“I’m scared of the dragon’s breath,” Cora said, crying. Smoke slithered through the cracks in the ceiling.
“He’s just snoring,” Delta said, holding a hand to her bloody head. “He won’t hurt you. Go on, Cora. You can do it.”
Ivy grabbed her around the legs and lifted her. “Go, Cora. I’ll come up right after you, okay?”
“I’m scared!”
I hoisted her and, straining, lifted her as high as I could. “Stick your arms up through the hole, Cora!”
She squealed, shut her eyes, and thrust her hands into the attic. “It’s hot! The dragon’s breathing hot air up there!” She jerked her hands down and sobbed.
“Cora!” I lowered her enough to wedge one arm under her butt and brush the sweaty hair back from her face so I could see her eyes. “Look at me!” When she did, I smiled. “Even in fairytales, princesses get scared of dragons. It’s okay to be scared, all right? But don’t stop trying to fight the dragon! Okay?”
She cried harder but nodded. I held her up to the ceiling again. She stuck her arms and head through the hole. “I’m looking,” she said, “But I don’t see the dragon. We better hurry, though.”
“Just climb up on my shoulders, okay?”
“It’s smoky, I’m scared!”
“Fight the dragon, Cora!”
She wiggled a little higher. “I’m stuck!”
Oh, God. I pushed. She screamed. More sweat poured off me. My scars began to throb with the heat. My skin knew what was coming. That we were trapped. “Don’t give up, Cora!” I begged.
“Thomas! Thomas is here!”
I heard heavy footsteps above us. Suddenly, as if by magic, Cora was whisked upwards. “I’ve got her,” Thomas yelled. “I’ll hand her to Santa and be right back.” I heard his quick steps leading away. Below me, Ivy and Delta began to cough. I thrust down a hand to Ivy. “Come on, you’re next. Climb up.”
“The hole’s too small for me. You know it is.”
“We’re going to try it, anyway! Get up here!”
She climbed atop the commode, then onto the sink. I grabbed her by one hand. Delta braced her by the legs. We all looked up at the hole. Ivy squeezed my hand and shook her head. “I won’t fit,” she moaned. She was right. God, we were running out of time.
“Cover your heads,” Thomas shouted. He was back, standing over the hole, smoke billowing in his face. “Watch out, I’m going to work on this ceiling with a tire iron.”
We all ducked as he attacked the wood above us. Chunks of wood pelted us. Boards split, nails squealed. The hole widened by slow degrees. “It’s big enough for Ivy now!” I yelled. He dropped the iron and, coughing, thrust his hands down. “Let’s go, Ivy. I’ll pull you up. I promised you I wouldn’t let anybody hurt you, and I meant it.”
She held up her hands. He grabbed her around the wrists. “I’m too fat—” she began, but the protest ended in a gasp as Thomas pulled her into the attic. “Carry her out,” he yelled to someone. Then, to me and Delta, “Jeb’s here.”
“Hang in there, Mama,” Jeb yelled. “Daddy’s just pulled up in the yard. He’s here.”
“Don’t you let your daddy climb up here,” she shouted. “He’ll throw out his back again.”
Smoke billowed into the bathroom from an air conditioning vent high on one wall. I covered my nose with the tail of my soaked t-shirt. A tiny orange flame curled through the metal vent. Like the obscene tongue of some smiling monster—a dragon, yes—it licked the air in my direction. This time you won’t get away.
“Cover your head, Cathy!” Thomas yelled. Jeb handed him a chain saw. He jerked the starter cord. The motor buzzed, the long blade spun.
“Hunker down!” Delta yelled, and tugged at my arm. I dropped to my heels atop the commode. She and I burrowed our heads together, coughing, as Thomas sliced a large opening in the ceiling with the powerful saw. When he finished he dropped to his stomach and thrust the entire length of his arms toward me. “Cathy, grab on.”
Every cell in my body wanted to flee that bathroom, even if it meant deserting Delta. To go first. All my life, I’d been the golden girl who always went first. But I couldn’t do it this time. I wasn’t that person, anymore. I had kin to think of. Delta coughed violently beside me. I stumbled to my feet. “Delta goes first! She’s not breathing well, and she’s hurt!”
