“Nirav, if it’s okay with your father, I’d like to give you the bowl you like so much.”
That worked. Nirav’s eyebrows lifted high, and the faint trace of a smile appeared. “You are giving? To Nirav?”
Kat gave him an added hug. “Yes. To keep. We’ll ask your father tomorrow.”
The partial smile blossomed into a full-fledged grin. “I am giving you thanks. Yes.”
Whew. Maybe not so out of practice after all. “Your mother had a bowl like this one?”
The smile dropped to half wattage, and Kat regretted the question.
“She had one like.” He stared at his feet again, and there was such a long pause, she thought he wasn’t going to say anything else. Then he looked up at her. “I am running in house.” He whispered the words, and Kat strained to hear above the noise of the storm. “Bowl drop at many pieces. Mama very sad.”
The sharp pain in his voice stabbed deep. He pulled away, but Kat held his hand. “Your mother loved you, Nirav, even if you broke a hundred bowls.”
He frowned.
“Your Papa—Malcolm—loves you even though you took this bowl.”
Nirav’s face cleared. “He says. Yes.”
“Your mother, the same.”
Nirav slowly nodded.
Kat gave him a quick hug. “We probably need to get some sleep.” Nirav didn’t look very happy about the idea. She glanced at Tye, who was contentedly chewing on the floppy toe of one of Nirav’s socks. Nirav patted the puppy, and the stiff line of his shoulders relaxed.
“Would you like to keep Tye with you?” Kat asked. “Because of the storm.”
Nirav’s expression smoothed. “Thank you.”
This probably broke every dog-training rule in the book, but when Kat lifted Tye onto the bed beside the boy, the pup snuggled in close, and Nirav slipped an arm around him. The right thing, at last.
Kat took a final look at Lily, who hadn’t budged, and she and Juni went into her bedroom. She was tired and ready for bed, but as she started to undress, she stopped, staring at the sheet she had used to cover the mirror.
She stood for several long moments. Streaks of distant lightning lit the room like random camera flashes, and deep rumbles of thunder shook the house.
Malcolm and his scarred face.
Nirav playing ball one-handed.
She went to the wall and pried out the three thumbtacks she had used to fasten the sheet. She put the tacks on the dresser, folded the sheet with the edges precisely aligned, and placed it on the bed.
Kat faced the mirror directly. She unbuttoned each button of her blouse, fumbling the last few. Then quickly, before she could change her mind, she took her blouse off and let it fall to the floor.
She wore no bra, the sole advantage of a reconstructed chest. The overhead light hid nothing. Symmetrical, factory-perfect breasts, cool to the touch compared to the rest of her skin, and, even after three years, distinctly alien. Twin long, broad scars from the mastectomies, spanning the space where her nipples used to be. Two thin curved scars from the lymph node removals. Four tiny puckered stars marking the exit wounds from surgical drains. The fresh red welt of the recent biopsy.
Such radical changes, and yet the cancer still lurked inside her.
The scars will fade over time, her surgeons had assured her, but Kat had a scar on her knee she’d gotten when she was five, and it still looked as fresh as the day it happened. These newer scars weren’t fading either, arcing red across the whiteness of her skin as vividly as the lightning arced across the darkness of the sky.
She forced herself to look. It had taken only days to accustom herself to Malcolm’s face, but she doubted she would ever achieve the same level of acceptance when looking at herself.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THURSDAY, 6:00 AM
The storm quieted sometime after midnight, its energy spent, and Malcolm slept deeply, no longer on alert for Nirav’s nightmares. Vague dreams of campfires and burned toast were easy to ignore, but he woke at 0603 to the smell of actual smoke.
He was fully awake, out of bed, and moving fast before his brain framed a single coherent thought. He checked the kitchen—no fire. The rest of the house—nothing. But smoke drifted in through the open windows.
Nirav up at Kat’s.
Shit.
He should never have let his son out of his sight.
Clothing, shoes, wallet, phone, keys. Out the door, sky dirty gray, wind from the east, seven or eight miles per hour, no fire visible but smoke sweeping up over the treetops. The fire must be lower down the mountain, but the wind would push it this way.
