A high-pitched screech penetrated the relatively quiet patio. For a moment, Nico couldn’t place the sound. Then it came to him. A fire alarm.
“Fire alarm,” Trey shouted over the unmitigated shriek.
They all jerked to their feet. The back door burst open and patrons streamed onto the patio. For an instant, Nico thought it might be a false alarm. Everything seemed exactly as before the alarm sounded. However, a second later, he smelled smoke. His gaze darted to the two small square kitchen windows to the right of the patio. Black smoked streamed out, clear in the light thrown from the stringed bulbs. “Smoke there,” he shouted as he gestured toward the windows.
The glass shattered as angry orange plumes of fire erupted from both windows.
“Fire’s in the kitchen,” David shouted as he grabbed his phone from the pocket of his jeans.
Trey was already by the door yelling to people to run around the building to the front. The patch of grass between the patio and fence wasn’t safe.
Flames spread from the window frame up the side of the building toward the residence above.
Panic surged through him as ferocious as the flames. Sophie was upstairs. The kitchen butted up to the stairwell to Sophie’s apartment. Those stairs were the only entrance or exit from her place. All around him, people spilled into the night. Sirens shrieked their approach.
From the window next to the kitchen, he heard banging. A woman’s face appeared. “Oh my God, there are women in there,” Trey said.
“We’ll get them,” David said. “You go get Sophie.”
Nico ran down the steps around the side of the building to the door of Sophie’s apartment. First, he tried turning the knob. Locked. He pounded on the door, screaming Sophie’s name. Terror turned into adrenaline. He kicked down the door and entered the skinny stairway. Heat hit him in the face as if he’d jumped in an oven. Oh God, the fire was right behind the wall and spreading fast.
6
Sophie
* * *
With Hugh’s journal in her hands, Sophie slipped into the bathtub. She’d run the water extra hot but not too deep so she could keep her precious gift dry. With her noise-canceling headphones playing her sister Maggie’s latest album, she turned to the first page. Like a novel from childhood, his words always soothed her when she was upset. They also reminded her that true love was often fraught with more than a few bumps along the way.
* * *
Dear Sophie,
You’re two years old today. This is also the day of your mother’s murder. Her name was Mae O’Malley and she was slight with big green eyes and hair the color of a new penny. She had a lot of freckles, which she hated. When we were seven, she tried to scrub them off with a metal brush. You can imagine how well that went. She loved dancing and theater and had a lovely voice that elevated the church choir every Sunday. She starred in all the school plays. She was as close to perfect as a person could be.
From the time we were small, I worshipped her.
Mae and I were born in 1960 and grew up together in Cliffside Bay. Her parents owned the local inn. My mother owned the only bar in town, which had been passed onto her by her father. Our families were intertwined by business and church. There was not a space of time in my memory that didn’t include Mae. That is, until her death two years ago. Now I have only memories.
Missing people is an awful thing. There’s such an emptiness and hunger that cannot be filled by anything the world offers. My people are the only thing I want. Nothing else will do. And yet, even as I know this, there’s nothing to be done. You’re both gone.
There’s rage, too. Anger is a beast that continues to grow inside me. I can’t shrink it down to a manageable size. Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. The beast fuels me, keeps me going, counteracting the grief by keeping me alive.
As I sit here tonight in the fading light with the sunset painting the sky pink and orange, it occurred to me that all this pent-up grief and anger might be lessened if I wrote to you every so often. Someday, if God allows, you might read these letters and know the story of your birth and those who both made you and mourn you.
Back in the day I used to dream of being a writer. I was always fond of detective novels and hoped one day I might try to write one. But I took over the bar and grill instead and the years kind of rolled along. Zane came, and I had to be his only parent. Between him and running the bar, there wasn’t much left of me at the end of the day. I thought, at least, I could write to you. There would be something left behind when I’m gone. Words are life, after all. Nothing can erase them. Not even time.
I should tell you a little about the man who murdered your mother. I’ll say up front that as much as they tried, the police could never pin anything on him. Just like he’d done all his life, Roger Keene escaped unscathed. I know the truth. Lily and Doc Waller know it too. And God help her, so does little Maggie Keene. Keene pushed Mae down those stairs. She didn’t fall. Someday, he’ll pay. It may not be until he reaches the gates of Hell, but it will happen.
I’m getting ahead of myself in the story.
Keene and I have a history that dates back to our high school days. When we were teenagers, this town was even smaller than it is now. Our class only had twenty-one kids. Keene and I had a few things in common. We were both good athletes being raised by single mothers. My father died in a motorcycle accident when I was a baby. Keene’s father was never known. He and his mother lived in a run-down house outside of town. He was the high school quarterback and I was the guy who could catch his throws and run like heck to the end zone. We were sort of small-town heroes, I suppose. Despite these commonalities, Keene and I were mortal enemies. From the time we were in grade school, I knew that under those good looks and the smooth talk was a bully. On the football field he’d shown me more than a few times his temper and his tendencies toward violence. I’d seen the glint of rage in his eyes when one of the boys on the team made a mistake. More than once I stopped him from hurting one of our teammates with his fists. I knew his heart, and it was black as the darkest night.
