By Design

by Denker, Jayne

  “No,” she protested again. “He didn’t come tonight because of me. I RSVP’d for both of us because I was afraid he wouldn’t bring me. And then—and then he got mad . . .”

  “Well, you did read his e-mail.”

  “I know.” She groaned. “It was wrong, I admit it. But I just . . . just . . . I don’t know . . .” Juliet started snurfling in earnest. “I’m losing him,” she wailed. “And it serves me right.”

  Well, that much is true, Emmie thought. But Juliet was such a mess, it brought the untouchable angel down to earth, suddenly, and Emmie didn’t really want to kick her in her bent wings. So instead, she said, “Juliet, if you want to make things right, maybe you should, you know, decide who you want to be with and then . . . do it.”

  “I have!” she burst out, tears springing up afresh. “But it’s too late. He’s so distracted. Sometimes I think he’s got . . . somebody else.”

  Emmie got a little thrill from that. What if it was her? And almost immediately she felt bad for being so selfish. It appeared that Juliet did care about Graham, and she really had made a mess of her life, and Emmie sort of felt sorry for her.

  Emmie turned onto Juliet’s street and slowed down even more as she navigated the twists and turns of the dark subdivision lane. “What about Kevin?”

  “I don’t have him, either!” Juliet wailed.

  Emmie pulled into Juliet’s driveway, parked, and risked a glance at the other woman. Juliet had buried her face in her fuzzy-gloved hands and was sobbing all-out now. Emmie wasn’t sure if she should hug her or at least pat her shoulder or what. Suddenly Juliet whispered in a strangled voice, “I’m sorry. Thank you for the ride home,” and lurched out of the car. She stumbled up her front walk, fumbled with her keys, and finally half fell into her darkened home. The red door shut abruptly, and Emmie was left alone, staring into the swirling snow.

  It took Emmie nearly twice as long to get home. The snow was even more blinding, if that was at all possible, and she took most of the drive at a crawl. Her shoulders were tight; her headache had expanded from her temples to behind her eyes and around the back of her head. Juliet’s freak-out in the car had completely flummoxed her. After months of dealing with Perfect Juliet and her Barbie Dream World, it came as quite a shock that maybe not everything was all fluffy and pink in her personal life. As Emmie eased her Honda through the main part of town and closer to her warm bed, she couldn’t resist analyzing everything Juliet had said. She thought she’d lost Graham—to someone else (that was the juicy part)—and she didn’t “have” Kevin, either? What did she mean by that? Kevin seemed like a devoted husband and father, even staying with the kids while Juliet partied. How could she not “have” him when he was firmly ensconced at home?

  Emmie sighed. Maybe all of that was just Juliet’s drunken rambling. How could she trust anything the G&T-soaked, stood-up, adoration-denied woman was saying late at night in a half-snowbound car, anyway?

  She braked slowly to get to a four-way stop without overshooting the intersection. Almost home. Still nobody else on the road. She thought there might be, what with it being a weekend night so close to the holidays. Seemed like there had been some event at the high school; the yellowy-orange glow of the field lights lit up the edges of the low-hanging clouds.

  When she finally got onto her own street, it took her a few seconds to realize something wasn’t quite right. First she noticed even more cars parked along the curb than there had been when she had left. Then she noticed the blue lights blinking on many dashboards. Then she saw the yellow lines of hoses crisscrossing the pavement, drifts of snow collecting in their curves and bends.

  Then, suddenly, something—someone—was in her headlights, holding up a massive gloved hand. She slammed on her brakes and slid a little. The figure before her skipped to one side. When her car was still, he put a hand on the edge of the windshield and leaned toward the driver’s side window. She eased it down. The volunteer firefighter’s clunky yellow helmet filled the space.

  “Street’s closed for a few blocks. Have to go around.”

  “What’s going on?”

  He looked at her like she was an idiot. “Fire.”

  “I mean . . . where? Whose house? I live on this street.”

  Emmie craned her neck to see which of her neighbors were put out in this kind of weather. She could invite them in and—

  “No. Oh, God. Shit.”

