“What are you working on now?” he asked her in his Massachusetts twang.
“I’m taking all the doors down to the original wood, and getting a hundred years of paint off them. I just started.” She smiled at him.
“That’s hard work.” He smiled back at her. She was a pretty woman, although she never played up her looks and didn’t seem to care. She had a great body, which he never admitted to noticing, but even at his age, he enjoyed seeing a good-looking woman as much as the next man. Pete didn’t agree with him, but his own wife was a knockout, and had been a cheerleader in high school. They had been married for twenty-seven years, and had five children. Phil had been widowed for fifteen years, lost his wife to cancer. His hardware store, Pocker and Son, was the best one around for miles and did a booming business. Phil kept their product line up to date with high-quality goods, and he knew every trick in the business for doing complicated repairs, particularly plumbing and electrical work. Melissa often asked his advice and found it useful. And Norm had a deep respect and affection for him too. Norm and Phil had dinner together once in a while. Norm was closer to Phil’s son’s age, but liked Phil better. He was a no-frills person, with a sharp mind, and had helped Norm many times with good advice when he started his contracting business.
Melissa carried her own bags out to the truck, as she always did, after she said goodbye to Phil, and the boy they hired in the summer put the wheelbarrow in the back for her. Less than an hour after she’d left, she was home again, with everything she needed.
Norm stopped by Melissa’s place that afternoon. He dropped in occasionally when he had something to do on a construction site nearby. She was sanding again, and didn’t hear him until he was standing in front of her. He was a tall, burly man, with a full head of dark blond hair, bright blue eyes, and powerful arms and shoulders. He had a kind face. He had gone to Yale, and dropped out after a year, and decided to do what he loved instead, working with his hands and building houses. He said college life wasn’t for him, but he read voraciously, was knowledgeable on a wide variety of subjects, and they’d had some interesting discussions in the past four years. He was divorced and had no kids, which appeared to be her situation too. He was fifty years old. He referred to a girlfriend from time to time, but it never sounded serious, and they never discussed their personal lives or her past history with each other. She never volunteered it, and he asked no questions, although he had wondered who the little boy was in the photographs. He didn’t want to pry. There were no photographs in the house of any man, and there had never been any evidence of one for the four years he had known her. She chose to remain a mystery, and he respected that. All he knew about her was that she had moved up from New York. And since her books had been written in her maiden name, he didn’t know about her life as a bestselling author either.
“Phil said you’re stripping all the doors,” he said, smiling at her. She nodded, and put down the sandpaper. “That’ll keep you busy for a while.”
“Yeah, like a year or two.” She grinned at him. “It suddenly occurred to me that they’d look a lot better if I take them down to the wood.”
“I can help you if you want,” he offered, but already knew what the answer would be. She liked doing everything herself.
“I’ll let you know if I run out of steam,” she said, and offered him a glass of iced tea, which he accepted gratefully and followed her into the kitchen he had rebuilt for her. It was a relief to get out of the heat, although it didn’t seem to faze her. She was perspiring from the work but didn’t care. She was comfortable with him. He had never done or said anything inappropriate, and wouldn’t have. It was obvious that she wasn’t open to male attention, and was content as she was, and he didn’t want to spoil or jeopardize the successful working relationship he had with her. He had installed air-conditioning for her throughout the house three years before, and it made a huge difference in the summer. The house was cool and pleasant, as they both drank the iced tea she poured them, with thin slices of lemon in it. She kept a pitcher in the fridge, and one of lemonade.
“There was a fire fifty miles from here last week,” he informed her. “We’re lucky there hasn’t been any wind. Something like that can take off in a hurry. It started in a campground, but they caught it quickly.” She nodded. Fire was a concern to all of them in a summer as hot and dry as this one. “Some of the campers don’t know what they’re doing.” Melissa was careful to keep the dry brush on her property cleared in the summer months. Norm had taught her that in the beginning. He was impressed by how much she had learned, and how avidly she followed his advice. She was a responsible property owner, and an asset to the area, although few people knew her.
He left after he’d finished his iced tea, and Melissa went back to work on the door she was sanding. It was dusk when she stopped, and went inside to take a shower and wash the dust off. She made a salad for dinner. She wasn’t hungry, and didn’t like to cook. In the summer months, she ate the fruit and vegetables they grew on the property with a meal of chicken or fish now and then. She didn’t enjoy cooking, and never had, and did as little as possible. She knew that Norm was a gourmet cook, and made a hobby of it. Sometimes he brought her the vinegar or jam he made, or some delicious treat he had concocted in the state-of-the-art kitchen that he had built for himself. Hers was much more basic, although it was adequate for her needs as a single person who never had visitors or entertained.
She had made that clear to him when she hired him to remodel the house. But she enjoyed the things he brought her once in a while. Melissa didn’t have hobbies, she put all her attention and energy into the house, just as she had put it into her writing, marriage, and son before. She was a highly focused person. She had been a powerful tennis player before, but had no one to play with now.
