Glow of the Fireflies

by Lindsey Duga

  As I scanned the room, bits of old memories came rushing to the surface—they were so fast and fleeting that I closed my eyes in an attempt to hold on to them.

  For years, I’d tried to remember my past. I’d been curious, but also desperate to find out what had created this void inside of me. But not once had I been able to remember anything significant.

  My gaze honed in on a little fairy with a purple wing and a dress and gold curls on the mantel. I’d dropped it once and broken one of its wings. I’d actually cried over it, while warm, wrinkled hands had clasped mine. “It’s only a figurine, sugar pea, not a real one.”

  The words came to me so sweet and soft, and the love in them hit me like a dropkick to the stomach.

  Then the memory was gone, slipping away like a bar of wet soap.

  While I’d been trapped in the past, Izzie had already ventured deeper into the cottage, chatting happily with Gran about things like oh, Briony and I have been friends since she moved to Knoxville, I wanted to come, and where will I be sleeping?

  As Izzie vanished into a side bedroom off the hall, Gran hobbled back to me on her crutches, talking in a low whisper. “Briony, I…appreciate you and your father’s concern. But I really don’t need any help, and…well, given your history here, it’s better if you go back home.”

  But that was exactly why I was here. My history. That, and to assist an injured senior citizen. Just around her living room was evidence of the help she needed—clusters of books and newspapers and old dishes, prescription bottles and empty water glasses. I could imagine a pile of laundry in her room that she’d been putting off, or a sink full of dirty dishes.

  This was an old woman with a broken leg, who was struggling, and yet, she seemed to be more concerned with pushing me away, not wanting my history here to make me uncomfortable.

  Maybe she really did care about me, but it was buried by layers upon layers of loneliness, bitterness, and a little regret. Perhaps she’d never come to see me in Knoxville because she thought her presence would only incite trauma.

  Seeing Gran look at me, her eyes glassy and full of pain, I wondered if she saw my mom in my place. Did I remind her of Heather? Of my mom? Was not seeing me as much self-preservation of herself as it was protection of me?

  I had barely known Mom when she’d left, yet I could still see her escaping out the front door in the middle of the night with only a bag slung over her shoulder. I could even picture her outfit when she left—a sunflower blouse and jeans of a light wash—down to the simple jewelry she wore. I’d still been awake after listening to my parents fight for hours, hearing things like, “You need to trust me,” and “This family won’t survive the fire,” and, “Jim, why won’t you believe me?” Her leaving, as I watched from the steps, hidden in shadow, was burned into my mind forever.

  How painful was it for Gran, then, who’d given birth to her?

  Carefully, I set down my duffle bag and faced my grandmother. Awkwardness widened like a chasm between us. If I waited much longer, I’d never be able to jump over it.

  “Listen, Gran,” I said softly, gently. “Iz and I are here to help. Cooking, cleaning, fixing you a cup of tea. Whatever you need. And thank you for worrying about me, but I’m fine.”

  Yep, totally fine. Not damaged at all.

  Gran’s silver brows pulled together as she looked at me like she still didn’t believe me.

  Then Izzie came out into the hall and paused, her gaze jumping from me to Gran. “Everything all right?” she asked cheerfully.

  Gran looked at Izzie then back at me, and just as she opened her mouth, the phone rang.

  The three of us stood frozen as it echoed through the small cottage. At the second ring, Izzie bounded down the darkened hall into what I assumed to be the kitchen, calling, “I’ll get it for you, Mrs. Kaftan!”

  Gran stood there, probably shell-shocked that a total stranger was in her house, had given her a hug, and was now answering her phone. Izzie was like that, though—she had a big personality to go with a big heart.

  Not a minute later, Izzie hollered through the house, “Brye, it’s your dad!”