  Before the firefighter could stop her, she lurched out of her car and stumbled down the street, past the vehicles of the volunteer firefighters, over the hoses, and through the drifts of snow. It couldn’t be. Of all the houses and buildings, it just couldn’t—

  “SHIT!”

  Another firefighter came up to her and put his hands up to stop her getting any closer. “Ma’am, you can’t be here—it’s dangerous—”

  “That’s my house!”

  He made a face. “Ooh, that sucks.”

  “You’re damned right it sucks!”

  Horrified, she watched as a dozen firefighters doused her house with jets of water that iced up as soon as the water hit anything not on fire. What was on fire was the back of her house. She couldn’t see any flames from where she stood, but she could certainly see the glow from them—what she had mistaken as the lights of the high school—and billows and billows of smoke pushed toward her by the strong winds.

  “My house!” she wailed, and coughed as ash mingled with snowflakes in the air.

  “Doesn’t look like it’ll be a total loss.”

  Emmie’s eyes were burning, and tears started coursing down her cheeks. “Are you shitting me!”

  “No, seriously. I’ve been fighting fires for years, and I can tell you it isn’t as bad as it looks.”

  Somewhere a window shattered, making her jump. Emmie shook her head in disbelief. “What happened?” she cried.

  “Was your electrical system up to date? We get a lot of fires from frayed wires in these old homes.”

  “Yes! I had all the wiring redone six months ago!” She put her fingers to her throbbing temples. Her hair was damp with snow. “My house! I was just having a party and now . . .” Her rambling thoughts ended in a groan.

  The firefighter took sympathy on her and steered her toward one of the rescue trucks. “Come on over here, ma’am.”

  He led her around to the far side of the truck so she wouldn’t have to watch her house being destroyed, shook out a blanket, and draped it over her shoulders. She saw two figures, also under blankets, sitting on the bumper.

  Emmie didn’t usually swear all that much, and certainly reserved the F-bomb for only the most dire of circumstances, when no other colorful language would do. This was definitely one of those times. “Fuck. Me.”

  “Oh, hey, Em.”

  “Fuck. Me.”

  “You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Kyle tried to joke.

  Emmie’s voice was ghostly, surprising even her. There was no fury—not like when she had gone postal on him at Carl’s. This time, she just stared at him and whispered, “You son of a bitch. You burned my house down.”

  Kyle clutched his blanket with one hand but held up his other in protest. “Now wait a minute, Emmaline—”

  “No, I will not wait a minute. I left you two in my house and was gone for an hour. I come back and . . . Kyle. What did you do?” It came out as more of a demand than a question.

  But her none-too-bright ex wasn’t about to confess—to whatever it was. His face a mask of incredulity and personal affront, Kyle drew out, “Whaaaat!”

  Emmie’s death glare stopped that approach quickly enough, so he switched to deflection. “Oh, sure, don’t even ask if we’re all right. Don’t even ask how we got out. And we called nine-one-one for you. So you’re welcome.”

  Emmie licked her dry lips and repeated even more slowly, “Kyle. What—did—you—do?”

  Kyle’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times, and then she heard the unlikeliest of voices. Caitlynn’s. “It was jus
t one candle. One . . . or two.”

  “What?” What in the world was this bubblehead talking about?

  “It was—”

  “I put out all the candles before I left! I’m not stupid!” She looked from her ex to his ditzy girlfriend and back again. “You . . . lit . . . some candles?”

  “Just one. Or two,” Caitlynn repeated, as if that would make it all right.

  “I didn’t even have any candles anyplace but the living room!” And then the light started to dawn. “You put candles in my bedroom? Why were you . . .” And then she froze in horror. “Oh my God.”

  Kyle grinned sheepishly and rubbed the back of his neck—that unconscious habit that always revealed when he was feeling guilty. “C’mon, Emmaline, don’t make a big deal out of this—”

  When Emmie spoke again, her voice was deadly calm, and she spoke very carefully. “Don’t talk to me. Ever again. Get out of here.”