“Cathy, let me get you out. Then—”
“Not this time!” I clambered off the toilet seat and shoved Delta toward it. “Go, go, go. Climb up. You can do it!”
Coughing so hard she couldn’t argue, she hoisted her plump self atop the commode seat. I pushed like a tugboat until she was standing safely on the porcelain rim. She raised her arms. Thomas grabbed her by the wrists. He pulled, I pushed. Delta yelled and swung her feet. By the time Thomas got her head and arms through the hole Pike bounded into the attic beside him, grabbing Delta beneath the arms. “You’ll hurt your back!” she cried.
“Yell at me later,” he yelled in return. He threw his arms around her but she struggled and turned to look back at me. “Cathy!”
“Go!” I yelled. “I love you, cousin!”
“I love you, too, cousin!”
Pike practically had to drag her out of the attic. Thomas flung himself back to the floor. Soot smeared his face. The smoke was so bad at times I couldn’t see him. He thrust down his arms again. “Cathy! Here! Here! Come on!”
But I flattened myself in one corner of the bathroom as the tongue of flame in the vent sprouted new tendrils. They crept out of the metal grate in all directions, turning it into a horrifying blossom of fire. One eager tendril headed for the hole in the ceiling, that delicious conduit for the outside air. The flame gave a low, hissing poof, like a magician’s sound effect.
Suddenly, fire circled the opening. Thomas was wearing one of his Giants jerseys. The left sleeve smoked then burst into flame. The sight of him on fire made me scream when nothing else had. He beat the flame with his hand, jerked the jersey off over his head, then threw it down to me. “Soak it and throw it back!”
I shoved the wadded jersey into the commode bowl, withdrew it with blue, sanitized water streaming everywhere, and tossed the sopping bundle up to Thomas. He drowned the flames on one side of the ceiling hole, threw himself down atop the soaked material, and reached for me. “Now!”
I leapt onto the toilet seat within inches of the vent fire. Nothing could keep me from staring into that terrifying maw of flame. It drew me, it taunted me. My arms refused to rise toward Thomas. In order to escape I’d have to get close, risk having that flame touch me. I couldn’t do it.
“Get out of here, Thomas. I don’t want you to die with me. Leave. Now.”
“Stop looking at it! Look at me, instead! Goddammit, Cathy, look at me.”
Slowly I dragged my gaze up to his. Through the smoke, the fear, the growing despair, I saw his face clearly for just a second. He looked straight at me, at my scars, at me, not them, with unwavering devotion. He’ll literally walk through fire for me. He’ll never turn away.
Thomas thrust down a hand. “We leave here together or we die here together! You decide! I’ll burn to death with you if that’s your choice!”
He meant it. He’d die here with me. I faced the fire again. I’ve given you all I’m going to give. You won’t get the best of me anymore. I won’t let you have Thomas. I raised my arms. The heat licked the air close to my right arm, and the scars prickled with pain. I shut my eyes and prayed. Thomas closed his hands around my wrists. He struggled to his knees, lifting me. I rose along with him. The lurid tendril of flame sent a tiny, curious tongue my way. As I rose past it I opened my eyes defiantly. I’m going to live.
With one strong heave of his body Thomas birthed me onto the hot, smoking attic floor. I threw an arm around his waist, and we staggered from the attic.
We were grabbed by the helping hands of Jeb, Santa, the Judge and others. I never let go of Thomas, and he never let go of me. We climbed down the hood of his poor truck
, now a sacrificial lamb atop a pyre of smoking wood. As we stumbled onto safe earth we both looked around wildly for the girls—there they were, over by the road, wanting to run our way but held back by Becka and Cleo and Dolores. And there was Delta, yes, safely sitting on the roadside with Pike beside her. A paramedic from the volunteer fire department tried to dab the wound on her head. She shooed him away. Who wants help for a flesh wound when your heart is being ripped out? When she saw us she shut her eyes in gratitude, then opened them, looked at the dying, burning remnants of her beloved café, and sobbed.