No movement in the cottage across the way. Malcolm crossed the road in three strides and pounded on the front door. “Scott! Scott! Wake up! Fire! We have to get the children.”
Nothing.
He pounded again, the glass in the top half of the door rattling with every blow. “Scott! Wake up! Come on!” At last he heard a sleepy voice, a mumbled what the hell from inside. The door opened. Scott. Tousle-haired. Barefoot. Fumbling his glasses into place.
“Come on. We have to go get the children. Move. Now.”
Scott shook his head as if he was still half asleep, and he backed up a step as if determined to do the opposite of whatever Malcolm told him.
“The mountain’s on fire. Probably from that storm last night. Kat hasn’t brought the children down—they may not even know yet. Come on.” Malcolm jiggled his car keys. Two more seconds and he was leaving on his own.
Scott’s gaze shifted to the smoke-tinged sky, finally tuning in. He gulped visibly. “Oh my god. Why didn’t you wake me sooner?” He scuffed his feet into a pair of tennis shoes by the door and grabbed his car keys and cell phone off the hall table. “I’ll drive. Your car’s too small.”
The idea of letting someone else drive in such an emergency made Malcolm want to pull rank, but Scott was right, and they’d already wasted too much time. He said nothing, just raced to Scott’s car and slid into the passenger seat.
Scott picked up on the full urgency at last, and he wasted no time getting the engine started. He stomped on the accelerator, and the car lunged up the gravel road, its engine howling.
Malcolm rolled down his window. Popping and crackling sounds were disturbingly close. “Does your cell work up here?”
“No.” Scott’s voice shook. His face had no color, the whiteness of severe shock. “Doesn’t matter. We can’t warn them. Nothing works at Kat’s place either—Lily didn’t even take her phone with her.”
Malcolm leaned forward, wishing sheer willpower would make them move faster. “I should have gone up during the storm and brought Nirav home. I’m sure he was frightened. By the time I made up my mind to do it, the storm had moved on, and I didn’t want to wake anyone.” He had seen the drought, the deadwood, the lightning. He should have assessed the risk and kept his son safe, not abandoned him to a stranger. His absolute failure tasted harshly bitter.
Scott seemed to be having similar thoughts. “Lily has to be okay. She has to be. That sleepover was my idea.”
No point in assigning blame. “The smoke woke me. Fire can race in this wind.”
Scott nodded, doing a better job than Malcolm would have expected on the steep, treacherous switchbacks. They weren’t high enough on the mountainside to see any details yet, but a shroud of smoke hovered over the treetops and sent thin wisps of haze floating across the road.
“I don’t want to get cut off.” Scott spoke through tight teeth. “When we get there, we grab the kids and go.” Both hands clenched the steering wheel, and he fought to stay on the road as they blasted through the rough potholes that pockmarked the surface.
“And Kat. All three.” Malcolm’s tension made his voice even harsher than usual.
The smoke thickened as they drove, and both men started to cough.
Small explosions echoed up the mountainside, sounding like small-caliber fire. Or firecrackers. Like the Fourth of July. Malcolm had planned on taking Ni
rav to a Fourth of July parade. Marching bands. Festive floats. Welcome to your new country. His throat tightened.
They crested the edge of the gully, ready to head down to the bridge, and Scott hit the brakes. The car skidded across the gravel in a sickening curve and finally lurched to a stop.
The wooden bridge was on fire, and flames had already enveloped both sides of the steep creek bed. Smoke streamed into the car through Malcolm’s open window, the smell sharp and acrid. Two downed trees and a tangle of burning debris blocked the road on the far side. No way up; no way down. The phrase had a sickening finality.
“No bridge! What do we do now?” Scott banged his palm against the steering wheel.
Malcolm scanned the flames. Not good, not good. This road was the only way in. “This gully is funneling the wind. A faster path for the fire.”
They bolted out of the car. Smoke swirled from all directions, and the intense heat seared Malcolm’s face and scalded his throat with every breath. He knew more than he wanted to about gunfire, mortar fire, bombing raids, IEDs. About pain and fear and lurking death. Please. Let Nirav be safe.