  The firefighter spoke up. “Uh, dude, you’d better listen to her. I’d be pretty pissed, too, if I were her.” Kyle still didn’t move, so he continued, “There’s nothing you can do here—just go on home, okay?” Kyle started to protest, but the firefighter stopped him. “No, man. Seriously. Go on now.” Then he turned to Emmie. “This usually isn’t part of the service, you understand, but, uh, you want me to . . . ?” And he gestured toward Kyle. “I can have a little talk with him after we’re done here.”

  Emmie studied the fist the firefighter was displaying. It was tempting, she had to admit. But she just shook her head. “No. But thank you. You’re very kind.”

  Kyle removed the blanket, pulled the other off Caitlynn’s shoulders (she held on to it for a moment, uncomprehending, but he tugged harder), and put both of them on the hood of the rescue truck. Likely remembering Emmie’s assault with the shot glasses, and realizing that anything she could grab off the fire trucks was much larger and heavier, he crab-walked toward his pickup, never turning his back on her for a moment.

  When they were gone, Emmie focused only on the rasping sound of her own breath in the icy air. She barely felt the heavy, gloved hand of her caretaker on her shoulder. As if from far away, she heard him say, “What a shithead.”

  “He’s my ex-boyfriend.”

  “Your ex-boyfriend was . . . you know . . . in your bedroom . . . with another girl . . . and, what . . . ?”

  “Knocked over a candle—or two—while they were . . . you know . . . apparently,” she said hollowly.

  “Jesus.”

  They stood silently, in awe of the magnitude of Kyle’s idiocy, until another firefighter approached with the news, “Fire’s out. Just have to give the debris a good soaking for a bit.”

  Debris. A good chunk of her house was now a pile of debris. Emmie stared, transfixed, at the icicles dangling from the man’s mustache as he echoed what the first firefighter had told her.

  “It’s not a total loss. Just the back bedroom. Seems like it was caused by—”

  “Candles,” Emmie filled in for him, her voice faint. “One or two.” She stared vacantly at her smoldering, ice-laden home. “Unbe-fucking-lievable.”

  Chapter 13

  Emmie was holed up in her childhood bedroom at her father’s house, clad in musty-smelling clothes she had dug out of the bottom drawer of her old dresser—too-small sweatpants and a voluminous “Go Panthers” sweatshirt. She hadn’t left the room all day, not even when her father tried to talk to her through the closed door. She knew she was being terribly rude. After all, he had picked her up late at night outside the near-ruin of her house and tucked her into her old twin bed, murmuring to her that she’d “get through this.”

  But she couldn’t help it. She was just . . . numb. Her beloved house was a wreck. Despite repeated assurances from the firefighters and her father that the damage would be covered by insurance, she couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if it wasn’t. (Was the torching of one’s house through an ex-boyfriend’s stupidity covered by her homeowner’s policy or not?)

  She burrowed under her pink-and-orange-striped bedspread and matching sheets, also rather stale smelling, and stared in the general direction of her small white TV/VCR combo as the final moments of It’s a Wonderful Life aired. Now, if she were in Bedford Falls, all her friends would come to her aid and rebuild her home in a weekend while joyfully singing Christmas carols. But her friends were more broke than she was, plus most of them couldn’t tell the business end of a hammer from their Wii controller.

  Nope, she was on her own. Except for Trish, of course. Her friend had been appropriately aghast to hear about the events of the evening that far outdistanced her kids’ adventure with toy submarines diving in full washing machines. When Emmie called to give her the news, Trish begged her to stay with them, which Emmie politely and repeatedly declined, more for Trish’s sake than her own. So she promised to bring Emmie some extra clothes, and, as a bestie should, offered to hunt down Kyle and beat him senseless.

  Emmie’s attention drifted from the movie, and she looked around her old bedroom. New Kids on the Block poster above her bed. White jewelry box on her dresser. The Baby-sitters Club book series on the low shelves along the wall. Dollhouse in the corner.

  She slid out from under her comforter, nearly boneless in her exhaustion, and made her way over to the dollhouse perched on a round, kid-height white table. She squeezed her sweat-suited butt between the armrests of one of the matching spindled chairs and peered in the tiny windows.

