Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [122]
“Daddy, what happened to our house?” Allyson couldn’t tear her eyes away from the smoldering ruins.
“I don’t know.”
Wide-eyed and mute, Britney refused to let go of me. I held her close, Allyson alone in front, her eyes vaguely accusatory, as if I or someone else on scene were responsible.
“It’s all burned up,” Allyson said.
“Yes, it is. And you know what? I thought you were in there.”
“Daddy, that’s silly. We were at a movie.”
“Why did it burn up?” Britney asked.
“You were at a movie until . . .” I glanced at my watch. “Almost one in the morning?”
“We had a flat on the freeway,” Morgan said. “We had to wait for the patrol. We waited, like, forever.”
“The State Patrol,” corrected Britney. I gave her another little squeeze. She squeezed back, as if I were the one in need of comfort. What a paradise I’d fallen into, embracing her skinny little body, feeling her bony ribs expand and contract as she breathed. Life was such a goddamn miracle. I gazed into Allyson’s eyes. Her mother had been able to read my feelings, too, often before I knew them myself. Allyson stepped forward and kissed my sooty cheek.
“You must have been worried.” With those words of comfort from a nine-year-old, life began to flow back into me.
“Yeah, and they never came,” said Britney. “The State Patrol never came.”
“Why didn’t you guys take my truck? I left the keys with Morgan.”
“We started to. We drove all the way into town, but Brit threw up in it,” Allyson said.
“She what?”
“I think she had too much pizza and Coke.”
Britney made a face. “It was the Coke. I can eat any amount of pizza without throwing up. At Lindy’s party I ate three and a half slices. I held the record.”
“You threw up there, too,” Allyson said.
“Yeah. From the Coke.”
“You all right now, pumpkin?” I asked.
“I’m fine. We didn’t want to take the truck after I threw up in it.”
“You guys must have been off in the truck when Stephanie and I came by the first time. You get the flat fixed?”
“Morgan didn’t know how,” Allyson said. “Finally one of the boys on Morgan’s tennis team saw us, and him and his mom gave us a ride. Then we saw all these fire trucks.” Britney put her cheek against mine.
“Where’s my stuff?” Allyson said. Always ready to stick up for herself, Allyson wasn’t inclined to let this affront to her perfect summer slide.
“I’m afraid it’s all inside, sweetheart. Everything’s still in there.”
“Not Miss Squiggly?” Britney said. She’d been dragging Miss Squiggly around since she was two. The doll was a mess. No hair. One eye. One leg.
“Even Miss Squiggly. We’re going to have to start from scratch.”
“I don’t want to start from scratch,” Allyson said defiantly.
“I need Miss Squiggly.” Britney burst into tears.
When I hugged them both again, Allyson started crying, too. “Look, you guys. We’re all together and nobody got hurt. Right now that’s the important thing. Nobody got hurt.”
Even as I said it, in my mind’s eye I saw the corpse in the backyard. If it wasn’t Morgan, who was it? Could it have been one of my old girlfriends, someone who’d come carrying a grudge and a can of gasoline? Maybe one of the Suzannes?
Or Lorie? For the corpse to have been Lorie’s, she would have had to lose some weight, but then, I hadn’t seen her in three years. She could have lost plenty of weight in that time. I wanted to go around the building and look at the corpse again, but I wasn’t about to let go of my daughters.
“What about my new sandals?” Allyson asked.
“We’ll get you some more.”
“I was going to wear those tomorrow.”
“I want my Miss Squiggly,” said Britney, slipping her thumb into her mouth. She hadn’t sucked her thumb since just after her mother left.
“Allyson,” I said. “Did you guys have anybody over at the house?”
Measuring the question, Allyson stopped crying and arched a look up at me. “No.”
“You sure?”
“Nobody.”
“Morgan, you didn’t have any friends visit?”
Morgan said, “No. We got pizza and headed out for the movie. Then Brit threw up. We came back and took my mom’s car, and