All through high school, Mae and Keene were an item. They were “the” couple of our class. Prom king and queen—that kind of thing. I can still see her sitting on the bleachers during our football practices wearing his letterman jacket. She was so pretty with the sun glinting off her hair and those big eyes in that heart-shaped face.
One night at the end of our senior year Keene, Mae, I, and a few others were down on the beach. Someone had built a bonfire and we were all sitting around drinking covert beers. Keene had wandered off to smoke dope with a few of the other guys, but I stayed behind with Mae. Waves crashed into shore, and the chilly night air smelled of sea and woodsmoke. We sat on a blanket with our backs leaning against a large piece of driftwood I’d dragged over to the fire. Across from us were two of our other friends, chatting about going away in the fall for college.
I was only half listening because Mae was beside me, and when that happened everything else faded into the background.
I loved Mae Keene with all my heart.
Yes, even way back then, I loved her.
And she loved Roger Keene.
“Did you tell your mom about the scholarship?” Mae’s gaze was directed toward the fire. She wore bell-bottom jeans and a bulky white fisherman’s sweater. She sat cross-legged and held a long stick in her hands, which she occasionally used to poke the logs.
It was a simple answer. I hadn’t told my mother that I’d been admitted to Berkeley or that I’d won a scholarship. You might be wondering why. The answer was pretty simple. Both my mother and I had secrets. Hers was that she was sick. Mine was that I wanted more than anything to go to college, and I’d found a way to do so. I knew her secret. She didn’t know mine.
“Ma needs me to take over at The Oar. She’s sick.” My father’s family had owned the bar and apartment above it for twenty years before I was born. When he died, it was the only thing he left us. Before my mother took it over, t
he place was more of a saloon. No one but a man would’ve dared step inside. She saw an opportunity to turn it into a bar and grill and attract tourists and families. She got a loan from the bank and put in a kitchen and changed the decor. All those years later, she was still making payments to the bank. Business was good enough to cover our expenses and the loan, but not enough to put any money away.
“What do you mean, sick?” Mae asked.
“Cancer.” Quiet enough so the other kids couldn’t hear me, I leaned close and told her about how I’d seen the diagnosis on her desk in her office. “She doesn’t know I know. I can’t leave her. She needs me.”
Mae didn’t say anything for a long while. She poked the fire. Sparks rose into the air as the logs shifted. “How bad is it?”
I heaved a pebble out toward the shore. “The cancer’s everywhere. All over her body.”
We both knew what this meant. Neither of us could say the words out loud, but the truth lived heavy in my chest, burdening me with the inevitable knowledge that my hardworking, uncomplaining mother would soon be gone from this world without ever having lived.
“I wanted you to get out, have more,” Mae said.
“People like me don’t get out.” My voice cracked as I admitted this truth to myself. I was stuck.
“People like us don’t get out,” she said.
Like I said earlier, Mae’s family owned an inn. The only one in Cliffside Bay. Like us, they lived in a few rooms upstairs. And like us, they were always on the brink of not being able to pay the bills. Her parents were older than most, having had her when they were already forty. I knew she felt obligated to stay and help them, just as I did. However, the thought of her growing old before her time like my mother made me sick. She was special.
“You should go, Mae. Go to New York. Get out and don’t come back.”
She continued to poke the fire. “Roger told me I don’t have a chance to make it in show business. He’s right. I’m too shy and scared to go away from here.”
My blood boiled. I wanted to toss my beer bottle against a rock, but I loved our beach too much to soil it with broken glass. Roger had no right to tell her any such thing. What did he know about show business? He just wanted her to stay because there was no way he was getting out of this town, either. Roger wasn’t exactly college material. The only reason he was about to graduate from high school was because of sports. The coach made sure he passed classes by leaning on the other teachers.
I didn’t say any of this, of course. We were good friends but not good enough for me to say all those hateful things about the boy she loved.
“We’re leaving to get married right after graduation,” Mae said. “Eloping.”
My heart about stopped. Eloping. That meant I’d never have a chance. See there, that’s the sad truth. I’d been holding on to this hope that she would see him for what he was and be done with him. I’d swoop in like a seagull on a tourist’s discarded sandwich. If they were married, that would be it. I’d never have a chance.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” she asked.
As luck would have it, the girls on the other side of the fire decided it was time to get up for another beer. We had our stash hidden behind a log a little farther inland.
“Aren’t you happy for me?” she asked. “I’m going to marry Roger. I’ve loved him forever. You know that. There’s no one else for me.”
I turned to her. The firelight reflected in her eyes. In that oversize, bulky sweater she looked small and incredibly vulnerable. I thought about Keene’s violent streak. I remembered a time when he’d tugged on Mae’s arm so hard that she cried out in pain and another when he’d shoved her against the wall at a party simply because she asked to go home.
