7. Audrey
— ? —
Audrey
Something’s wrong.
I’m swimming up from sleep, confused and disoriented, and there’s a small hand shaking my shoulder with increasing urgency.
“Mommy. Mommy, wake up.”
Lily’s voice is thin with fear. I force my eyes open, blinking in the darkness, and the first thing I notice is the smell.
Smoke.
“Mommy, something smells funny.”
I’m out of bed before I’m fully awake, adrenaline flooding my system like ice water. The hallway is hazy, gray tendrils curling along the ceiling, and somewhere below us there’s a crackling sound that makes my blood run cold.
“Baby, come here.” I grab Lily, hoist her onto my hip even though she’s almost too big to carry. “We need to go outside right now.”
“What’s happening?”
“The house-” I can’t finish the sentence. The smoke is thicker at the top of the stairs, and when I look down, I can see orange light flickering in the living room. Dancing shadows on the walls. The hungry glow of flames eating through our home.
The wiring. Rowan kept saying the wiring needed updating. We kept putting it off.
“Close your eyes, baby. Hold onto me and don’t let go.”
I take the stairs two at a time, one hand on the railing, one arm locked around my daughter. The heat hits us halfway down - a wall of it, pressing against my skin, stealing the air from my lungs.
The front door. I need to get to the front door.
Lily’s crying now, her face buried in my neck, and I’m coughing so hard I can barely see. The smoke burns my eyes, my throat, my chest. Everything is orange and gray and terrifying.
Please. Please let us get out.
My hand finds the doorknob. It’s hot - not burning, not yet - and I wrench it open and stumble onto the front lawn, gasping, pulling clean air into my lungs in desperate gulps.
“Mommy!” Lily’s screaming. “Mommy, the house!”
I turn around.
Our seafoam-green cottage is on fire. Flames are climbing the walls, licking at the shutters, punching through the living room windows in great billowing sheets of orange. The sound is deafening - roaring and crackling and hungry, like the fire is alive and angry.
Our home. Our memories. Everything.
I sink onto the grass, Lily still in my arms, and I watch it burn.
***
Rowan
The phone wakes me at 3:07 AM.
I’m on my mother’s couch, where I’ve been sleeping for two weeks now, and for one disoriented moment I think it’s Maryse calling. Then I see the screen - MOM - and something cold settles in my gut.
“Rowan.” Her voice is shaking. “The cottage. It’s on fire.”
I don’t remember grabbing my keys. I don’t remember running to my truck or starting the engine or driving through the empty streets of Miller’s Point with my heart trying to claw its way out of my chest.
I just remember seeing the flames.
They’re visible from three blocks away - an orange glow against the black sky, growing larger as I get closer. By the time I screech to a stop in front of the cottage, fire trucks are already there, red and blue lights strobing across the chaos.
Audrey. Lily. Please God please God please-
I’m out of the truck before it’s fully stopped, running toward the house, and then I see them.
Audrey’s on the lawn, Lily in her arms. Both of them are coughing, covered in soot, but they’re alive. They’re alive.
“Audrey!”
She looks up. Her face is streaked with tears and ash, and for a moment something flickers in her eyes - relief, maybe, or surprise that I’m here.
“She’s okay,” she gasps. “We got out. We’re okay.”
I drop to my knees beside them, reaching for Lily, pulling her into my arms. She’s shaking so hard her teeth are chattering, and I hold her tight against my chest and breathe in the smell of smoke in her hair.
“Daddy.” Her voice is muffled against my shoulder. “Daddy, the house is on fire.”
“I know, baby. I know. But you’re safe. You’re both safe.”
I look at Audrey over Lily’s head. She’s staring at the cottage, watching the flames consume the place where we built our life together. The place where we brought Lily home from the hospital. The place where we were supposed to grow old.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I don’t even know what I’m apologizing for. The fire. The affair. Everything.
She doesn’t answer. She just keeps watching our home burn.
***
Audrey
I don’t know how long we sit there - minutes, hours - before Lily suddenly screams.
“Mr. Buttons!” She’s pointing at the house, at her bedroom window on the second floor. “Mr. Buttons is inside!”
