She turned the corner and saw the fire truck blocking most of the view of the Finnemore house. Firemen had already hooked up a hose and were having neighbors move their cars out of the way. Henry looked up to the top window and saw bright flickers against the glass. Black smoked snaked from under the eaves and leaked out the cracks in the windows.
“Miss, we’re going to have to ask you to move,” a voice said. She turned, numb and disbelieving.
“I work there,” she said. It wasn’t quite right but she couldn’t explain what was in the basement. A treasure trove of Cane River history was going up in smoke. The idea of it was like a shock of cold water and she reached out to grab his arm. “I need something from inside. I need to go in the basement.”
The young man shook his head. “I’m sorry. Nobody can go inside.”
She started to move away and he clamped a gloved hand on her shoulder. “Miss, you can’t go near the place. Let us handle it.”
Henry shrugged him off and darted away, taking advantage of the fact he was wearing heavy gear and huge boots. She could hear him yelling behind her but she didn’t stop until she’d reached the far corner of the house where the stairs to the basement were.
She stumbled to a stop. There was a huge pile of boxes on the edge of the property. It looked like maybe half the collection had already been taken out. She stood there, struggling to understand, until the fireman caught up with her.
He took her arm none too gently this time. “You can’t be here, Miss.” His voice was no longer polite. He’d run full tilt in all his gear and he wasn’t happy about it. She looked up into his eyes and knew she wasn’t going to be let go this time.
She pointed to the boxes. “Why are those there?”
“Miss, I don’t know.” He was pulling on her now. “You have to move back.”
At that moment, Gideon emerged from the basement door, a stack of boxes in his arms. Soaked in sweat and covered in dirt, his expression was one of such fierceness that Henry took a step back. He ran up the steps two at a time, across the grass, deposited the boxes and ran back toward the stairs.
“Hey!” The fireman let go of Henry’s arm and took off. She could only stand there in shock as Gideon looked behind him, then continued on his trajectory toward the irreplaceable collection of Cane River history.
There was a commotion behind her. Several firemen backed into the street. The smoke was billowing in earnest now and as she stared upward, there was a boom and several windows shattered at once. She ducked instinctively, one arm over her head, and felt the sharp sting of bits of glass and wood against her skin.
Looking back, she saw Gideon run out, two boxes in his arms. The fireman was behind him, one hand clamped on Gideon’s collar. Henry could see the fireman’s mouth open wide and moving in fury. Gideon either didn’t hear him or didn’t care because as soon as they were free of the stairs he turned and ran toward the other boxes.
“Henry!”
Father Tom ran across the street, his face tight with panic. His gaze scoured her from head to toe.
“Where you inside?” He put his hands on her shoulders.
“No, I was at home.” She turned and pointed to the boxes. “Gideon must have been here. He’s already carrying out the collection.” She had lifted one of those boxes before and she couldn’t understand how he was carrying two and running up the stairs, over and over.
Father Tom turned, seeing Gideon and the fireman for the first time. The relief on his face was so sharp that Henry almost put out a hand to steady him. “He was. He was working when he smelled the smoke and he said he was going to try and get the boxes out. I tried to argue with him but he hung up on me. Stubborn, as always,” he said.
Henry tried to smile but her face felt stiff.
“If you weren’t inside, how did this happen?” Tom turned back to her and lifted one of her hands, exposing streaks of blood on the underside of her forearms.
“I don’t know,” Henry said. Then she remembered the windows and looked up, pointing to the second story. Just then, another sharp cracked sounded and flames billowed out from the upper story as if an angry dragon were trapped inside.
“We’d better move back,” Father Tom said. He looked up and Henry saw his expression go slack.
She whirled around to see Gideon running to the stairs once more. The fireman looked behind him and let out a bellow of rage. He lumbered after Gideon but was no match for his speed, barely reaching the stairs before he was through the old green door.
The fireman stopped, clearly torn between running inside and returning for the rest of his gear. After a few seconds he turned and ran toward the truck, shouting for help.
“What is he doing? Can’t he see the whole place is coming down?” Father Tom asked.
Henry shook her head. Of course Gideon could see it.
He didn’t care.
He had nothing to lose.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Not truth, but faith is that which keeps the world alive.”
―Edna St. Vincent Millay
Henry waited.
It seemed as if her whole existence had narrowed to the shouts of the firemen, the choking smoke, the heat of the fire. Father Tom’s voice beside her seemed miles away and his steady hand on her back felt like it was happening to someone else.
“He’ll come out, Henry.”
She shook her head.
“He takes risks but he’s not an idiot,” he said. “Most of the time.”
He was trying to make her feel better, joking around but she was petrified with fear. Every moment she’d spent with Gideon seemed to pass before her eyes.
He knew all her secrets.
He accepted her just the way she was.
She’d never told him how she felt.
“Don’t cry,” Father Tom said, his voice strained. “Please don’t cry, Henry. He’ll come back.”
