Chapter Eighteen #2
“I didn’t deliberate over what happened next; rather, my body chose for me, instinct taking over. I kissed William and ran into the barn.”
All Grace remembers from being inside the blaze is darkness and heat. Fear, too. So much fear.
She saved two of the horses. When Grace tells that part to Diana, she flexes her hands, the skin layered in scars, scorched by the metal locks of their stalls.
“The other horses, a gelding Irene recently brought to the farm and Daisy, my favorite of the mares . . . I couldn’t get to them. I can still hear their screams, high-pitched and ear-piercing. The fire was too hot, too fast, and the smoke was everywhere.”
When Grace was well enough, her sister filled in what happened next, repeatedly detailing what she knew, so by the time Grace was discharged from the rehabilitation facility, she assumed Irene’s stories as her own memories.
William somehow found her lying on the barn floor, unconscious. He carried her out onto the grass, beating the fire from her body with his own hands.
“Then my beautiful, stubborn husband went inside one more time. When the firefighters rescued him, he was a few feet away from Daisy’s stall, barely alive. Carson’s body wasn’t far from William’s, but the smoke likely prevented the two of them from seeing one another.”
The pain hovering around the older woman intensifies, thickening the air with a grief so endless Diana finds it hard to breathe.
Her instincts tell her to comfort Grace, to tell her she’s said enough; yet a hungry, reckless voice whispers that doing so would put her own healing at risk.
So Diana remains silent, pushing down her rising guilt to listen to the rest of Grace’s story.
“The fire ruined our lives,” Grace says.
“My sister said it was like William and I were a building in the middle of an earthquake. We held together as best as we could, until our broken pieces collapsed onto one another, and only the memory remains. William’s death, months after the fire, was when everything fell apart.
“I meant to be with him, but my doctors were concerned that my own healing was behind schedule. They’d convinced me to go to physical therapy.
One morning away from William would be fine, they assured me.
They were wrong. As I struggled to get my damaged legs to remember how to walk, William’s heart gave out.
By the time I made it back to his room, he was gone. ”
Grace finishes talking, and the last splinter of bark lies shredded at her feet. She tips back her head, the sun highlighting the lines on her face and the scars on her neck.
Diana is speechless, which, for the first time, gives her sympathy for all those people who shied away from her after Tom died. Some of them, she guesses, had been scared off; others, she suspects, had no idea what to say that wouldn’t sound trite or useless.
“Everyone—the doctors, the nurses, Irene—worried I wouldn’t make it, that losing William would be a setback I wouldn’t be able to survive,” Grace says. “I pushed my grief to the back of my mind, choosing to deal with it later. I never really did, though.”
“I’m so sorry, Grace,” Diana says, offering words of compassion yet knowing, from her own experience, that they won’t quench the pain.
“I couldn’t then, and still struggle now, to look too closely at everything that happened.
At the fire. At William’s death. At this lonely life I’ve led ever since.
” Grace’s posture loosens as she speaks, transforming her competence and independence into frailty.
“Sometimes, not looking too closely is the only way to get through a terrible time. Yet after William’s death, I began to remember more about that night.
I would smell smoke; it was as if my body was still back in the barn.
I’d wake up at night, my clothes soaked, dreaming I was on fire, flames all over my skin. ”
Grace bites out her words. “I was so angry. I am still so angry. This didn’t need to be my life. I wanted to be with William, to grow old with him here.” She kicks at the bark, scattering the pieces. “I haven’t been able to let my anger or pain go. You should.”
“Someday, maybe,” Diana says, “but I can’t do that until I understand the letter.”
Grace leads her to the remains of the barn.
“I never met Carson Roy. I knew his mother, though. She was the receptionist for the local dentist, and every time I went in for a cleaning, we’d chat about the weather and the latest town gossip.
William probably had Carson in class. It wasn’t a large high school, and he taught every student at some point.
Carson wasn’t anyone William mentored or ever talked about.
Maybe that’s why he stole from us? Maybe William gave him a bad grade?
Or did he resent not having William’s attention? ”
Diana imagines that a map of Grace’s telling of this story would be shaped in spirals and swirls, the sentences swooping around one another, obscuring the facts, hiding away the truth, keeping her from understanding.
“The police said Carson started the fire,” Diana says. “How did he do it?”
“When he came to steal from us, he dropped a lit cigarette inside the barn. I’m sure he never meant for things to get as out of control as they did.
” Grace scratches behind Scout’s ears. “That summer was the first time we ever worried about a fire. A few times, in the early morning, William thought the back stall smelled like tobacco. Other times, marijuana. He was furious; smoking in a barn like ours was dangerous. It wouldn’t take much to cause a fire.
He told Jessica and Tom to go somewhere else if they needed to smoke.
