someone who was trying to cover something up. Ian? Addison? Whoever else was involved with their hideous plan?
I strode back towards my house, the smell of smoke thick on my clothes as I stepped back inside. I let out a sigh—was this my fault, somehow? I had climbed into the attic and found that scrap of paper, maybe that had been enough to set whoever it was off into doing something like this. But…why now? Why not when we had first closed in on him back more than a month ago?
A knock at the door took me by surprise; I jumped, and turned to answer it. Probably one of the neighbors asking for help with the Paul and Mary situation. I pulled back the door, and found myself faced, instead, with Mona.
“Uh, hi,” she murmured. It had been four days since I’d last seen her, and I had to fight the urge to reach out and draw her against me, to feel her small form against my own. But I knew she’d left for a reason, and I didn’t want to push my luck.
“Come in.” I stepped aside, making way for her, and she brushed by me—close enough that the smell of her filled my nose. I closed my eyes for a second and tried to get my head together. She wasn’t here for that. She probably heard about the fire somehow and came down to make sure that everything was okay.
“What’s going on out there?” She gestured to Paul and Mary’s house, to the thick clouds of smoke and steam that had settled over our shared lawn. I furrowed my brow.
“I thought you knew?”
“Nope.” She shook her head. “I came to see you, and when I got here…”
She trailed off and looked towards the house, and I could tell that she was thinking about Ella, wondering, somehow, if this was connected to her. But we couldn’t linger on shit like that when we had no reason to believe it.
“I don’t think they know yet.” I shrugged. “I went round there when I smelled the smoke, and the two of them were already outside. And then the firemen turned up, and rest of the neighbors came out to help, so I got out of the way.”
“Jesus, that’s so horrible.” She shook her head and reached for the counter, as though steadying herself. She placed a hand briefly on her stomach, an odd gesture—but I didn’t have any time to linger on it as the door went again.
“I’ll get it,” I muttered, forgetting in that instant that Mona didn’t live here anymore. She followed me with her eyes as I paced across the floor in front of her, and I knew something was going unsaid between us—I just couldn’t figure out what it was.
When I opened the door, I found myself faced with two firemen, flanking Mary. She had tears streaming down her face; I supposed that what had just happened was beginning to sink in for her. I gave her a sympathetic nod, and reached out to pat her arm.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked earnestly. I might not always have got on great with Paul, but Mary was a sweet woman and she didn’t deserve this. Nobody did.
“Jazz, it’s…” She trailed off and I felt my heart leap into my throat. What the fuck was this? I stepped aside, and gestured for them to come in. The firemen exchanged a look, but did as they were told—and it was only then that I noticed what they were holding between them.
A mangled sheet of plastic—that’s what it looked like at first glance. The fire had mutilated it, whatever it was, and I squinted at it, trying to figure out what they were doing with it in my house. Mona squeezed Mary’s shoulder as she approached, but she seemed distracted and shrugged her off without thinking.
“They found this, in the attic.” Mary’s voice cracked, and that’s when it sunk in. I grasped for the counter to hold myself up as the firemen laid the object out in front of me.
Now that I could get a better look at it, in the light, I could see what it was, or what it used to be. A few brand logos, a couple of discernible cartoon faces—children’s toys. And not just any child. Ella’s.
My head began to spin as it registered to me what this really meant. No. It couldn’t be. Of course it couldn’t be, because then…then she’d have been up there too. And I saw that house—it was hollowed out, completely and utterly. Nothing was making it out of there alive.
I gasped for air, and a sob bubbled up out of my chest and seemed to stick in my thr
oat like a shard of bone. Mona led Mary and the firemen back to the door, thanked them, and sent them on their way; I could hardly register what she was doing as my eyes blurred and the room swam in front of me.
“Jazz,” Mona murmured, her hand on my back. “Jazz, look at me.”
I didn’t move, knowing that if I made eye contact with her, then all of this would suddenly be real. If I met her sympathetic gaze, I would have to acknowledge that this was really happening. I stared at the ground, and, in a snap decision, pulled myself upright and made for the garage.
“Jazz!” Mona called after me. “Jazz, come back!”
She hurried after me but I was pretending she wasn’t there, pretending none of this was happening. Ella. Ella had been there. There was no body yet, but did there really need to be one when I knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was up there when it happened?
The knowledge she had been so close was the worst part. That I could have practically reached out and touched her—maybe she even watched me, distraught, going in and out of the house. How did they get her toys? I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to—maybe they’d replaced them for her, or they’d snuck in and grabbed them when I wasn’t paying attention. Both options made me want to throw up. A wave of nausea passed over me, and I did my best to ignore it as I opened the door to the garage and reached for my bike.
“Jazz, where are you going?” Mona called from behind me. I ignored her, but she wasn’t going to let me get away that easily. She pushed herself in between me and the bike and glared into my eyes.
“Jazz.”
Her voice was firm and centering, and for a moment all of it hit me. A tidal wave was too soft a description for the feelings that cascaded down over me in that second—grief, anger, fear, a tiny flicker of hope that somehow I was wrong and none of this was really happening. I wanted to collapse into her arms and try to forget all of this, but I knew that wasn’t how it worked. I needed to get away from her, get away from all of this—from the reminders of my daughter, from anyone who knew her. I’d start again somewhere else, break up the Marauders and be done with the whole thing. I had tunnel vision, my only thought on getting away from here, as though putting some space between myself and this house would be enough for me to forget her.
