Won't Last Long

by Heidi Joy Tretheway

  Aussie whined again, more insistently.

  Melina raced toward the house, assaulted by an acrid smell. Aussie barked.

  It took Melina several seconds to fully process what she was seeing as smoke billowed into the sky.

  Without thinking, she sprinted toward the back door, pulling open the handle. Smoke poured out and the fire roared hotter, stoked by new oxygen.

  “Joshua!” She screamed. She took a few steps into the kitchen, frantically searching through the smoke for Joshua. If Aussie was outside, Joshua must be in here.

  Heat pulsed from the far end of the kitchen where the pantry door was closed. Thin flames snaked between the moldings, licking up toward the kitchen ceiling, scorching and bubbling the paint. It was surreal, watching the flames devour her home, and she fought to tear her eyes away from that image and find what mattered: Joshua.

  “Joshua!” she screamed again. She ran toward the front of the house, to the living room, where the smoke was lighter. For a moment, she thought of all of the beautiful things that could die in this fire—the silk drapes she’d purchased, their new couch, Momo’s paintings, a few antiques—and she wondered if anything could be saved.

  Her eyes swept the living room and she reached for the one thing she knew had value.

  “Melina!” Joshua thundered down the stairs, choking as he said her name. “Melina! Get out of here! What are you doing?”

  Joshua grabbed her roughly by the shoulder, forcing her out the front door and down the stairs, nearly tripping in the process. They fell onto the front lawn as fire trucks wailed, pulling up to the house and unrolling hoses.

  Then Joshua got up shakily and ran back toward the house, going back for one more thing.

  Paralyzed, Melina watched and wept.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  “I thought I’d lost you. I really, really thought I had.”

  Joshua’s arm pulled Melina close to him, holding her so tightly she struggled to catch her breath from crying.

  “I thought you were in the house. I thought you were trapped.”

  They watched from the side yard as firefighters set up around the house, hosing down the kitchen. Smoke bloomed, white water vapor mixed with black chemical burn, then subsided as crews extinguished the flames.

  Everyone seemed to move in slow motion as Joshua and Melina watched their home, Momo’s old house, pump out billows of smoke. Aussie remained planted firmly beside them, whimpering softly.

  “What happened? Where were you?” Joshua asked.

  “I went to get something from work and when I came back, I found Aussie in the front yard and the house was on fire. I thought something had happened to you.”

  “You weren’t home?” Joshua asked, puzzled. “I thought you were in there and something caught fire while I was running. I thought you were unconscious or stuck.”

  Melina saw the fear in Joshua’s eyes, and knew that despite his mistrust, despite the accusations he threw at her before he slammed out of the house, no way was he so far gone that he didn’t care for her.

  Together, they watched the fire crew work. On his second trip back into the house, Joshua ripped Momo’s painting off the living room wall. He locked it safely inside his Porsche and moved the car to a neighbor’s driveway to make way for fire trucks.

  Melina looked back to where they’d tumbled out of the house. There, on the front lawn, her Giustiniano bag slouched on its side, worth thousands of dollars yet completely ignored by the firefighters and neighbors who assembled at the scene.

  “What’s my bag doing there?” she asked. The non sequitur surprised Joshua.

  “When I went upstairs, I couldn’t find you. But I found that. And I grabbed it, because I knew it was important to you.”

  Melina reeled. Out of everything they had, everything he could have grabbed from the house, he chose to save her designer handbag. It was inconceivable.

  “Thank you,” she croaked, feeling small. If that was what Joshua thought she truly valued, she realized it wasn’t nearly as important as she’d first believed. Everything she needed—Joshua and Aussie—was right here.

  “Is that my sweatshirt?” Joshua asked, pointing to a gray lump at the bottom of the front porch steps.

  “That’s what I saved,” she said, smiling. “It was the only thing I could see that had any value.”