Jessica denied doing anything wrong. Tom was agreeable enough that William didn’t suspect he was the problem. ”
Diana sees Tom in the tub in their Brookline apartment, smoking his one cigarette to decompress from the stress of work, so careful to dispose of the ashes, never leaving a lit cigarette unattended.
He started smoking in high school, he told her.
Oh, Tom, she thinks, covering her face with her hands.
“Are you all right?”
Diana lifts her head. “If there was a cigarette, why don’t the police test it for DNA now? I’ve read about how people have gotten out of jail when old evidence is examined with modern techniques.”
“Why bother? It was an open-and-shut case. Everything pointed to Carson. Even if there was some question about that, there was a flood at the police station back in ’98 or ’99, and all the old evidence was destroyed.
The Hamilton Star did a big story about it, and I remember how they said all cold cases would have to be closed out because of the water damage.
My fire wasn’t a cold case, but the flood definitely ended any possibility that new information would be found. ”
Diana lets her hands drop. “What about Jessica? What happened to her?”
“Jessica’s had a challenging life. There was a boyfriend who went to prison for armed robbery.
She developed a serious drug problem. She has a little girl, Ava, who must be about eleven.
Jessica’s parents are raising her. Not sure they planned on parenting in their seventies, but the child needed them.
I talk to them every couple of months. They’ve been good about staying in touch all these years. ”
With her boot, Grace pushes aside remnants of the barn’s foundation.
“You know, I never heard from Tom after the fire. He never came by the hospital, never sent a note, never checked in on us. He didn’t come to William’s funeral either, which was hurtful since they were close, but I always chalked that up to youth and inexperience, not a crime. ”
Diana thinks of Jonathan and Lily pulling away when Tom was diagnosed, unable or unwilling to be a part of his death. Why would Tom cut Grace out of his life? Grief, perhaps? Or guilt?
“Was there ever any talk of someone else,” Diana asks, struggling to get out the words, “other than Carson, being involved in the fire?”
“I’ve never had any reason to disbelieve the police investigation, Diana. Never thought it was anyone but Carson who caused my husband’s death. I don’t think Tom’s letter has anything to do with what happened to William and me.”
Diana reviews all Grace has told her so far, the facts sorting themselves like cards in a deck, stacking against one another and rapidly shuffling past. Grace’s story hasn’t offered the clarity she hoped for; instead, it’s left her with more questions.
Was Carson really responsible for the fire?
Was it accidental or deliberate? What was Tom’s role?
Or maybe she’s wrong about all this. Frustration glimmers at the edge of her vision, sending her pulse into an unsteady beat.
“After the fire, Irene tried to get me to rebuild the barn and continue William’s plans to cultivate our orchard,” Grace says.
“She was afraid not doing so meant I’d given up.
Letting nature take this space back has been a gift of a kind.
I like it untamed and messy, like the way it had been, I suppose, before people came to this valley.
Of course, abandoning William’s dreams for our trees was painful.
I just couldn’t do it without him.” She points to the apple trees, their wizened branches empty of the plans William once had for them.
“Though Irene was right: Sometimes, I did want to give up. Yesterday was like that. I told Ms. Sousa I was ill, but it was more like I was heartsick. My heart broke when William died, and it has never healed back to what it was before.”
Diana knows that feeling. “How did you move on?” she asks, hoping Grace has the answer for her.
“I haven’t. That’s the truth of it. I’m eighty-one years old next month, and every day for the past thirty-four years, I wake up expecting William to be next to me. Then I remember he’s gone.”
Before Diana leaves, Grace invites her inside. From a cramped kitchen drawer, the older woman fishes out her worn address book, its pages stained and ripped from years of use, and copies Jessica’s address and phone number onto a scrap of paper.
“When was the last time you saw Jessica?” Diana asks.
“Fifteen years ago, maybe,” Grace explains. “The last update I received about her was from her parents. They said she lives in Nashua, New Hampshire, and calls every Sunday at 11:00 a.m., after her parents get home from church, to catch up with Ava.”
“Thank you, Grace. For talking to me today, for opening up.” Diana gives Grace a smile she hopes conveys that, while their meeting wasn’t easy, it was more than she’d hoped for.
“I still don’t think that letter is about William and me, though I guess it’s worth asking Jessica what she remembers from that time.
” Dropping the address book back in place, Grace closes the drawer with a swift push.
“Promise you’ll tell me if you uncover anything that’s relevant to me.
I wrote my address in Florida on that paper, too.
I’m moving to a retirement community where my sister lives.
It’s not my farm, but it will be easier to manage. ”
“I promise,” Diana says, taking Grace’s hand, carefully holding the older woman’s thin, ruined skin.
She expects she’ll never see Grace again after today, and she finds herself surprisingly sad about that.
She would have liked to have had this woman in her life for much longer—as a connection to Tom, as a reminder of the quicksand of grief, and most of all, as a friend.