“Lily! Lily!” Scott shouted over and over, but it was pointless, Kat’s cottage still more than a half mile away. Even if Lily had been standing right there on the other side of the roadblock, she probably couldn’t have heard him. The fire’s roar drowned everything else.
Perhaps there was still a way to circle around the worst of it. Malcolm leaped over a patch of burning grass and forced his way a few feet into the trees on the uphill side of the road. Hopeless. He turned back. “It’s catching like tinder.” He slapped at a few blackened spots on his pant legs. Thin curls of smoke rose from the fabric.
“We have to get them,” Scott said. “There has to be a way.” His voice shook, his hands shook, and he looked increasingly panicked. A gust of wind tossed a burning twig onto the hood of the car, and he flinched as it tumbled to the ground.
They were surrounded by smoldering trees and at risk of being hit by far more than a twig. They needed to get moving. “We’ll get them.” Malcolm snapped the words, hoping they would shake some sense into Scott. “But not this way. We have to go back before the fire loops behind us and traps us, too.”
Behind them, smoke poured in from all directions, thicker than it had been only a few moments earlier.
“Leave? Hell, no. Lily’s up there!” Scott looked fearfully at the flames, but then he turned to Malcolm with a snarl. “If you were a real parent, you’d understand.”
“Don’t be a fucking idiot.”
Scott bristled at the word idiot, but Malcolm didn’t give him a chance to snap back.
“I’m heading back to let people know the three of them are trapped.” Malcolm took two strides away from the car—he had no time to cater to a fool. He could sprint back, grab his car, and head down to where he could pick up a cell signal. If Scott wanted to stay here and burn to death, that was his call. “Am I running, or are you driving?” The surging flames were getting closer every instant.
Scott pounded a fist against his thigh, staring up the road as if his glare would open a path. He wiped his face with his shirt sleeve. “Okay. You win. Driving. Driving in the wrong direction.”
He lunged into the car, threw it into reverse, and before Malcolm even had his door shut, backed helter-skelter down the road in a frantic search for a space wide enough to turn around.
CHAPTER NINE
THURSDAY, 6:15 AM
The click-click-click of Juni’s toenails on the bare wooden floor woke Kat from an all-too-brief, unsettled sleep. The sound was a ticking clock, counting down. As soon as she rolled over, Juni whined and poked Kat’s arm with a cold nose.
“Go away. It’s too early.” Kat pushed the dog away and burrowed back under the covers.
But Juni kept whining and nudging, whining and nudging. The children would wake soon. Kat rolled out of bed and pulled on a shirt and shorts. Something was different this morning, something was off. Too quiet. That was it. Almost silent. She could usually hear the early-morning chatter of birds. This morning, nothing.
She opened the front door to let Juni out, and the smell of woodsmoke hit her at first breath. An illicit campfire. Or some farmer burning trash. But a gray haze tinted the air, too dark and dense to be fog, and Juni stuck close, underfoot instead of snuffling through the grass, even clingier than during the thunderstorm. Kat slipped on her flip-flop sandals and walked across the road for a better view of the valley.
At first all she could see were shifting shreds of smoke that hovered low over the mountainside, but a sudden change in the breeze cleared a window in the gray, and scattered patches of bright orange and yellow came into view. Flames. Fire. A forest fire. A forest fire, in the midst of all this drought. Kat’s throat closed on a hard lump of fear that threatened to choke her. She froze, staring, unable or unwilling to take it all in. Nothing improved, and at last she shook herself into motion.
She needed to take the children to their fathers. Now. Scott had a landline at his place—Lily had laughed about a phone with a cord—he could call the fire department. If they said she should evacuate, she could come back and pack.
She hurried into the cottage, opened the children’s bedroom door, and found Nirav sitting up in bed as if he had just wakened. Tye sprawled in his lap. Lily still slept soundly.
“Lily, wake up.” Kat’s tension strangled the words, and she tried again. “Wake up, Lily. We need to go use your father’s phone.”