Come back. And in an instant Henry remembered standing at the screen door, crying for her Mama as she drove away. She’ll come back, now stop your fussing, Lorelei. Aunt Lisette had been angry, whether at Henry’s crying or being left with a toddler, she didn’t know now. Her mama had told her there was something important she had to do, somewhere she had to go. Henry was supposed to be good and stay with Aunt Lisette until she came back. Henry hadn’t been good enough because Mama had never come back.
“You have to move away from the house,” another fireman said, rushing up to them. He carried an oxygen tank and a mask. “We’ve got someone trapped inside.”
Father Tom moved away but when Henry took a step, her knees started to buckle. He reached out and caught her before she hit the grass, his hands gripping her, soothing voice in her ear. “Come on, Henry. Come on over here for a while.”
Her eyes were open wide but she felt like all she could see were smoke and flames. “I never told him,” she whispered. “I never told him the truth.”
“You can tell him when he gets out,” Father Tom said. “Whatever it is, you can tell him then.”
But he wasn’t coming back. When you have no one to love, and nothing to lose, you can do what you want. You can rush into burning buildings after old papers and pictures. You can die trapped in that basement because you’re not responsible to anyone. Your life is yours to throw away if you wish.
Her legs trembled and she wrapped her arms around her middle. Father Tom held out a hanky to her and she just stared back at him.
The upper stories were fully engulfed now and smoke poured from the basement door. It swarmed up the steps like a living thing. Three firemen strapped on oxygen tanks and masks at high speed, ready to go into the basement.
“There,” Father Tom shouted and Henry turned, preparing for the worst. The firemen were barely at the top of the stairs when Gideon emerged from the black smoke carrying two more boxes. His face was blackened and his shirt was smeared with soot. He coughed and coughed, eyes squinting out toward the bright sun.
A fireman reached down and
hauled him up the last few steps onto the grass. Gideon leaned over, coughing hard. One fireman removed his mask and seemed to be giving Gideon a piece of his mind, gesturing toward the boxes and the flaming building behind them. He tugged Gideon toward the grassy area, his face red and sweaty.
Henry didn’t remember walking toward them but the firemen were blocking her way and she was shoving at them, unable to explain she wasn’t heading for the house, but for Gideon. He set down the boxes right there on the pavement and stepped toward her. She didn’t so much as hug him as run into him, knocking him back a few steps. His arms wrapped around her tight and he was saying something into her hair. One of the firemen was still yelling, but his words were all noise and emotion, and Henry didn’t bother trying to piece it together.
Gideon leaned back and put his hands against her face, cupping her cheeks. She looked up, memorizing the dark blue of his eyes against his smoke-blackened skin. He was whispering now and she looked at his mouth, part of her wanting to know what he was saying and part of her refusing to listen. She knew he didn’t love her. She’d held on to hope, taking his promises as a sign that he did. That hope was gone as surely as the rest of the Cane River collection.
He leaned down and put his forehead to hers. She knew she should step back, but instead she leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his. He pressed back, his lips warm and urgent. The scruff of his beard scraped against her chin and she reached up to thread her hands through the back of his hair. After a few moments, he broke away as if trying to stop kissing her but not quite able to move back, their breath mingling.
He tasted like smoke and truth and the end of everything.
“Henry,” he said.
Hearing her name seemed to bring her back better than the firemen or Father Tom or the heat of the blaze. Henry. It was the name she’d given herself because she hated the one her mother had given her. She’d wanted a different life, one that didn’t revolve around people who didn’t love or need her. Lorelei was the girl that got left, the girl who didn’t have parents, and the girl who loved more than she was loved. Not Henry.
She let her hands fall away from his neck and she stepped back, brushing tears from her cheeks with trembling fingers.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said.
Then she turned and walked away.
***
Gideon sat in his car for a long time, simply too tired to get out and walk all the way to his front door. It had been three days since the fire. Three days since Henry had spoken to him. Tom said she needed time, that it had been traumatic to see him running out of a fire, but Gideon didn’t believe it. He knew deep down in the place where he held his darkest secrets that Henry wasn’t meant for someone like him. He should never have hoped for anything more than friendship. Pigs get fed and hogs get eaten. And idiots get their hearts broken.
Within hours of the blaze, Barney Sandoz had publically accused him of setting the fire even though it made no sense for Gideon to have wanted to burn his own collection. The fire was declared suspicious when the fire chief announced they had found traces of an accelerant in the basement. Gideon tried to explain about the kerosene lamps he’d used while working. The investigator listened quietly and then asked why he hadn’t brought in an electric light, if there had been an extension cord. Gideon remembered the way the firelight had cast Henry’s face into soft shadows and said nothing.
He angled out of his car and trudged toward the porch. He hadn’t left the light on and the sliver of moon barely illuminated the shape of the house. He usually came home right after work but he’d ended up wandering along the river with Tom. Neither of them had said much, just walked the trails and fished a little. It was one of the few places that didn’t remind him of her but it didn’t make it any better. In fact, the absence of any trace of her there made his chest ache even more. In the end, he’d driven the old highway, hoping the curves and scenic stretches would be some sort of escape.
