The Firebrand

by Susan Wiggs

  But Mama was there already, coming through the kitchen door. She had plaster smudges and a funny look on her face as she said, “Hello, Mr. Higgins. Welcome to our home.”

  Now Maggie remembered. The giant’s name was Mr. Higgins. He really wasn’t scary, just big. He looked confused about the plaster. She wondered if he knew he had white cat feet prints all over his black coat.

  “Thank you,” he said, not “Fee fie fo fum,” as he stepped into the parlor.

  Grammy Vi came in, looking terrifically proper. Mama introduced them, and the giant called her Mrs. Hathaway in a respectful way and gave a bow like a gentleman in a stage play. Standing in the middle of the parlor, on the faded flowery carpet, he made everything around him look tiny—the horsehair sofa, the glass lamp, the shelves of books against the wall. Even the tall case clock, which Maggie was learning to read, seemed little beside Mr. Higgins.

  “We didn’t expect you so soon,” Mama said in her Polite but Firm voice. “May I take your coat?”

  He set down his case. It looked like a leather carpetbag, only it was black. He took off his coat and handed it to Mama. She brushed at the white cat prints as she hung the coat on the hall tree.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  The way he stared at Mama reminded Maggie of something Sally Saltonstall had once told her. Some ladies had what were known as Gentleman Callers. Gentleman Callers usually brought gifts of lemon drops and fresh flowers. Mr. Higgins didn’t seem the sort at all, and his black bag appeared too Important to contain lemon drops.

  Maggie thought about his enormous house and lovely garden and Ivan the dog, who never got tired of chasing sticks and rocks. She thought about his old, gray grandmother, who seemed as fierce as the Bad Queen in Maggie’s favorite fairy story.

  “Let’s all sit down, shall we?” Mama said.

  Maggie heard that funny note in Mama’s voice again—the one she’d been hearing for a few days. Mama was the same as usual, but Maggie was the sort of girl who noticed everything. She’d noticed that her mother’s voice got a bit higher and a little strained when she was Upset. Usually it was Injustice that upset her, but when Maggie asked her about it this week, Mama would simply say something like “I’m just thinking about how much I love you.”

  The words made Maggie feel all warm and Important inside but a little nervous, too. Because she noticed everything, she noticed that lately Mama’s hugs lasted a few seconds longer. Her bedtime stories were softer and not so scary. And when she thought Maggie was fast asleep—Maggie was very good at pretending to sleep—Mama stood by the bed an extralong time.

  Grammy Vi sat perfectly straight on the sofa, patting the seat next to her for Maggie, who clambered up. She was delighted to escape a scolding about the plaster, even though it was drying to a white powder and making little clouds in the room. Maggie swung her legs, watching the plaster dry on her bare feet, while Mama and Mr. Higgins sat down in the straight-back wooden chairs on each side of the squatty parlor stove. Mr. Higgins’s knees came up high in front of him.

  “I bet you have a very tall bicycle,” Maggie said admiringly. “The ones with the biggest wheels go the fastest.”

  “Actually I’ve never ridden on a bicycle,” he said. His voice was very deep. “I don’t know how.”

  “It’s the best thing ever,” Maggie said.

  “Is it?” He made an expression with his mouth that might have been a smile, but Maggie didn’t know him well enough to tell. “Better than strawberry ice cream?”

  Now she was sure it was a smile. And his watchful eyes had a nice twinkle in them. “Maybe the same as strawberry ice cream,” she admitted.

  Grammy Vi patted her hand, making a tiny puff of white powder on the sofa.

  “This is a very special meeting,” Mama said.

  Maggie stopped swinging her feet. A Meeting? She was at a Meeting? Mama had lots of those, but Maggie had never been invited to one. Suddenly she felt very grown-up.

  “Will we have a March?” she asked excitedly. “Will we have a Protest? Will Patience come and teach us hymns of solid—solid—” She looked at Grammy Vi and whispered, “I forgot the word.”

  “Solidarity,” Grammy Vi said. “And no, it’s not that sort of meeting.”