  Joshua shook his head, his eyes dancing. “Well, the smoke was pretty thick. I think you can be forgiven for not being able to see at all.” He pulled her closer and kissed her, ran his hands through her smoke-tainted hair.

  “Well, what else is there, right?” Melina asked. “You got Momo’s painting. I can buy new clothes. We can have our wedding photos reprinted. And we can get new furniture.”

  “It looks like the fire was in the kitchen,” Joshua said. “Hopefully, it didn’t get much further, and we’re just dealing with smoke.”

  “The fire was in the pantry,” Melina confirmed. “I saw when I came in the back door.”

  “The electrical box,” Joshua nodded. “I knew those old fuses looked bad last time I got the lights back on.”

  Then a cloud crossed his face, and it looked as if he might cry.

  “Joshua? What’s wrong?”

  “I thought of something that I wish I could have saved,” he said. “But it’s too late now.”

  Melina put her arms around him. “Tell me.”

  “There was an old shoebox full of recipes in the pantry. And postcards, and old photos from growing up. It’s pretty much the only thing I saved from all the times my family moved around, because we didn’t have much space to pack souvenirs.”

  Melina smiled. “That’s all?”

  “That’s all? Melina, you might not love your history, but it’s important to me, OK?” Joshua was defensive. “Those recipes mean the world to me—they’re my connection to all the kitchens and places where I grew up.”

  “Come here.” She led him to her silver coupe and opened the front passenger door.

  “We can’t go anywhere,” Joshua started. “Our house—“

  “No, look,” she interrupted, pointing inside. “Look at this.” She pulled the large, square volume off the front seat—bound in leather, its pages were fat from holding irregular pieces of paper. The scrapbook.

  Melina put it in Joshua’s hands.

  “This is your shoebox.”

  Joshua stared. He balanced the book on top of Melina’s car and opened the front cover. He turned a page, and then another, peering at it under the streetlight’s illumination. Everything was there. Each recipe in order, reflecting where he’d been at each stage in life, from boyhood through today.

  Joshua turned past photos and postcards, through recipes scrawled in his teenage handwriting. Each piece was preserved under a clear plastic sheet and Melina had taken the time to photocopy recipes printed on both sides of an index card so that Joshua wouldn’t have to take them out of the protective book.

  “It’s … it’s amazing.” His fingers turned each page with reverence.

  “I wanted to tell you. That’s why I went to my office tonight. This is what I’ve been working on in the evenings, as a surprise for you.”

  “You mean, you’re not—?”

  “No, I’m not cheating on you. It kills me that you would think that, but there isn’t an easy explanation that wouldn’t spoil the surprise. I couldn’t work on the scrapbook at home.”

  “But all the phone calls? The lingerie in your suitcase?”

  “You know how you’re supposed to go camping with Mark this weekend?” He nodded. “Well, that was just the story we cooked up so that you would drive me to the airport and I would be able to surprise you by having us both go.”

  “You mean, like on vacation?”

  “Yes, that was the rest of the surprise. Your dad and Serena are meeting us in the Caribbean. They’re working on their marriage and they want to see you.”

  Joshua was stunned. All of this secrecy, all of the lies. They weren’t hi
ding some dark secret. They were guarding Melina’s surprise—the first she’d ever planned for him.

  “You hate surprises,” he said, frowning.

  “And you hate change,” she leaned in and kissed his frown. “But I think each of us are getting a little more comfortable with them. And with each other.”

  ***

  It was late at night and most of the neighbors had gone to bed by the time the last fire truck pulled out of their driveway. The silence left behind was striking.

  The fire marshal explained that he’d be back to investigate further in the morning, but from the looks of the kitchen pantry, the fuse box was exactly where the fire started.

  “What caused the fire?” Joshua asked.

  “You know, with houses this old, you never really know for sure,” the marshal waved his hand vaguely. “We try to rule out the obvious stuff—cigarettes, cooking fires, arson—but if it’s not something like that, it is often a case of some wire, some little electric spark getting out of control and causing a whole lot of damage.”