  “Oh, okay.” I hurried down the hall past Gran, into a room with linoleum floors, a large round wooden table, an old gas stove, and appliances from the fifties. The scent of cinnamon and other spices filled my nose as I entered. Everything about it was quaint and adorable and perfect. I was certain this was the kitchen of every fairy-tale character ever made. Wind chimes and other baubles hung next to the curtained windows, and silver cutlery was displayed in a little wooden case hanging on the wall.

  Izzie handed me a big, brown antique phone with a curling cord connected to the wall. One of those that you could cradle easily between your ear and your shoulder.

  “It’s not your dad,” she whispered, her eyes big, trying to communicate something to me that I wasn’t getting.

  “Who is it?” I whispered back.

  “Just talk,” she said, shoving the phone against my chest.

  I put the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

  Izzie made a gesture to show she was going back to Gran. I nodded to her as a voice from the phone said, “Mrs. Kaftan? Are you there?”

  “Um, this is her granddaughter. How can I help you?”

  “Well, as I was telling the other girl,” said the voice, a little more irritably, “I’m calling to confirm the demolition of the Redwrell place off Hummingbird Road.”

  Oh no… My old house. Did he say demolition?

  My skin chilled over, while that gap inside my chest expanded, contracted, and expanded again, painfully.

  “I need to talk to Mrs. Kaftan.”

  “She can’t come to the phone right now,” I said in a hollow voice.

  “Well, whether or not she can come to the phone is not my problem. She has pushed this demolition back for months. Changed her mind five times. It’s happening tomorrow whether she approves or not. I’ve gotten official orders from the county. You tell her that.” The line disconnected, and I was left staring at an empty kitchen and listening to the dial tone.

  Slowly, I put the phone back in its cradle, and my gaze passed the sink, skipping over the mountain of dirty dishes I had predicted, to look out the window at Gran’s overgrown garden. My eyes were drawn to tiny things that felt familiar: big strawberry patches, the trellis on the outside wall with honeysuckle vines, hummingbird feeders hanging from the awning…

  There was something about that garden. A memory that was itching to be brought to the surface but was buried deep. Still, I kept staring. Trying, trying to remember…

  This whole place was like that. A little painful, but also familiar. If my grandmother’s house made me feel this way, then what would my own house make me feel like?

  I’d hoped that coming here would give me closure. Answer a thousand unanswered questions. Finally bring light to a past I’d always been too scared to bring out of the dark. But could I move on from my past if my house—the only clue to the fire that haunted my dreams—was bulldozed to the ground?

  Truthfully, I’d never expected to confront it so soon. Maybe halfway through the summer I’d gather enough courage and go, but it looked like I no longer had that option.

  It was now or never, and I was done living with regret or wondering about things that I’d never find out. I had to go see it, and I had to go now.

  Heading out of the kitchen, I flew down the hallway and found Izzie and Gran sitting in the living room.

  “Iz, keys, please?” I asked, breathless.

  Without question, Izzie dug into her purse and tossed me the keys to her CRV. She knew I would want to go from the beginning. It was why she’d made sure that I’d taken that call.

  “Wait—Briony? Where are you going?” Gran called as I hurried out to the porch and the screen door banged behind me. Hopefully Izzie would feed her some small
white lie till I got back.

  I felt bad, leaving so rudely, but they were going to tear it down and I couldn’t let them without seeing it at least once.

  The minute I’d left this valley, broken-hearted, motherless, and empty, I’d closed a door on my past. On this life I’d once had which had been literally burned away.

  I’d been okay with it. Or, at least, I’d tried to be. Sure, I’d felt like a giant canyon had opened in my chest, and I couldn’t trust a boyfriend not to cheat on me, or rely on anyone to finish a relay race or complete a group project…

  But I’d been okay.

  Except now I wasn’t.

  Now I had to see this through.

  Pulling my phone out of my other pocket, I selected the maps app and typed in Hummingbird Road, Firefly Valley. I didn’t have an address number, but thankfully, the road was only a mile long, so I could drive up and down and check the houses. Surely a burned-down house would be easy to find.