Now it was close to midnight and although he was exhausted, he knew he’d stare at the ceiling over his bed for most of the night. He unlocked the door and reached for the little lamp on the side table but missed it in the darkness. Moving to the left, he swept his hand back and forth, still not finding the base. He aimed lower, and a fraction of a second later, realized the table was gone, too.
Gideon stumbled backwards out of the doorway, jumped off the porch, and onto the packed dirt driveway. He stood there, heart pounding, scanning the darkness for attackers. He backed toward the car and quietly opened the trunk, taking out a flashlight. He considered the crowbar for a moment, then left it. If he got into a fight, he didn’t want to kill anyone. Again.
The house was perfectly silent as he crept back up the stairs. He opened his phone and dialed the emergency number. The operator answered immediately and Gideon said, “Someone’s broken into my house.” He turned on the flash light and shone it at the door. “No, I don’t know if they’re still inside.”
He walked forward, ignoring the operator’s advice, but gave his address slowly and clearly. He swung the beam of light back and forth, noting the upturned chair, the smashed side table. Standing at the threshold, he reached an arm around the doorframe and hit the main light switch. The room was instantly illuminated but it took a few minutes for Gideon to understand what he was seeing.
His furniture was destroyed, pictures off the wall and the table on its side. And there, in the center of the room, Barney Sandoz lay on the carpet. Gideon recognized him right away, even though his eyes were wide and blankly staring. His tongue was black and protruded from between his lips, one arm thrown up over his head as if he were waving at Gideon.
As he looked at Barney, Gideon saw another face from long ago. A man just as contorted, eyes bulging, neck bruised. The image was burned into his memory and eighteen years could not erase it.
A tinny sound recalled him to the present. The operator was speaking but Gideon let the phone drop from his ear. The last few days passed through his mind. He saw Sally’s tearful hugs and Vince’s words of forgiveness. He thought of Austin and the wariness in his eyes. He thought of Tom, who had never given up on him, who loved him like a brother and wanted more for him than a life of penance.
He closed his eyes, taking one more moment before his life changed forever. He thought of Henry laughing up at him, weeping into his shirt, shyly kissing his cheek. He remembered how she bit the top of her pen as she worked and the way the lamplight reflected in her eyes. He could almost smell the rain and the trees, feel the weight of her against him, the warmth of her lips and the softness of her skin.
And for a breath of ecstasy, give all you have been, or could be.
He opened his eyes and put the phone back to his ear.
“I need to report a homicide,” he said.
***
“So, we’ll see you on the twentieth,” Patsy said. “I’ll bring Jack’s costume and we’ll do a dry run for Hallowe’en. You can take a hundred pictures of my beautiful baby and then maybe Denny’s mom can babysit so we can all go out to dinner. Make sure your hunka hunka historian doesn’t have anything happening that weekend, okay?”
Henry grimaced. “I think it will be just us three, actually.” She stared out her apartment window at the river and braced herself for the questions.
“Hold up, now. A few days ago, you were a goner for this guy. What happened, Sherlock?”
She ran a hand through her hair. It was too early to have this conversation, Friday or not. “We just wanted different things.”
“That makes no sense. Don’t say that like it makes sense.”
A tear slipped down her cheek and she wiped it off, impatient with herself for crying again. She’d already shed too many tears over Gideon. She couldn’t be with someone who thinks so little of himself, like his life meant nothing. “I don’t want to be with someone who puts me last, who never remembers that I exist.”
There was a silence on the other end. “Like Kimberly did.”
“We all have issues. We look for someone who fills whatever hole there is in our hearts. But when they can’t completely fill that need, we see it as a problem with them, not with us.”
“This isn’t some complicated psychological problem. I don’t love him because I need a…” The rest of her sentence faded away as she realized what she’d said. Her heart felt like it was being crushed. She didn’t want to love Gideon. Not when he wasn’t going to put her before everything else.
Patsy sighed. “I don’t want this to come between us but can I tell you something as a friend? As someone who has known you the longest in this world?”
“You will anyway,” Henry said.
“You’re right, but not because I’m trying to stick my nose in your business. I know how you love your privacy. I’m going to tell you what I think because as long as we’ve been friends, I’ve never seen you look at someone the way I saw you look at Gideon.”
Henry said nothing, just leaned her forehead against the window, the glass cool against her skin.
Patsy went on. “And I’ve never seen anyone look at you that way.”
“So?” She was weary, down to her very bones.
“So, that kind of something deserves a chance.”
Henry wiped her eyes and said nothing. She wanted to give them a chance more than anything else in her life.
“Maybe it’s a problem with him, and not you. The guy was in prison for most of his adult life. He’s lived by himself for years. He’s never had a family. He’s hasn’t had any responsibility to anybody. He’s new at this. His old habits, the ones that served him so long, may not be the right ones.” Henry heard Patsy take a bracing breath. “And your old habits may not be, either. Your past is dictating your future every single day. You see every relationship through the lens of Kimberly leaving you.”
Along the Cane River: Books 1-5 in the Inspirational Cane River Romance Series Page 58