Chapter 3 #2
"And if the answer is yes, when you call, we'll be ready. I want you in the strongest possible position before we put you in front of him."
I stood. The world, after sitting that still for that long, felt slightly tilted. She walked me to the door of her office.
"My receptionist will give you my direct line. If anything changes between now and your decision—anything—call me. Day, night, weekend. I mean it."
"Thank you."
The receptionist gave me Miranda's direct line on a slip of paper.
I went down the stairs of the building, out into the noon sun, and stood on the sidewalk for a minute.
The traffic was running on Meeting Street the way it always ran.
The pigeons on the church steps across the way were doing what pigeons did. The world had not changed. I had.
I had a lawyer who was prepared to fight. I had a strategy. I had a foundation. For the first time in seven months, the ground felt steady.
The fight, Miranda had said, would be helped by a male role model in Noah's life.
Who would want a thirty-four-year-old single mother in hiding?
Our place was a converted old house a few blocks from the bakery.
Three bedrooms upstairs, two downstairs.
Noah and I had the master, which was big enough for two beds and had its own bathroom.
The landlord had been planning to rent the room to two strangers when I came to look at it.
I'd offered to take both beds and pay for both, and he'd said yes.
The other four rooms were rented out—two college students and two young adults in their early twenties just starting out. The kitchen downstairs was shared, but each room had its own fridge. I'd set up a folding table by the door of our room and called it a mini bar.
I prepped meals on Sundays and kept them in the freezer. In the morning, I'd pull out what we needed for dinner and set it in a plastic basin on the folding table to defrost. By the time we got home from the bakery, all that was left to do was cook it.
"Hey, Tessa. Hey, Noah."
We came home from the bakery around six. Gregory was on his laptop in the living room when we walked in.
"How'd your midterm go?" I asked.
"Turned it in this morning."
"Good for you."
He nodded and went back to his laptop.
The other tenants were not bad. They were just twenty-two. They ate at midnight. They left dishes in the sink. They came home from their shifts and forgot the burner they'd turned on for coffee.
I had woken up twice now to the smell of gas in the morning. I went downstairs, turned off the burner, and didn't make a thing of it. I asked them, the second time, to be more careful. They were embarrassed and apologetic. I believed them.
I was twenty-two once. I was worse than they were. There was a joke in there somewhere about karma.
We ate at the small kitchen table downstairs. Noah cleared his plate when he was done. I did the dishes while he brushed his teeth, and by the time I came up, he was already in bed.
I checked the kitchen on my way through. The counter was wiped, the stove was off. I got into bed not long after him and lay in the dark, listening to him breathe across the room.
I thought about the afternoon. I picked Noah up the way I usually did.
He came down the sidewalk with his backpack and waved at a girl with brown braids on the bench.
Probably Penny. We drove back to the bakery for closing.
Noah sat in his corner doing homework while Mrs. Thompson set down a glass of warm milk and a cookie beside him.
As I counted the till at the front, I saw Benjie cross over to Noah's table twice: once to help Noah with a homework question, once just to check.
When everything was done, we said goodnight to Mrs. Thompson in the alley.
It hit me when she pulled the back door shut behind us that Havensworth wasn't a place we were hiding in anymore. Somewhere along the way, without my catching it happening, it had turned into the place we lived.
Noah was calmer. He read at the breakfast table. He helped with small jobs at the bakery. He had Mrs. Thompson and Benjie. He had a friend named Penny he was willing to throw a punch for.
You can't keep running for the rest of his childhood.
Noah had a home now. The thought of going back to Nicholas was not something I could stomach.
The decision was made. I knew that.
I just had to prepare myself to be in a room with him.
I turned on my side and made myself sleep.
I woke up coughing.
It was dark. The room smelled wrong. The smoke alarm in the hallway was screaming. Noah was coughing, too, in his bed across from mine, sitting up with his fists in his eyes.
"Noah!"
"Mom!"
"Get up! Get up, baby. We're going."
I crossed to him in two steps and pulled him out of the bed. He was nine and tall for his age, but I didn't care. I held him against my chest and ran for the door.
I dropped to a crouch and opened it.
The hallway was orange. Smoke was pouring up the stairs from the kitchen below. The heat hit my face before I had taken a step.
I shut the door. Judging by the sound of sirens approaching outside, someone had already called for help.
"They're coming, baby. Help is coming."
The window was the only way out.
I pulled the comforter off the bed and wedged it along the gap under the door. I sat Noah on the floor against the wall by the bathroom, got down beside him, pulled his T-shirt up over his nose, pulled mine up over mine, and held his hand. We waited.
A fire engine pulled up to the house. I could hear voices on the lawn. Boots. The radio chatter that meant a working fire.
Then Gregory's voice—high, frightened—”Tessa and Noah are still up there! Master bedroom!”
A ladder hit the wall outside. Glass broke. A firefighter came through the window—helmet, mask, air pack, the size of him filling the room.
He was on us in two strides. He went down on one knee in front of me. He said something through the mask I couldn't make out, but I understood. He held his arms out for Noah.
I had to make myself give Noah up. My hands didn't want to let go. I made them.
He took Noah against his chest the way I'd been holding him. He turned and went back to the window.
Noah looked at me over his shoulder. Wide-eyed. Scared.
"I'm right behind you, baby. I'm right behind you."
He stepped over the sill onto the ladder with Noah against him. I lost sight of them.
I stayed on the floor against the wall where Noah and I had been waiting. I made myself breathe shallow. I listened for him on the ladder going down. I told myself, in my head, the same sentence over and over.
Get him down. Hand him off. Come back for me.
I waited for what felt like a minute, maybe two. Then I heard him coming back up the ladder.
He came through the window again, crossed to me, went down on one knee, and said something that I thought was come on.
He picked me up. One arm under my knees, one arm behind my back. I put my face against the side of his neck above the gear and held on. Something in me let go.
He carried me to the window. He stepped over the sill and started down the ladder, using one arm to guide us down. The cold air hit my legs. I felt the rungs through his boots. The smoke poured out of the broken window above us as we went down.
My feet hit the grass.
He set me down. He turned, looking. Noah was on the grass three feet away, beside another firefighter who was crouched next to him with a hand on his back. Noah saw me. He tried to stand. I went to him on my knees, pulled him into me, and held him there.
The firefighter who'd carried me out pushed his mask up.
"Are you both okay? Anyone else in the house?"
I looked up at him.
I don't know what came over me. I wasn't thinking.
There was just a flood of gratitude—thank you, you got him out, you got us out, you are real, I can touch you—and before I'd registered moving, I'd reached up with one hand, taken the side of his face, pulled him down, looked in his eyes, and kissed him.
He didn't push me away. He didn't pull back either. He stayed where I'd pulled him, his mouth against mine, frozen.
It took a few seconds. Long enough for my brain to catch up to my body. Then I realized what I was doing.
I pulled back. I put my hand over my mouth.
"Oh my God."
He was still where I'd pulled him, crouched in front of me, his mouth slightly open.
"Oh my God, I'm so sorry. I—"
And then I saw him.
I saw the eyes. The jaw. The shoulders under the gear.
The man from the bakery had just carried my son and me out of a burning house. And I had just kissed him.
He didn't move. He was looking at me.
"Ma'am."
His voice was low. Steadier than it had any right to be.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you. I'm so sorry."
He nodded once.
"Stay here. EMS is coming. Don't move."
He stood. He walked away from me, back toward the engine, back to the men still working the fire. I sat on the grass with my arm around Noah and watched him go.