  “Maggie,” said Mama, “Mr. Higgins is here because he is part of the most wonderful story in the whole wide world. You know which story I mean, don’t you?”

  Maggie wiggled up and down on the sofa. “The baby from heaven story?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that is our story,” Maggie said. “There was a great, terrible fire, and I fell from the sky, and you caught me, and that is how I came to be your daughter.” She looked from the strange, big man to her mama. “Right?”

  “That’s our part of the story. But there’s another part, too. Mr. Higgins can tell you about it.”

  She stopped wiggling and regarded him with new interest. “Really?”

  “Yes,” he said in his giant’s voice. “Before the fire, you had a mother and father who loved you very much.”

  “I know that. My mama has always told me so.”

  He lifted one eyebrow, an expression that made him seem extremely interested. “Has she?”

  “Of course,” Mama said, speaking to Mr. Higgins. “I never wanted her to feel she’d been abandoned, ever.”

  Maggie wasn’t sure what abandoned meant.

  “Now a very surprising thing has occurred,” Mama continued.

  “A miraculous thing,” Mr. Higgins said, and the way he regarded Maggie made her feel like the most Important girl in the world. She got a funny prickle in her chest, like the feeling she got on Christmas morning as she lay in her bed, waiting for Grammy Vi to call her into the parlor to see her presents.

  “What is the miraculous thing, Mama?” she demanded, unable to contain her excitement. The rusty springs of the sofa creaked as she bounced up and down. “I want to know the miraculous thing!”

  “Well, now there is something new to add to our story.” Mama was quiet for a second as she took a deep breath of air. “We always thought— It was always assumed that the loving mother and father had died trying to save their little girl from the fire.”

  “Because they were too big to be wrapped up in blankets and mattresses,” Maggie said. She didn’t like to think about it, but her mama had said it was a tragical part of the story. She caught Mr. Higgins’s eye. “Last October on my birthday, Mama let me pick out two stars in the night sky. She said those two stars were the lost mother and father, who would always watch over me.”

  “That’s a nice story,” he said. “But we have some good news for you. Those people didn’t die after all.”

  Maggie took a moment to think about this. “The mother and father?” She had always pictured them like people in a stereoscope photograph—frozen strangers posed side by side, wearing the same clothes and the same statue expressions every time she peered through the scope at them.

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” he said. He kept catching Mama’s eye, and each time he did, she would nod in a nervous way. “Your mother and father were hurt in the fire, and for weeks and weeks, they had to stay in the hospital. They were asleep almost the whole time.”

  “Like Rip van Winkle,” Maggie observed.

  “A little. But bit by bit, they got better. It took a long time. They went to the hotel building where they had last seen their daughter, and it was gone. The city officials told them everyone in the building had died.”

  Maggie heard a rough break in his voice. He splayed his big hands on his knees, and she could see shiny scars on his knuckles and fingers.

  “They were the saddest people in the world when they heard this news,” Mr. Higgins went on. “For all the years since the fire, they have been missing their little daughter.” His hands squeezed his knees as if looking for something to hang on to. “They never knew she was safe and sound, living with a foster mother and a grandmother up over a bookshop.”

  Th
e Christmas-morning feeling in Maggie turned to something different. She began to feel a shy, odd cramping inside. Mr. Higgins kept staring at her in a way that was funny and sad and hungry all at once.

  “Maggie, sweetheart,” Mama said in her softest voice. “A most remarkable thing has happened. Mr. Higgins is your papa, who lost you in the fire.”

  Maggie pulled her knees up to her chest, trying to make herself very small. Looping her arms around her knees, she said nothing.

  “You always wanted a papa of your own,” Mama pointed out.

  “But Willa Jean is the papa,” Maggie objected, her voice very loud. “You said.”

  “That was just pretend,” Mama said. “This is for real.”

  Everyone was very, very quiet for a long time. They all seemed to be waiting for Maggie to say something. Finally she set her chin on her knees and said, “I already have a mama.” She couldn’t imagine any other, except as a faraway star in the night sky.