  In spite of her dark mood, she smiled a little. The interior was a mishmash of strange furniture, much of it homemade by Emmie out of pieces of cardboard (many a shoebox was sacrificed, she recalled), colored with paint and markers and adorned with scraps of fabric left over from her mother’s sewing projects. She had even glued blocks of fabric to the walls and floors—a budding designer’s version of textured wallpaper and carpeting. Oh, and there was her favorite piece: a beanbag chair made out of an uninflated balloon stuffed with grains of rice, the latex now tacky and cracked.

  She was startled out of her reverie by a knock on her bedroom door. Her ghost of a smile vanished—she still didn’t feel like talking to her father, despite the guilt she felt at locking him out—but she called out, as receptively as possible, “Yeah?” then returned her attention to the dollhouse.

  The door opened a crack. “Emmie?”

  That wasn’t her father’s voice. She looked up. The door opened wider, and there stood Graham, filling the doorway. Her heart jumped, and her first thought was that she looked like hell and her clothes smelled, and dammit, why didn’t he get a gander of her all dressed up last night . . .

  Then she noticed that he looked terribly uncomfortable—that easy self-confidence that usually surrounded him like a mantle of light was missing. In his right hand were two paper bags. One was a large shopping bag, the other a small, gold-and-red-striped gift bag with red tissue paper sticking out of it. He hooked his right thumb into the pocket of his jeans and shoved his left hand into the other pocket.

  “Hey,” he said awkwardly. “Your dad sent me up. I, uh, I’m sorry I didn’t make it to your party last night.” Before Emmie could respond, he rushed on, “I was going to, really. Well, I went back and forth about it for a while—not because of you—definitely not.” His words tumbled out faster. “But . . . I was angry with Juliet for . . . well, a bunch of reasons, actually, and . . .”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I felt bad about it,” he said, “and I stopped by your house today to . . . and I saw . . . well.” He stumbled to a halt and gazed at her with a sympathetic expression. God, how she loved it when this man looked at her, because he really looked at her. He rustled the paper bags he was holding. “I was going to bring you the hostess gift I had gotten for last night.”

  He held out the gift bag and moved forward a couple of steps into the room. Emmie told herself to stand the heck up and meet him halfway, but when she rose a few inches, she found that the kiddie chair was coming with her. It was stuck t
o her behind—or, rather, her behind was stuck in it. Oh, good Lord. She sat back down and let him come to her.

  “How did you find out where I was?”

  “Ah, well, your home is a bit of a tourist attraction at the moment.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “And I ran into your friend Trish on the sidewalk. She, uh, seemed to know who I was, somehow.” Emmie was sure her face was crimson with embarrassment. Why, yes, we had many discussions about you, Realistic Hottie. “Anyway, she came up, introduced herself, we talked about what happened. She said she had been hoping to get some of your personal items out of the house for you, but she wasn’t sure it was safe to go inside. She was on her way here with this,” he indicated the larger bag, which he put on the floor. “Some of her own clothes and things for you. But instead she asked me to deliver it.”

  All the blessings of the gods upon Trish, dearest, bestest friend in the world, Emmie thought. Having Graham deliver the clothes for her—genius. Pure genius. As Emmie welcomed the giddy butterflies back to her stomach, Graham prompted, “Anyway, open your gift.”

  She rooted around in the bag until her fingers closed around something quite heavy. She drew out a brass candle snuffer. And she started to laugh.

  “I swear I bought that yesterday, not today.” Graham grinned, the relief evident on his beautiful features. “I was really hoping you’d laugh and not, you know, bludgeon me with it.”

  Emmie was laughing so hard tears were leaking out of the corners of her eyes. Or maybe she was crying. She couldn’t tell anymore. She hastily wiped at her cheeks with the overlong cuffs of her old sweatshirt and rasped, “Thank you, Graham. Really. It’s . . . lovely. A little too late, maybe . . .” And they both laughed out loud. “But lovely.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She wanted more than anything to stand up and give him a hug—or, if she were perfectly honest with herself, a little something more—but she didn’t dare attempt to get out of the chair again. So she gestured to the other kiddie chair. “Won’t you join me?”