Chapter Nine
Someone says my name, though it’s easy enough to ignore as I slip through the hazy, kind world of unconsciousness. I want to stay here, far from the unthinkable, far from the violence that brought me to this place. But the voice returns, this time with urgency.
“Charlie!”
Fingertips dig into my shoulder as my body shakes and my senses come into focus one at a time.
First, something cool and wet runs along my face.
The sun glows behind my eyelids, and the taste of copper fills my mouth.
With the strong scent of smoke, I’m yanked into the real world as the back of my head begins to throb.
“Charlie Kilgore, if you don’t wake up, I’ll kill you.”
I open one eye, then the other. Seton kneels over me in her police uniform, her face etched with concern. My thoughts are muddled as I try to remember what brought me here and touch the tattoos running up her forearm. “Did these hurt when you got them?” I ask, my voice rough.
“Not as much as your head hurts right now. Glad you’re back.”
“How did I get here?” I ask.
“You tell me.”
Above her, thick smoke billows into the sky, nearly blocking the sun. The radio on her shoulder chirps an update I can’t quite follow. She dips into it, saying something about an ambulance as I struggle to sit. “Don’t move,” she says. “The EMTs are on their way.”
I try to speak, but my mouth is coated in ash.
Seton pulls a bottle of water from a bag and holds it to my lips.
I suck at the liquid, attempting to wash away the foul taste as she runs her hands through my hair.
“You scared the shit out of me,” she says.
“What happened, anyway? Did you run into a tree?”
I touch my head. My fingers come away covered in blood. “I don’t know,” I say as images creep into my memory like forgotten dreams: an explosion, a fire, someone fighting to escape.
Concern flashes in Seton’s eyes. “You’ll remember soon enough. And head wounds bleed a lot. It’s probably nothing, but we’ll want to be sure you don’t have a concussion or smoke inhalation or a fractured skull. Do you think you can stand? We should move away from the smoke.”
Nothing happening right now makes sense. Fifty yards down the shore, a fire rages, and yet there’s no urgency to Seton’s actions. “We have to get to the house,” I say.
“And do what?” Seton asks. “I alerted the fire department. They’re on their way.
My job is to contain the scene and make sure no one does anything stupid, and the only person to contain right now is you, so sit tight and don’t make trouble.
I told you yesterday the Lantern Festival was a fire hazard. Guess who’s right again.”
“The boat,” I say. “It’s tied to the dock.”
Seton follows my gaze to where the motorboat tugs at its line. “What about it? That’s your boat. Didn’t you bring it over from your place?”
“I wasn’t the one who came in the boat,” I say as the events of the morning begin to take shape in my mind. “Reid . . . your mother . . . I don’t know who’s here.”
A shadow crosses Seton’s face. She stands and faces the flames, shielding her eyes as she takes in the scene—the burning house, the bobbing boat—as though for the first time.
She shouts into her radio and takes off down the shore toward the fire.
My head spins as I struggle to stand and lean over my knees.
“Mom!” Seton shouts. “Reid! Where are you?”
I fight nausea as I stumble after her.
“Stay back,” Seton says as she rips off her hat and coat and dives into the lake, emerging from the water with her uniform clinging to her body. “The water will protect me from the fire.”
We both know that’s not true.
“Someone made it out of the house and collapsed by the courtyard,” I say. “We need to get them away from the smoke.”
“We don’t need to do anything.” Seton snaps her fingers. “Except give me your shirt.”
I pull the blue running jersey off and toss it to her. She douses it in the lake, too, and wraps it over her nose and mouth. “Move back to where we were. The fire department’s coming in their boat.”
Seton squeezes my hand, takes a deep breath, and runs forward until she’s swallowed by smoke. I wait, ignoring her instructions and feeling useless as the heat of the fire sears my bare skin.
Off in the distance, a siren sounds. Thirty seconds later the local fire boat speeds into the cove.
One volunteer firefighter tosses the anchor overboard while two others set up a hose that sucks water from the lake and sprays it toward shore.
I wave both arms, directing the water toward the courtyard.
Then I dash forward. Smoke burns my eyes.
I keep low to the ground, crawling as heat and smoke and a lack of oxygen begin to overwhelm me.
I nearly turn back before a torrent of water cascades from above, cooling my skin and forming a pocket of air close to the ground that I breathe in deeply.
Ahead, Seton stands against the fire. I crawl toward her. Her eyes are bloodshot, and she coughs through the running jersey.
“We’re almost there,” I say.
“Go back!” she shouts before succumbing to a fit of coughing.