  “So you mean the house caught itself on fire?”

  “Something like that,” the marshal said. “These old houses, it’s like they have minds of their own. They go for years or decades just fine, and then something can trigger it. You’ll probably need to rewire everything, not to mention all the smoke damage.”

  “How bad is the damage?”

  “Well, your kitchen is toast, if you’ll pardon the expression,” the marshal said. “It’s a total loss. So’s your pantry, and your dining nook will need new walls. But the rest of the house is intact. It just needs a good, thorough cleaning.”

  Melina’s shoulders sagged, thinking of all the work they’d put into making the house beautiful, and how far this fire had set them back. But Joshua’s energy was up.

  “It’s the best thing that could have happened to us,” Joshua consoled Melina. “We were going to gut it anyway, so who cares that the kitchen is ruined? I imagine we’ll even have insurance money to help with the remodel.”

  Joshua’s upbeat attitude was contagious, and Melina couldn’t help but smile, despite the late hour. A half-moon hung large overhead.

  “You are by far the sweetest, nuttiest man I know,” she said.

  “And you are the most thoughtful, rottenest surprise-secret-keeper I know,” Joshua said, pointing to the scrapbook. “I love your surprise, and I’m sorry I doubted you.”

  “If you take me to a hotel and order us room service, you’re forgiven,” Melina said, sleepily. Aussie whined.

  “We’ll go five-star,” Joshua said. “Let’s see if I can find some clothes upstairs that aren’t too smoky.” Joshua dropped a kiss on her forehead and ran into the house.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Fairy lights strung around the fence lit Melina and Joshua’s backyard from corner to corner, and dozens of friends wandered around the garden, which had the unmistakable late summer scent of ripe tomatoes, herbs and flowers in bloom.

  Melina drifted happily from group to group, enjoying the party as much as she enjoyed being the hostess. A smorgasbord of potluck food was spread on long tables lining the side of the yard.

  It was twilight and Joshua stoked a blaze in the fire pit he’d built, surrounded by hearty old bricks and pea gravel. S’mores were on the menu, and adults transformed into children as they tried to perfect a toasted, golden marshmallow.

  Lauren shrieked as once again her marshmallow caught fire, blackening it. She pouted and her date replaced the offending charred marshmallow with a fresh one.

  Tonight was the big reveal—two months since the house fire, and Joshua and Melina had completed both the kitchen remodel and the arduous process of cleaning up smoke damage. The upholstered furniture and drapes downstairs had to go, but the rest of the house was mostly untarnished.

  “Love it, love it, love it,” Stephanie said, her blonde curls bobbing with delight as she walked through Joshua’s kitchen, fingers trailing over cherry cabinets. She took in copper pots hanging from an overhead rack, a massive six-burner stove, and acres of white quartz countertops. In a nod to the history of the house, Joshua chose a refurbished, bright turquoise refrigerator with classic curved corners and an old-style pull handle.

  “This is awesome,” Mark added. Joshua grinned. He’d personally selected everything in the kitchen, from the extra-large sink to its gooseneck faucet.

  “There was a silver lining in the fire,” Joshua said, “because I got to do everything I wanted and more, with the insurance covering more than half of it.”

  “I’m just so glad you are OK,” Stephanie said. “You were really stupid for running inside—twice—and I don’t even want to think about what could have happened if you’d passed out from the smoke.”

  “Did they ever figure out what caused it?” Mark asked.

  “Not exactly,” Joshua said. “It was like the house caught itself on fire. It wasn’t something we did, like leaving something on the stove. The wiring was old. It just—sparked.”

  “Well, I hope you’ve checked everything else out,” Stephanie said.

  “Oh, we have, top to bottom,” Melina interjected, wrapping her arms around Joshua’s waist. “I think we had four different electricians in here at one point, going over everything and rewiring.” She changed the subject: “Momo just got here. You two want to come meet her?”