  Mama’s eyes turned enormously bright as she said, “Now you have two who love you. Isn’t that lucky?”

  Maggie didn’t feel lucky at all. She lowered her eyelashes and peeked at the man sitting in the chair with his hands on his knees. He didn’t really look like the papa in the stereoscope pictures. He didn’t even have side-whiskers like Sally’s father or a bristly beard like Mr. Kennedy, whose red-haired wife had a new baby every year.

  And that made her realize why Mr. Higgins didn’t look like a father—he had no children with him, none crawling in his lap or whispering in his ear or bringing him treasures from the lakeshore.

  Maggie stood up, raining bits of plaster on the floor, and walked over to Mr. Higgins. If he really was her papa then she wanted to look at him up close.

  He put out both of his hands and held them palms up. There were some whitish scars on his fingers; she’d noticed them that first day at the bank. Maggie stared at his face and saw the scars there, too.

  “Did it hurt very much?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “It did.”

  Sometimes grown-ups didn’t answer questions directly. She was glad Mr. Higgins did.

  “Can I touch them?” she asked.

  “Of course you can.”

  She put her hands into his. They fit together nicely, and his hands were dry and warm and smooth. Just for a second, he shut his eyes, and when he opened them, she thought they looked extra shiny.

  “Where’s the—” Maggie stopped herself from asking the question. She didn’t know what to call the other mama, even though they told her she was so lucky for having two.

  “Your mother?” he asked, guessing her thoughts.

  “The—my other mother.” She hoped he knew it was an important distinction.

  “She lives far away in a place called California. Do you know where that is?”

  “Of course I know,” she said with an excess of patience. “It’s in San Francisco.”

  “Actually your…other mother does live in San Francisco. It’s a big city by the sea.”

  “Why does she live there? Isn’t she your wife?”

  “No,” he said. His voice was flat, but he didn’t seem cross at all. “She’s not my wife anymore because we had something called a divorce.”

  “Is that anything like the mumps? Sally Saltonstall had mumps and we couldn’t be together for days and days.”

  He made a rusty sound, and it took her a moment to realize it was a laugh. “Being divorced means we’re not married anymore. But Diana will always be your mother.”

  She’s never been my mother, thought Maggie, but she didn’t dare to say that aloud. She knew somehow that it would be bad manners.

  She smiled to let him know she liked him. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Higgins. Maybe you’ll come and visit again.”

  As she turned away, he said a funny thing. He said, “Christine.”

  The tone of his voice made her turn back to face him. “Who is Christine?”

  He smiled. It was a nice smile but it was stiff around the edges, as though his mouth wasn’t used to smiling. “You are,” he said. “That’s your name—Christine Grace Higgins.”

  She jumped back as if he’d breathed fire like a dragon. In her mind, she saw the stone angel with the name Christine on it. “My name is Maggie,” she said stoutly. “Margaret Sterling Hathaway. Maggie Maggie Maggie.” She stamped her bare foot each time for emphasis, raining specks of plaster on the floor.

  He didn’t get mad, but smiled again, just a little. “Maggie’s a very nice name. We’ll call you Maggie if you like.”

  She’d been expecting an argument. She folded her arms and said, “Very well.”

  “Very well,” he said back at her. They stared at each other for quite a long time, until a funny feeling came over Maggie and she couldn’t help herself. She giggled. And then Mr. Higgins laughed, too, and Mama and Grammy Vi smiled and whispered something between them.

  But after a while, Mama started to look serious, as she had when she was telling the story. “Maggie, darling, there’s something else we have to tell you.”

  “What?”

  “We’ve talked about what’s best for you now that we know where you came from. We talked to important judges and lawyers trying to figure out how to arrange this so that all of your parents have a chance to love you. You’re going to be living with Mr.—with your papa. Won’t that be nice?”

  There was a silence in the room as big as Lake Michigan. She pictured Mr. Higgins’s giant house and his old grandmother.