He was adept at dodging her occasional acerbic comments about the world, or life in general. She never turned her sharp tongue on him, and he recognized her moods easily. He was good with people, and didn’t take her taciturn nature personally. He accepted that it was just the way she was, and like Phil at the hardware store, he still thought that underneath the bristles, she was a good person. She wasn’t rude to his workers, but she wasn’t warm and friendly either. She was kinder to Norm than to his employees, because he was so unfailingly nice to her. Even Melissa recognized that she wasn’t an easy person, and admitted it to him often, though she made no effort to change. He accepted her as she was, and liked her anyway. In his opinion, despite the lack of frills, he recognized that she was an honest, honorable woman, with good values, and many qualities.
* * *
—
She watched the news that night, and heard a report about another fire that had started in a campground, closer than the last one. She wondered if she should hose down the house. But she decided the fire wasn’t close enough or serious enough to worry about. That night, in bed, she woke to the sound of a windstorm and saw the trees swaying outside her windows. She got up and went out. A fierce wind had suddenly sprung up out of nowhere.
She went back to bed, turned the news on in the morning, and saw that the nearby fire had grown to alarming proportions, and the wind hadn’t died down yet. If it continued, it could push the fire in her direction. She decided to hose down the house. Norm came by and found her doing it an hour later. Her entire home was a wooden structure, as were all the outbuildings, and she was watering down the roof when he got out of his truck and walked over to her.
“I was going to offer to do that for you.” She had already done most of it, and hosed down the trees nearest the house. She wasn’t sure how much it would help if the fire came straight for them, but did it anyway.
“It sounds like a bad one,” he commented. “I’ve been listening to the news since five o’clock this morning. I hosed down my place too.”
“It’s another campground fire,” she commented, holding the hose steady in her s
trong hands.
He hesitated for a moment before he answered. “They suspect arson this time,” he said in a serious tone, and Melissa looked angry. She had a short fuse, and was worried about the fire, and her house.
“If it is arson, they should hang whoever started it.” Fire was their worst fear in the summer, and the most dangerous.
“If it’s arson, whoever set it will go to prison,” Norm said calmly.
“How could anyone do something like that?”
“Do you want me to start on the sheds around the property?” he asked her and she nodded, frowning.
“I’ll come with you. I’ve done everything I can here at the main house.”
She got in his truck, and together they drove to each of the outbuildings, and stopped to hose them down. She had installed water sources throughout the property and an extensive irrigation system. When they finished, Norm left to check on one of his other clients who lived closer to the fire, which was now raging, according to radio reports. They had continued listening in the truck, and the situation sounded serious. News channels in Boston reported that night on the news that a major fire was now burning in the Berkshires, spurred on by unusually high winds that hadn’t died down yet. Melissa continued listening to weather reports late into the night, and checked the fire map on her computer that was tracking the fast-moving blaze.
By midnight, she was seriously worried as she saw the fire zone growing and getting closer. There was a river and a county road between her house and the fire, and if it jumped either one of them, her property would be in immediate danger. She dozed off while looking at her computer, and at two a.m., she was awakened by a loud pounding on her front door.
She woke up with a start, and raced downstairs, still dressed, and came rapidly awake. The wind was still blowing when she opened the door and saw two deputy sheriffs she didn’t know, with an official car with flashing lights behind them.
“We’re evacuating the area,” one of the deputies said. “You need to be out as quickly as possible. The fire is heading this way.” She stood staring at them, and made a quick decision.
“Thanks for letting me know,” she said politely.
“Do you need help? Are there children in the house, animals in the barn? You can let the livestock loose, and you’ll have to let them fend for themselves.” Several people in the area were panicking about their horses, but the fire was moving too fast now to get them into trailers and drive them out. Some homeowners were refusing to leave until their horses were safe.
“I don’t have kids or animals,” she answered. “Just me.”
“Well, get out fast. Do you want us to drive you anywhere? The main road is still open, but the smaller ones are closed.” As she looked over their heads, she could see the bright orange glow of the fire in the night sky.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured them, and they left as she closed the door.
The decision she had made on the spur of the moment was that she wasn’t leaving. She didn’t want to evacuate. She was staying, to do whatever she could to save her house. She didn’t care if she died trying. She had nothing that she cared about to lose now, except her home. It was all she had, and the only thing she loved. And she hadn’t worked that hard for four years in order to abandon it now. She wasn’t afraid of the fire itself, or getting hurt, only of the damage it would do. It would have been different if Robbie had been there with her. But he wasn’t. She only had the house to worry about, and was responsible only for herself.
The fire seemed to grow minute by minute as she watched from her windows, and the air was filled with smoke and ash, which made it hard to breathe. Her truck was covered with a thin film of ash. She went out to hose down the roof again, coughing in the acrid air, and was intent on dousing the whole roof when Norm drove up a short time later. He looked unhappy to see her there, and shouted over the sound of the hose as he walked toward her.