And my heart broke. Because I saw her future in the flames of that fire as clearly as if I’d been watching it play out on the drive-in movie screen.
For the first time in the history of our relationship, I didn’t hold back even though I knew it would alienate her from my life. I had to. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night had I not said the truth.
“Please look at me when I say this,” I said.
She tilted her face my direction. Her eyes widened but her mouth clamped shut in a stubborn line.
“If you marry Keene, it will ruin your life.”
She blinked. Tears gathered in her eyes. “Don’t say that. How can you say that?”
“I’ve seen how he treats you. Do you think I don’t see what he’s like?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I know you do. In your heart of hearts, you do.”
She turned her face back to the fire, then tossed her stick into the flames. Several tears traveled down the side of her face. It took every ounce of control I had not to wipe them away.
“Roger says you’re in love with me.”
I swallowed as my stomach turned over.
“Is that why you’re saying this?” she asked. “Because you want me for yourself?”
I drank the dregs of my beer before answering, knowing this might be the last honest exchange we ever had. “It is true that I love you. It is also true that marrying Keene will ruin your life. It may even end your life.”
“You’re wrong. You’re just jealous and spiteful.” Her voice broke.
“I’ve been jealous for a long time now. That’s true. But as far as spite goes, you couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m the only one in your life who wants what’s best for you.”
“You don’t know anything about anything, Hugh Shaw. You just think you do—going around acting like a preacher and all high and mighty like you’re better than the rest of us.”
I could barely speak from the ache in my chest. She’d never said one cross word to me in all the years of our friendship, and it hurt bad. “I’m not better than you or anyone else in this town except for Roger Keene.”
“You have no right to say such a thing to me.”
“Maybe I don’t, but I sure couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try.” I untangled my legs and rose to my feet. “I know you hate me right now, but if you ever get in trouble or it gets too bad, come to me. I’ll always be here.”
And I left her there. She married him the day after graduation. Her parents had no choice but to let him move into the residence section of their inn. When my mother died a few months later, Mae came to the funeral and said how sorry she was and gave me a hug. When I looked carefully at her face, I saw a bruise on her cheek under heavy makeup. For nineteen years we were friendly when we saw each other in town or when she came into the restaurant with Keene, but not close like we’d once been. Strangely enough, she didn’t have Maggie until almost ten years into their marriage. As you most likely know by now, Maggie and Zane were born the same year. She told me later that she stayed on birth control because she didn’t want to risk having him hurt a child like he did her. Maggie was an accident. A happy one, of course.
Well, that’s all I have time to write tonight. I’ll tell you more of our story in another passage. For now, happy birthday to my beautiful girl.
Love,
Hugh
Sophie set the journal on the table next to her tub and sank into the water up to her neck. With her eyes closed, she listened to her sister’s crystalline voice singing about love. She wondered how it was possible to love someone so much who didn’t return those feelings, or even worse, loved someone else.
Her thoughts drifted to Mae. She wished she could know exactly what it was like to be her, to love a man like Roger instead of a man like Hugh.
If only Hugh knew how much The Oar meant to her. She’d come running as fast as she could to this town and the business he’d built for her and Zane. She was proud to run it and proud to live in this community. Her birth parents may have thought it best to “get out,” but she knew in her heart this was where she belonged. The last few years had been joyous for her. How she wished she could tell him how grateful she was to have this anchor in her
life. And how she wished he were here so she could ask him for advice about her disastrous love life.
She turned up the music and let the tears spill from her eyes and into the bathwater.
7
Nico
* * *
Nico punched in the code to the apartment. Thank God Sophie had given it to him months ago. He ran up the stairs two at a time. By the time he reached Sophie’s doorway, the fire burst through the wooden steps below. They were trapped upstairs. He twisted the doorknob, and the door opened. He almost tripped as he ran inside and shouted for Sophie. Smoke was seeping up through the floorboards.
“Sophie? Where are you?” He ran across the living room to the kitchen. The light was off in the tidy kitchen. An open bottle of red was on the table. She’d opened wine, but no Sophie. Bath. She’s in the bath. She can’t hear anything because she listens to music through her noise-canceling headphones to drown out the pulsing beat of the jukebox in the bar below.
Utter fright choked him as he ran across the living room to her bedroom. The door, slightly ajar, revealed a dark room. He didn’t bother to knock. The bed, neatly made, did not have his girl. The door to the master bathroom was closed, but a strip of light under the door told him she must be in there.
He burst through the door and there she was, naked in the tub under a pile of suds. Her eyes were closed. Thick headphones covered her ears. A half-full wineglass sat in the corner of the tub.
“Sophie.” He shouted at her as he lunged forward.
Her eyes flew open. She tore off her headphones.
“Sophie, the restaurant’s on fire. We have to get out of here.” His terror morphed to anger. “Can’t you hear it?”
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