  Stephanie, Mark and Joshua followed Melina out to the garden where Squirt was making Momo comfortable on one of the padded chairs. Melina stooped and threw her arms around the old woman.

  “Thank you for coming all the way down here,” she said. “I want you to see what we’ve done with your house.”

  “I know you’ve taken care of it,” Momo assured her, patting her hand. “I’ll bet I know how it started.”

  Melina froze. Joshua, who had barely listened to their exchange, came close.

  “What do you mean, Momo? You knew the house could catch fire?” Joshua was serious. He’d put his life on the line, and he hated to think that the fire could have been prevented.

  “No, nothing like that,” Momo said, too casually to reassure Melina and Joshua. “I don’t know about the fire, except what you told me, but I guess I know how it happened. There was a fight.”

  “What?” Melina flashed back to the searing look Joshua shot at her just before he bolted down the stairs and out the front door on the night of the fire.

  “There was,” Joshua admitted. “I made some assumptions. I jumped to conclusions. It was—I was not fair to Melina.”

  “Let’s go inside and take a look.”

  ***

  Momo led the way, through the shining new kitchen with barely a glance, through the front hallway and into the living room.

  “Did you take anything apart? Any walls?” Momo asked keenly.

  “Just a few, the dining nook and the kitchen and the pantry, where there was the most damage,” Melina said.

  “And what did you find?” Momo asked, peering around, looking for something.

  “We found little things. Nuts and bolts, construction debris probably, and this little box.” Melina took a rusted tin from the fireplace mantle and brought it close to Momo, who lifted the lid.

  Inside lay a small assortment of someone’s treasures: A child’s toy horse, an old seed packet, a skinny gold ring, an octagonal bottle and a little cup with a handle.

  Joshua pointed to each item in turn, helping Momo’s poor eyesight.

  “What do you think?” Melina asked Momo. “How did you know what we’d find?”

  “Darling, I had no idea what you’d find,” Momo said, clutching Melina’s hand, “but I knew you’d find something. I lived here for more than sixty years, but the house is much older than that. It’s older than me. And whenever we’d change something in the house, it would share a secret with us. Once I found a love letter sealed under some wallpaper!”

  She settled on the living room sofa and patted the seat for Melina and Joshua to join her. “I
t’s amazing what gets carried forward from past into present, isn’t it? These are things you would have thought nothing about, like they’d never last, they’d just end up in some garbage dump. But here they are. They’ve found new life.”

  “So why do these things matter?” Joshua asked, not following. “What does it have to do with the fire?”

  “You can put this house back together,” Momo said, “just like you’re putting your marriage back together. It was broken even before you started.”

  Joshua and Melina exchanged looks at the truth of that.

  “Some people say, ‘If these walls could talk,’ and I guess that’s true enough,” Momo continued. “But the question is, what story are they telling? Are they telling you about the past, or are they telling you about what you can do in the future?”

  “So the cup, the horse, are those supposed to mean something?”

  “They can have all the meaning you choose to give them,” Momo said. “The ring can be your marriage. The cup could be for your kitchen. The seeds could be for your children, or you could plant them and they might still grow in your garden.”

  “And what about the bottles?” Melina asked.

  “Who knows, dear? I don’t. They can tell you to drink and be merry. You can use them to hold a special message. The point is, this house, and everything and everyone in it, is yours. You don’t have to know what it was. You only have to decide what it will be.”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  At the beginning of dinner, each member of my family says we’re thankful for. My daughter once mentioned God, bacon, pacifiers and Mommy on the same night—high praise, indeed!

  This is my opportunity for gratitude, and there simply aren’t enough words.

  I am thankful to my writing mentors, especially editor Jim Thomsen (“There’s nothing more attractive than a character who mans up”), and the generous best-selling author Denise Grover Swank (“Friends don’t let friends look dumb in print”). They suggested huge, scary changes that made this book vastly better.