“I’m going,” I informed her firmly. I reached around her and climbed on to the bike. “I need to get away.”
“Jazz, we don’t even know what happened to her,” Mona pointed out desperately. “Please. Come on. Please.”
Her voice was imploring but I didn’t want to hear it; I was done, out, over, ready to move on. I kicked the bike a couple of times, trying to get it started up, but it wasn’t co-operating. I was being too rough, my brain too frazzled to do much else.
“Jazz, I need to tell you something.” She grabbed my arm, but I refused to look up. Anything that could come out of her mouth—it wasn’t enough to change my mind. She must have known that. She scanned my face for a reaction, any reaction, and I gave her none. The bike finally roared into action beneath me, and Mona stepped away at once. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but I could barely see them.
“Listen to me!” she yelled over the sound of the engine, but I was already gone. She was backed against the wall of the garage, hand on her stomach once again, as I glanced over at her—and burned her face onto my mind one last time. I wasn’t coming back. Not for her, not for anyone. I pulled out of the garage and on to the street, and past the smoldering remains of the house that had once contained my daughter.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Thanks for coming round,” I intoned, my voice completely free of any emotion. I was genuinely happy to see Lucy, but it was hard to express that when it felt as though my soul ached with every breath I took. I just didn’t know how I was meant to get over this.
No body had been found as they excavated the rest of the house; they had rung me up a couple of times in the hopes of straightening everything out, but I couldn’t give them much. I mean, I wasn’t even Ella’s mother; what did I know about her? I had been able to confirm that the mangled toys found in the attic were hers, but that was about it. Fuck, I hadn’t even been around there because of the fire—I had taken three days to pluck up the courage to tell Jazz about the baby, and it just so happened that some twisted cosmic joke played out in my timing.
I had decided to keep the baby—or, at least, that had been my plan before Jazz vanished off the face of the Earth. What had it been, a week, and I’d heard nothing from him whatsoever. I was terrified to think about what he might have done in response to this. He was hardly the most temperate guy at the best of times and now…well, I just hoped no one else had been hurt in the process.
Except me, of course.
I had no idea what I was going to do now. I had spent those three days convincing myself that I was making the right decision—that no matter what, Jazz and I loved each other and we could work through this pregnancy as partners. But instead, he fled, without even finding out that I was carrying his baby. And who could I talk to about it? Not Amanda or anyone from work—they had taken his fleeing to hint towards his guilt, no matter how much I tried to convince them to the contrary. If they found out I was having his baby, they’d just tell me to get rid of it or give it up for a adoption—neither of which seemed like particularly enticing alternatives. Even though I had only known about our child for a few days, I was growing to love him. But I would have to consider other options now—now that Ella seemed to be gone for good, and her father had no intention of coming back.
I had never seen him as he was that day. I had seen him mad—scared, angry, guilty, any combination of the above—but I had never seen him like that. It was hard to explain the emotions that radiated off him in waves, thick and strong and heady. He seemed as lost in them as I was, struggling to process even a little bit of what had happened. Of course he ran—because if he ran, he never had to face up to the fact that this had really happened at all. I couldn’t blame him. If I could have done the same, I would have.
So I called Lucy, and bawled down the phone to her about what had happened that day—Ella’s toys, the fire, the baby, all of it. She listened in silence and, as soon as I was done, told me that she was coming round to stay with me for a few days.
“No, you don’t have to—” I protested, instantly feeling guilty that I had burdened her with all of this. But she cut across me, not hearing a word of it.
“I’m coming over and I’m sorry to say there’s nothing you can do to stop me. You’re off work, right?”
“Right.” I nodded, dabbing at my eyes and wiping my nose on the back of my hand. Amanda had given me more time off when she heard about the latest development in Ella’s case—I wondered if I would ever truly start working for her, judging by everything that had gone down over the last few months. It felt as though the job I’d been promised had turned into a kind of nightmare where at every turn something traumatic happened. If my first case hadn’t been Jazz and Ella, maybe none of this would have occurred. Well, at least I wouldn’t be aware of it—and I wasn’t sure if that was for better or for worse.
“Well, I’m not dumping you there in the city by yourself,” she replied. I could hear her gathering herself, probably already planning her route into town to make sure she could get to me as fast as she could. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
“Thank you,” I sniffled, feeling pathetic, and she hung up the phone. I tidied as best I could, doing away with the takeout wrappers that littered my floor. I’d have thought that with everything going on my appetite would have dropped through the floor, but it seemed that my baby was a hungry one. I laid out some covers on the couch for Lucy, already feeling better knowing that she was on her way.
I knew she couldn’t fix it all, but she could at least provide me some company to guide me through all of it. She’d been there since the start, after all—she knew what was going on. She’d met Jazz, knew how I felt about him. I would have gone to my family, but
that would have involved filling them in on everything when I had only been giving them the vaguest details in our monthly calls. The thought of catching them up on everything now wasn’t just exhausting but depressing. Recounting every detail, of how I’d failed and given in and given up—I already felt like a big enough pile of crap as it was. No, I needed my best friend—and thank God, because she was here for me.
She hugged me as soon as she was in the door. Lucy wasn’t a hugger, so I knew it must have been serious. I smiled into her embrace, remembering in that second just how much human contact seemed to make all this easier.