The stuffed rabbit. The threadbare, one-eyed rabbit she’s slept with since she was two.
“Baby, we can’t-”
But Rowan’s already moving.
He’s on his feet and running before I can stop him, sprinting toward the house with the firefighters shouting at him to stop, and I watch in horror as he disappears through the front door.
“ROWAN!”
The flames are everywhere now. The porch roof is starting to sag. And my husband - my stupid, reckless, infuriating husband - just ran into a burning building for a stuffed animal.
“Sir! SIR!”
A firefighter tries to grab me as I stumble to my feet, but I shove past him, my eyes locked on the door.
Come out. Please come out. I can’t lose you too.
The seconds stretch into eternity. Lily’s screaming beside me. The firefighters are rushing toward the house with a hose, shouting orders I can’t process.
And then the door bursts open, and Rowan staggers out with Mr. Buttons clutched against his chest.
His face is red, streaming with sweat. His shirt is singed. And his hands-
I can see the burns from twenty feet away. Angry red welts spreading across his palms and forearms, blistering skin where he must have shielded himself from falling debris.
“Daddy!” Lily breaks free from my grip and runs to him. He drops to his knees, hands trembling as he holds out the rabbit.
“Got him,” he gasps. “Told you I’d get him.”
“Daddy, your hands-”
“I’m fine.” He pulls them away, shoves them into his jacket pockets. “Just a little burned. I’m fine.”
He’s not fine. Even in the firelight, I can see how bad the damage is. But he’s smiling at Lily, that crooked smile, like he didn’t just risk his life for a stuffed toy.
Like it was nothing. Like she asked and he answered, simple as breathing.
He ran into a burning building. Twice, by the time you count finding us earlier. He ran in without thinking because our daughter asked him to.
I stare at his hands - the hands that used to trace patterns on my skin, that held mine at our wedding, that typed messages to another woman for three months.
Now they’re burned and blistered and hidden in his pockets.
“You need a hospital,” I say.
“I’m fine.”
“Rowan-”
“I said I’m fine.” His voice cracks. “You and Lily. That’s what matters.”
Behind us, the cottage groans. A section of roof collapses inward, sending sparks spiraling into the night sky like dying stars.
Our home. Our history. Gone.
But we’re alive. All three of us, alive and together on this lawn.
That has to count for something.
***
Rowan
The paramedic wants to take me to the hospital.
“Second-degree burns, at minimum,” she says, examining my hands with a clinical frown. “Maybe worse. You need proper treatment.”
“I need to stay with my family.”
“Sir-”
“My daughter just watched her house burn down.” I pull my hands back, ignoring the searing pain. “I’m not leaving her.”
The paramedic sighs, but she doesn’t push. She cleans the burns as best she can, wraps them in gauze, tells me to see a doctor first thing in the morning.
I nod and don’t look at my hands.
Audrey’s watching me from across the lawn. Lily’s asleep against her shoulder - finally crashed after the adrenaline wore off - and there’s something in Audrey’s eyes I can’t quite read.
Not forgiveness. Not love. But not hatred, either.
She’s looking at me like I’m a stranger she’s trying to remember.
“Mom’s on her way,” I say quietly. “She’s bringing blankets. We can stay at her place tonight.”
“Okay.”
“Audrey-”
“Don’t.” She shakes her head. “Not tonight. I can’t do this tonight.”
“I know. I just-” I swallow hard. “I’m sorry about the house. I know I should have fixed the wiring. I kept putting it off, and-”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Isn’t it?”
She doesn’t answer. We stand in silence, watching the firefighters battle the flames that have already won.
Our seafoam-green cottage. The place we fell in love with on our honeymoon drive. The place where Lily took her first steps, where we hosted Christmases and birthdays and a thousand ordinary Tuesday nights.
Gone. All of it, gone.
My hands throb inside the bandages. The pain is constant now, a deep burning ache that radiates up my arms. I should tell someone. I should get real treatment.
But Lily’s asleep, and Audrey’s standing beside me, and for the first time in two weeks, I’m not alone.
I’ll worry about my hands tomorrow. Tonight, I just want to stand here with my family and pretend we might still be okay.