  Pursing my lips, I waited impatiently as the shoddy Internet connection pulled up directions. It took so long that I grabbed a screenshot of them in case I lost the signal while I was driving.

  The narrow road through the mountains was full of twists and turns, but I was careful, and Izzie’s car moved like a dream. I drove almost ten miles below the speed limit and made turns at a snail’s pace. My driving instructor would’ve been proud.

  Finally, I got to a crest on a hill, and it looked so familiar that I had to be close. The meadows on the other side held purple, yellow, white, and light-pink flowers. Tall trees stood on the slopes, and off in the distance was a hint of green-blue. Maybe the edge of a lake?

  Easing off the gas pedal, I coasted down the hill and followed the road until it curved around a bend in the trees, then I rammed on the brake. Hard.

  The seat belt pressed against my chest, slicing a line between my breasts and cutting against my throat—but that wasn’t the reason I felt like choking.

  The house was still standing as if held up purely by magic. It was charred almost completely black. Half the roof was caved in, and bricks, burned wood, and other rubble peppered the surrounding overgrown lawn. The house was bigger than Gran’s, and judging from the paint, it had once been mint-green. Windows had pieces of glass jutting out from the edges, broken and warped from extreme temperatures.

  It had been mostly destroyed by the fire, but…it was somehow even more beautiful than when it had first been built. Because over the burned wood and remnants of plaster, flora had grown. On top of the wood was a thick covering of moss, and up from the moss, more flowers and weeds had sprouted over the house, giving it a living green carpet. Vines curled over the chimney and layers of honeysuckle fell on top of one another. As I stepped out of the car, their scent filled me to the brim, and all I wanted was to pluck a blossom and place the end of the flower between my lips to taste the sweet nectar.

  I thought I’d never had honeysuckle before, but apparently I’d been wrong. I’d had them many, many times.

  For a few minutes, I just stood under the trees, half in the shadow of my old house, and stared. Not at the dilapidated structure before me, but the Blue Ridges that loomed behind.

  The Smokies looked like a painting off in the distance. Rich oil colors and pastels blending into shades of nature. A light periwinkle against a backdrop of bright blue, the mountains were like a jagged line on a heart monitor—up and down, up, up, and then down again. The breeze tickled my skin as the sun warmed it, nourishing it better than any all-natural lotion or oil I’d ever tried.

  There was something about this valley. Something special. I’d felt it at Gran’s, but it was more obvious here, or maybe I was just more mindful of it.

  The sound of my feet over the gravel, then the grass and underbrush, came to my ears distant and muffled. In fact, I was hardly aware that I was moving at all. My legs took me from Izzie’s car, up the rotted porch steps, and through the wooden frame where there once stood a door, and I looked inside my old house for the first time since losing my memory of it.

  Like at Gran’s, the ground rolled beneath me as a strong feeling of vertigo forced me against the charred door frame.

  I blinked, and I envisioned my mother walking toward me through the large, high-ceilinged room with its burned wood floors and flowers growing between the floorboards.

  She was as I remembered her—from the few weeks I knew her between the fire and the time she’d left. Long, thick dark-brown hair and beautiful green eyes. While I had wavy light-brown hair and pale gray eyes without a spark of the color my mom had. Dad had once told me that we both looked like foxes—the way our noses were straight and the shape of our eyes seemed to slant upward, sly like a vixen’s.

  Imaginary Mom bent down and threw her arms out, her face bright and beautiful and happy, and she wrapped me in her arms—five-year-old me, not sixteen-year-old me. I pressed my small hands against her cheeks and squished them together, puckering her lips. She planted a kiss on my forehead, making my chest glow with warmth and happiness.

  Then the world tilted once more and the hands holding mine grew smaller. They were strong, though. Twisting in my grip, the hands threaded our fingers together and I looked up from our entwined grasp to see a young boy. His features were blurry, like a photo taken out-of-focus, but his eyes were bright and sharp, glowing like two fireflies against tanned skin.