  Maggie thought maybe she had bees in her belly, because something was buzzing around in there. Then she realized it wasn’t bees at all, but a scream. When she opened her mouth, out it came—the loudest, longest, most desperate scream she’d ever screamed.

  Fourteen

  Rand had known that starting Maggie on her new life was not going to be easy. He’d expected it to bother him when she clung to Lucy and begged, “Please don’t make me go!” He understood that, blood ties notwithstanding, his daughter was bound by the heart to Lucy Hathaway.

  He thought he’d braced himself for a wrenching transition. But he wasn’t prepared for how helpless he felt.

  He was, by nature, a problem solver. He was the sort to fix things, find remedies. But as he regarded the wailing little girl who clutched at her mother’s skirts, he had no idea what to do.

  Miss Lowell, the governess he had engaged to look after Christine, had admonished him to be firm with the girl, to ignore any childish objections and get on with the business of bringing her back where she belonged. Miss Lowell, who had twenty-five years’ experience managing children, had made it sound so simple. But how could it be simple to tear a child away from the only mother she knew?

  He caught Lucy Hathaway’s eye over the head of the weeping child. Lucy appeared pale but calm as she held Maggie and kissed the top of her head and made soothing sounds. But Rand knew that inside she must be breaking apart.

  He imagined that, in this moment, Lucy was like a shipwreck in a storm—her destruction slow and violent, inexorable, sinking into coldness. He knew, because that was how he’d felt when he’d lost Christine.

  She is Maggie now, he told himself. With all the other upheaval, he would not try to force a strange name on her.

  Viola Hathaway sat very still, the only motion a steady stream of tears down her cheeks.

  He still could not believe how easily Lucy had ceded custody of Maggie. Now, as he watched her holding the little girl, he understood why. It wasn’t that Lucy had something to hide, or that she wished to shed herself of the cumbersome inconvenience of a child. Quite the opposite. She lived and breathed for Maggie. Lucy had known that any resistance to Rand’s suit would hurt Maggie, and so she’d surrendered quickly and completely.

  She must have understood from the very start that it would come to this. So why had she come forward, when she could have let him go on believing his daughter dead? Why wouldn’t she let him go on year after year, sitting with an old photogra
ph and drinking a single bottle of champagne on Christine’s birthday?

  He knew now, and the understanding humbled him.

  After what seemed like a long time, Lucy put Maggie on the floor, held her by the shoulders and gazed solemnly into the miserable little face. “This is the way it has to be,” she said. “Before there was me, there was your papa, and he needs you now.”

  Maggie shot him a look over her shoulder. “He doesn’t need me. He’s got Ivan and his old grandmama and that great big house.”

  Rand held her gaze. “You’re wrong, Maggie. I need you very much.”

  She blinked, her eyelashes spiky with tears. “Why?”

  “Because you are the most precious thing in my life, and I thought I’d lost you forever. Now that you’re back, you’re all I think about.”

  “Could you maybe think about me while I stay here?” she suggested. “And I could come and visit you sometimes?”

  She spoke with such adult logic that she nearly did him in, but Lucy took charge. “Come, sweetheart. Grammy Vi and I got all your favorite things ready. I want you to be all settled in your new room so that when I come to visit you, I’ll know you feel right at home.”

  Rand stood out of politeness, but he had no idea what to do with himself.

  “I’ll never feel at home there. Never!” Maggie stomped her foot. “I’ll hate it there. I’ll hate it forever!”

  Remarkably, Lucy pretended not to hear, and even more remarkably, the tantrum subsided. Maggie followed Lucy out of the parlor down a narrow hallway.

  “A tantrum is only a tantrum if there’s someone watching,” Viola Hathaway murmured to him, dabbing at her cheeks with a lace-edged handkerchief. “Remember that technique. I suspect you’ll need it.”

  He nodded. “I feel like a monster.”

  She didn’t try to soothe or placate or deny it. “Perhaps now you understand my daughter,” she said with a touch of pride. “Justice and honor are everything to her. She puts them before everything, even her personal desires.”