We ran to her and the girls, hugging them and them hugging us. Holding their hands, we turned and, with Delta, looked at the lovely old house, the heart of the Cove, the touchstone that had brought us all together there.
As we watched, The Crossroads Café burned to the ground.
Thomas
Cathy and I made out on the couch at home that night like lovers reunited after a thousand years in exile. We were dirty, sooty, smoky, blistered, exhausted, and sad about the café, but we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Ivy and Cora—scrubbed, soothed, fed and hugged—slept soundly in their beds with their pets and their newly assured trust. Their doubts had vanished. Cathy and I would never abandon them. They would never worry about us again.
I turned Cathy’s hand and forearm. Gauze covered the underside from elbow to wrist. The skin had been lightly blistered. Does it still hurt?” I asked gently.
She nodded. Her eyes met mine with wonder. “But it’ll heal. I know that, now. It will heal.”
I pulled her onto my lap. She stroked my face. “I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too,” I answered softly. “I always have.”
Cathy slid off my legs and knelt before me, taking my hands in hers. For the first time since I’d known her she looked up at me without angling her face to the good side. No more posing. No more hiding. “Today I finally understood the real meaning of trust,” she whispered. “I trust you with my life, my love, and my future, and I want you to trust me with yours. I promise to go to Asheville and speak at the burn conference in the fall. I promise to stop hiding from the world. As long as you look at me the way you’re looking at me right now, I can face anything the world throws my way. Thomas Mitternich, will you marry me?”
I reached inside my shirt and pulled out a necklace with the ruby and diamond band dangling from it. I took the ring from the chain and slid it onto Cathy’s left hand. “Have I told you lately,” I said gruffly, “that you’re the most beautiful girl in the world?”
That night we went to bed peacefully in Mary Eve’s magical house, sharing a bed that faced the plastic-draped opening where a wall had been removed. Soon the small, intimate bedroom would expand to welcome a new legacy, our legacy. We made love in the light of a spring moon shimmering outside a stained-glass window Cathy’s grandmother had set into the wood with her own wise hands.
When we slept, I dreamed Cathy and I ate biscuits at the café. It looked the same as always. A good dream.
Like us, the café could be restored.
Cathy
Her face swollen from crying, Delta stood in front of the café’s charred ruins. Thomas and I craned our heads from the back of a crowd that included the Whittlespoon clan and most of the café’s neighbors in the Cove. Pike stood to one side, his expression dark and his arms crossed over his chest. Delta cleared her throat. “I called you all here today to say something that’s hard to say.” Her voice trembled. She looked to Pike for support but he only scowled harder. Rebuffed, she sucked in a deep breath, steadied herself, and stared at everyone grimly. “This sweet old place will never be the same. My heart’s just flat broken. How could the Lard do this to me? I’m not rebuilding the café. Don’t even talk to me about it.”
As we gasped and traded stunned looks she walked to her car, got in, and drove up the lane to her house. She went inside, and that was the last we saw of her for days.
Delta had lost her faith in biscuits.
People all over the region flooded Delta with sympathy and encouragement, to no avail. The governor called, and various mayors, and a senator. Artists showed up to cry and carry off sentimental shards of the Privy, promising to adorn a new one when she re-built the café. But Delta remained inside her home, resolute and inconsolable.
The girls held my hands as we looked at the ruins. “Cathy, were you scared we were gonna die?” Cora asked in a small voice.
I shook my head. “Nope. I knew Thomas would come and get us.”
Ivy nudged Cora’s shoulder. “Thomas keeps his promises. We don’t have to worry about anything anymore. Because we’ve got Thomas.” She looked up at me with gleaming eyes. “And we’ve got you.”
My throat closed with emotion. I loved these girls, these little people who needed Thomas and me as much as we needed them. We were a family. Even Mrs. Ganza recognized that. She’d emailed us after the fire.
Dear Ms. Deen and Mr. Mitternich,
I was wrong. You do know how to be good parents.
When you file for adoption I’ll give my full approval.
In return, when the café reopens I expect you to send me
biscuits.
I had no intention of telling her that the café’s future might be in doubt.