A few yards farther, my hand lands on wet cloth. I recognize Andrea Haviland’s hockey cap at once. “Mom!” Seton says, shaking her mother’s shoulder and pressing her ear to her mouth. “She’s breathing.”
A wall collapses, showering us with heat. Another rush of water from the fire hose cools the air. “Get under one arm,” Seton says. “Stay low. Keep moving.”
Somehow, we drag Mrs. Haviland’s limp body across the ground and away from the fire. Behind us, flames shoot in the air as the house falls in on itself. Fifty yards down the shore, Seton kneels over her mother, checks her vitals, then speaks into the radio. “Where’s the ambulance?”
“Five minutes,” the dispatcher says.
“Make it one,” Seton snaps.
“She needs oxygen,” I say.
Seton shoves me. “Are you a doctor now? Thanks for stating the obvious. And next time, do what I tell you. You could have gotten yourself killed.”
“So could you,” I say.
She yanks the running jersey from her face and flings it at me. “Getting killed is my job, not yours.”
Behind us, footsteps approach as my aunt jogs along the shore, dressed for the part in scrubs. “Give me an update,” Hadley says as she kneels beside us and takes over the scene.
“Smoke inhalation,” Seton says. “Maybe some burns.”
Hadley puts an ear to Mrs. Haviland’s chest and uses the flashlight on Seton’s phone to check her breathing passage. “Vitals seem okay, as far as I can tell. Her skin’s turning pink from the smoke, but no burns, thank God. She’ll need oxygen as soon as possible.”
Unlike me, Hadley doesn’t get admonished for stating the obvious. In fact, Seton seems perfectly comfortable deferring to her. I slide away to give them room, leaning my back against a tree and slipping the jersey on as a coughing fit racks my body.
A few moments later, the ambulance arrives, sirens blaring.
The EMTs hurry along the shore with a gurney, then follow Hadley’s direction as they strap an oxygen mask over Mrs. Haviland’s nose and mouth.
Eventually Hadley leaves them and crouches beside me.
“You scared the bejeezus out of Seton,” she says as she checks my pulse, her bony fingers resting on my wrist. My lungs tickle, and I suppress another nagging cough.
“I do my best,” I say.
“Open up,” she says, shining the light into my throat. “You need to get to the ER.”
I have an $8,000 deductible on my insurance. I’m not going anywhere near the ER. “I’ll be fine.”
“Your face is covered with blood. You have an open contusion on your forehead. And your lungs are filled with smoke. Two choices: You can ride in the ambulance or come with me. The ambulance costs extra, though.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Good call.”
One of the EMTs waves to Hadley. “Sit tight and breathe deeply,” she says, leaving me by the tree.
A fire truck pulls in behind the ambulance, and another team of firefighters uncoils a hose along the shore. Seton joins me and slides onto the ground. “They think my mom’ll make it through this,” she says, closing her eyes. “How did you wind up here, anyway?”
Some of the events of the morning are still hazy, but they begin to return to me as I tell her about leaving Idlewood and jogging to the Ridge Trail, pointing to where the rock face spills from the peaks above us.
“I was at the overlook and thought I smelled a cigarette until smoke started billowing from the shore. By the time I got here, the whole house was in flames.”
Seton swears under her breath and moves a lock of hair from my forehead. “That’s a nasty cut.”
The wound throbs the moment she mentions it, but I don’t mind, especially if it means having Seton this close.
These moments between us pop up when I least expect them, offering fleeting glimpses of possibility.
I lay my hand over hers. Seton closes her eyes.
“I don’t want to make a mistake,” she says.
“I know,” I say.
She rests her forehead against mine. Pain shoots through my temples.
“Ow!” I say.
“Sorry,” Seton says, shifting away to signify a return to the friend zone, a dance we’ve mastered. I wonder what would happen if one of us chose to seize one of these moments, if we followed our feelings wherever they might lead us. I wonder if our relationship would survive.
“My mom’s done it this time,” Seton says. “First, she took a sledgehammer to those cameras. And today, with the security system gone, she started a fire.” She catches herself. “Are you recording this?”
I shake my head. “I don’t have my phone,” I say as the final memories of this morning snap into place: the noise behind me, the swing of a tree branch. I glance around the cove, trying to make sense of it.
“What?” Seton asks.
“The boat was already here,” I say. “It was tied to the dock.”
“Yeah,” Seton says. “Because my mom was here.”
But Mrs. Haviland was in the burning house, not on the shore with me. “Your mother stumbled out of the house and collapsed in the courtyard,” I say. “Then I heard a noise and saw a tree limb swinging toward me. Someone attacked me, but it wasn’t your mother.”
Seton stands and faces the fire. “That means someone else was here,” she says. “But who?”