  His hands tightened around mine, so tight that his palms grew uncomfortably hot. I gasped, trying to let go, but he held on, and the walls of my house erupted in flames.

  Chapter Four

  Hot wind blew at my cheeks, smoke blocked the scream from my throat, embers fell on my skin, and they burned and burned. The house was on fire. The floors, the walls, the roof, the couch where Dad and I would watch Friends reruns and take naps, the bookshelf holding Mom’s favorite paperback thrillers. Flames licked my arms and flickered against my shoulders and traveled up the grandfather clock that Mom had loved, consuming it.

  Finally, the boy let go of my hands, but by then it was too late. I couldn’t run…couldn’t escape the wall of fire.

  My chest constricted and breathing became impossible. It was the smoke. It had gotten into my lungs and it was sucking out the oxygen. I gasped over and over, trying to get air.

  In the back of my head, I should’ve known that this wasn’t how people died of smoke. They became heavy…sleepy. Not more awake, not panicking. Not shallow, gasping breaths. I also should’ve known that this was a memory—one I’d never had before. I’d never known Mom loved paperback thrillers or that we had a grandfather clock, or even that we had a couch Dad and I used to take naps on.

  But I couldn’t think straight. My world was a fiery nightmare, and I couldn’t leave it.

  Cool hands wrapped around my hot wrists. Breath, fresh and crisp like an autumn breeze, tickled my cheeks. Words, soft and urgent, whispered in my ear over and over, pulling me away from the fire. Out of the memory.

  I opened my eyes and found myself staring into another pair. They were a soft summer green, positioned on either side of a thin, straight nose and above high cheekbones. It was a face. A face of a boy—blond, tan, and handsome.

  His lips moved, speaking sentences that hadn’t yet registered in my brain.

  Dazed, I glanced down to see that he supported the upper half of my body with an arm that wrapped tightly around my shoulders. His forearm muscles pressed against the back of my neck, and I marveled at how his cool temperature relieved my burning skin. My legs curved in a way that had suggested I’d fallen somehow. Did I trip on a loose floorboard?

  “What?” I breathed, the question passing across my lips like the simmering heat in a desert.

  “…all right?”

  His voice finally reached me, and I blinked hard, focusing on the solidity of the stranger and the fact that he was holding me so close I could count the sparks of light
in his eyes.

  I flexed my fingers, and when the numbness retreated and the strength returned to my arms, I pushed out against the stranger’s chest. He dropped me—probably from surprise rather than from my own force—and I landed on the burned wood, wincing as splinters pierced my arms, elbows, and palms.

  “Careful,” the stranger said, watching my movements in obvious concern.

  I scooted away inch by inch, my shorts snagging on the splintered wood. “Who are you doing here?”

  The boy tilted his head, his lips twitching in what seemed to be amusement. “That sounds like two separate questions.”

  I gritted my teeth. “You know what I meant. Who are you? And what are you doing here?”

  All trace of amusement disappeared, and his gold eyebrows pushed together into a V. “What are you doing back here?”

  Back. What am I doing back here? Had he…known me?

  It certainly was possible. Apart from my family, I hadn’t really thought of anyone else I could’ve forgotten thanks to my amnesia. I hadn’t even considered it.

  “This was my house…once,” I said slowly, my gaze meticulously noting every detail of his appearance in hopes of remembering something. He wore a plain navy shirt with olive green shorts, and he was barefoot. Odd… I observed his eyes again and the planes of his face. Nothing struck a chord, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

  “Did…did I know you?” I finally asked.

  It was like I’d pulled a gun on him or something. He abruptly stood and took a step back. His eyes were wide, and he looked from me to the charred walls then back to me. “No. I mean, it’s not safe here. You should leave.”

  “Hey, why do I have to go?” I stood, rubbing my arms that were irritated and scratched from the wood. “You’re the one who creeped up on me.”

  “I didn’t creep—” He stopped, his lips twisting into a scowl. “You were passed out on the floor. I was just checking to make sure you were okay.”