“Haven’t they evacuated you yet? They evacuated me an hour ago.” She nodded but didn’t say more, and concentrated on what she was doing as he picked up another hose. “You’ve got to get out, Melissa. There’s nothing else you can do here. It’s headed your way. There’s no time to lose.”
“I’m not going,” she said firmly, her eyes fixed on her roof to make sure she wet every inch down.
“Don’t be crazy. You can’t risk your life for a house. If the worst happens, you can rebuild.” She just shook her head, and he could see that she meant it and wasn’t going anywhere. He had been on his way to volunteer to help the firefighters who, so far, had been unable to control the blaze. But he didn’t want to leave her. There was something terrifyingly determined about the way she looked. He knew how much she loved her home, but this was insane. He grabbed her arm, and the water from the hose sprayed them both. Her shirt was wet as she looked at him.
“I’m staying, Norm. You can go.”
“I’m not leaving here without you.” He tightened his grip on her arm and she shook him off with a look that said she would fight him if he tried to take her away. “Come on, Mel, be sensible. It’s too dangerous for you to stay. If the fire gets here, you could be trapped, or hit by a falling tree or part of the house.” An old Victorian, wooden structure like her home would go up in flames within minutes.
“I don’t care. This is all I have now. And if I die in the fire, no one will miss me.” As she said the words, she knew it wasn’t true. Her sister, Hattie, would miss her, she knew that her sister still cared, even if their lives were far apart now. Hattie was faithful about reaching out to her a few times a year. She initiated contact, Melissa never did. “All I have is a sister who’s a nun, and she believes all that crap that if I die, I’ll be in a better place. I haven’t seen her in six years.” Norm could tell there was a lot more to the story there, but this wasn’t the time to ask, and Melissa probably wouldn’t have told him anyway. She had never mentioned her sister before.
“I believe in that crap too, and I have no desire to wind up in that better place with you. I’m not leaving until you come with me, so you’ll be responsible for killing me too, if we stay.” They were both coughing in the smoke by then, which was being carried for miles by the wind.
“Leave me, Norm. I’ll be fine.” And if she wasn’t, it didn’t matter to her. He could see that now, for the first time. He had never realized before how determined she was to be alone, and how little she cared about her own life. Whatever had happened to her before had made her indifferent to whether she lived or died. It made him sad for her.
“You’re a stubborn woman,” he said, and she didn’t deny it. They walked into the house then to get away from the smoke, and saw on a news bulletin that the fire was two miles from her house and advancing at a furious pace.
“I’m going to lose the house,” she said in a grim voice, pulled a pillowcase out of a closet, and then rushed into the living room and started throwing the photographs of the little boy into the pillowcase, as he watched her with a question in his eyes he didn’t put words to. She glanced at him, and continued what she was doing.
“He’s my son. He died of a brain tumor when he was ten, six years ago. It destroyed my marriage, that’s why I’m here,” she said matter-of-factly in a flat voice. She had never said that to anyone before. The pillowcase was heavy and full when she finished, with all the silver frames with photographs of Robbie in them. Norm looked sad for her as they walked back into the kitchen to check the TV again, but the image had changed dramatically when they saw the weather map again. The wind had turned at a ninety-degree angle and was heading north, taking the fire with it, which was bad news for the people who lived in its path, but it meant that Melissa’s home had been miraculously spared. She looked at Norm in disbelief. His home would be safe now too, unless the wind changed direction again. “If I still believed in God, I would think it was the answer to prayer, but the people in its path are
in big trouble now. I feel sorry for them.”
“I still believe in miracles,” Norm said quietly, and finally found what he wanted to say to her after what he’d seen her do in her living room and the look on her face. “I’m sorry about your boy, Mel. I never knew who the child was.” He had seen the photos many times while working on her house. He was a beautiful little boy with dark hair and big eyes like hers.
They sat down in the kitchen for a minute. Her legs were shaking with relief that the wind had turned and her home was safe. She didn’t even care that Norm knew about Robbie now. It had been a naked moment when he had seen more of her than he ever had before.
“It changed everything when he died,” she said in a soft voice. “It almost killed me, and actually, it did kill a lot of me. I’ve been half dead ever since. I gave up my work, my life, my marriage. None of it made sense anymore without him. The only thing that has made any sense and kept me alive since then is this house. And if it burned down, I’d go with it. It’s all I have to live for now.”
“That’s not enough,” he said gently.
“It is for me,” she said with a tired smile. It had been a long night.
“What about your sister, the nun? Why don’t you see her?”
“I can’t stand nuns. We were very close until she took the cowardly way out, eighteen years ago. We haven’t been close ever since. The last time I saw her was at my son’s funeral. I don’t miss her,” she said sharply. “She’s not the same person she used to be. Neither am I. I took care of her after our parents died. She was twelve, I was eighteen. I became her only parent then. It made me grow up very quickly. I spent all my college years taking care of her. She went nuts at twenty-five and joined a religious order. I was furious with her. We drifted apart after that. I got married a year later, and had Robbie. And our lives were too different from then on.”
Finding Ashley Page 3