Lily opened one eye and made a disgusted face. “What time is it?”
“Time to move. Come on, get up and get dressed.” Kat picked up Nirav’s shirt and shorts from the chair in the corner and handed them to him. “Get dressed, please.”
He took the clothing with some obvious nervousness, watching her closely, but he climbed out of bed and started across the room. Lily snuggled back into her pillow and closed her eyes.
“Lily, come on. I don’t want to scare you, but there’s a small fire down below. It’s far away, but we need to call the fire department. Your father’s phone is closest.”
Lily sat bolt upright and swung her feet out of bed, wide-eyed and fully awake. “A fire? A forest fire?”
Nirav might not have understood the words, but he obviously picked up on Lily’s frightened tone. He froze in the doorway, looking from Lily to Kat and back again.
“Get dressed. Now.”
Nirav hurried toward the bathroom, Kat headed for the living room, and Lily closed the bedroom door to change. Kat gathered her cell phone, car keys, and green canvas shoulder bag from the living room, and she stuffed in Tye’s harness and the leashes for both dogs. Lily and Nirav joined her, each with their day packs of overnight things.
“Got everything?” she asked. They both nodded. “Okay, come on.”
Juni stayed fused to her side. Kat opened the door. The smoke had thickened in the minutes they’d squandered and was darker and more threatening now. Not horrible, at least not yet, but very present. Kat took a deep breath to calm herself, but that only triggered a cough. Tye whimpered and backed up a step.
Nirav’s eyes widened with full understanding. “No fire. No.” He tucked his injured arm more tightly against his body.
He had far more experience with the consequences of fire than the rest of them. Kat reached around his shoulders and gave him a quick hug. “It’s okay.” She prayed that was true. “We’re going.”
Lily took Nirav by the hand, and they started down the steps, but Nirav stopped as soon as he saw Tye no longer followed. He dropped Lily’s hand, set down his day pack, and scooped up the puppy with his good arm under Tye’s chest and his bad arm bracing his hindquarters. He hurried to the car. Lily grabbed his pack, and she, Nirav, and both dogs wedged themselves into the back seat. Kat tossed her shoulder bag in front, fumbled the key into the ignition, and sped downhill as fast as she dared.
“I’m sure …” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat and began again
. “I’m sure we’ll meet your fathers as they’re coming up.” There, that sounded better. That sounded almost confident. Even she believed it. Almost. There was dead silence from the back seat.
They made it through the first switchback, then the second, and with each drop in elevation, the smoke got thicker and visibility got worse. Small flecks of ash dotted the windshield like discolored snowflakes, tiny gray specks of alarm. Kat tried to clear it with the windshield wipers, but that only left gray streaks, making it even harder to see. She hit the brakes to avoid a raccoon who trundled uphill in the center of the road.
“Where’s Dad?” Lily whispered, as if talking out loud could make things worse. “Shouldn’t we see him by now?’
“Any minute.” Surely he and Malcolm had noticed the smoke. They would come. Kat would meet them. She braked again to let two deer pass. They weren’t in any rush, they acted like they were out for a morning stroll, and Kat found their nonchalance reassuring. But they, too, were moving uphill, while she and the children were moving down.
She slowed the car to a crawl as she approached the next switchback, which led steeply down to the small bridge over the gully. Once they crossed the bridge, it would take only a few minutes to reach the other two cottages.
She eased around the curve, then slammed on the brakes so abruptly she was thrown against her shoulder belt. The children yelped, and she could hear them scramble back in place. The road ahead was gone, replaced by a wall of flame. Kat’s insides twisted into barbed wire. No. Please no.
The dry stream bed burned along its full length, as if the fire had known it would be an easy pathway up the mountainside and had pursued it first. Grasses and ground cover crackled as they burned, yellow-orange and vaporizing fast. Dead limbs and fallen tree trunks flamed. Two of the dead trees Kat had seen on her earlier walks had toppled, and they lay tangled, blocking the road. They had knocked down adjacent saplings as they fell, and the resulting mess was a snarl of burning branches and debris.
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