Thomas walked over to us. He’d been scrutinizing his scorched truck, which now had been towed from the debris. He smoothed a hand over the girls’ heads and they grinned up at him. “The good news,” he announced, “is that my truck doesn’t look much worse now than it did before. I can fix it. In fact, in honor of its heroism I’m going to restore it to its full glory. Mint condition.”
I smiled wistfully at him. “We’re all going to be okay. Mint condition. But what are we going to do about Delta?”
Thomas put an arm around me. “We’re going to do what she did for us: We’ll refuse to give up on her.”
Pike ushered us into the Whittlespoon house that warm spring night. He looked worn and tired. “She’s in the sunroom. Whatever y’all have to say, I hope it’s powerful. Because like I told you on the phone, now she says she’s going to sell the café so everyone will quit hovering around it waiting for her to change her mind. She says she’ll sell everything that can be salvaged, and then she’ll sell the ground it sits on. And the rights to the name. The menu. Her recipes. Even her biscuit pans, at least the ones that didn’t get ruined in the fire. Everything a person can sell.”
Thomas shook his head. “She can’t be serious.”
“She is. She really is heartbroken. She’s convinced the place will never be a sanctuary again. Never have the same spirit. She’s always felt safe in the café. After our kids drowned it became a sacred place to her, where nothing bad could happen to her or anybody else she loves. Now God’s put the kabosh on that notion, and she’s so mad at Him she wants to spit. He burned her restaurant down. Why did He let that happen? Cleo keeps quoting the Bible to her, trying to calm her down. ‘We aren’t meant to understand the Lord’s ways. He really does cook in mysterious ways,’ and on-and-on. But Delta isn’t listening. She’s mad at God, so she’s not going to minister to people with her cooking anymore.” Pike frowned. “No more soul food.”
“I’ll talk some sense into her,” I announced boldly. I headed for the sunroom, waving at Pike and Thomas to stay back while I worked my Southern-belle-geisha-movie-star charm.
Delta lay in the dark on one of the wicker lounges, dressed in an old chenille robe with a pair of pink coffee cups embroidered on the front. She stared grimly into space. I sat down on the lounge next to hers. “Hi, cousin. Get up off your butt and bake me some biscuits. I’m in biscuit-withdrawal.”
“You can’t talk me out of selling the café.”
“Yes, I can. You’re not a quitter.”
Her shoulders slumped. “I was raised in that house. I was taught to cook in that house. My first two babies were born in that house. After they died I turned to that house as a comfort and for a living. Wh
en I cooked in that house, when I served food to people in that house, I nourished all my memories. Sure, I can build another café, but I can never rebuild that house. I just don’t have the heart to try.”
“So you’re saying that leftovers aren’t worth saving? You’re saying there’s no point in salvaging what’s no longer perfect? That it can’t be wonderful in a new way?” I pointed to my face. “Are you saying that everything you told me to believe about myself was wrong?”
Delta’s eyes snapped. “You know that’s not what I mean.”
“Then tell me what you do mean.”
“All I’ve done is feed people and meddle in their lives. I don’t see any evidence that I’ve changed anybody’s life. People change on their own. You didn’t need me to tell you how to live. Neither did Thomas. I fed you, that’s all. And now I can’t even do that.”
“So . . . you just took an interest in me for fun? You were just being pleasant to your movie-star cousin? You really didn’t think my life was worth saving or rebuilding? You really didn’t care if Thomas killed himself? To you, we were just two more paying customers?”
“Quit trying to poke me a long stick until I give in! I’m done caring about that café, I tell you! Looking at it the burned-up ruins of it makes me sick to my stomach! It’s like a dead person. I can’t resurrect the dead! Leave me alone!”
I leaned closer. “You taught me to never give up. You gave me my life back, even when I didn’t think I wanted it. Now a fire has stripped away your self-image just as a fire stripped away mine. My face was how I connected to the world. The café was your connection to the world. Thomas says you once told him I was trapped in a dark place and he had to be my light. Now I’m going to be your light. Even if you don’t want me to.”
The Crossroads Cafe Page 39