LITMIR.BIZ

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a woman in Hillston, and I am, actually, although my wife and kids are in Texas right now, I would discourage them from spending any time outdoors until the mystery of how and why this is happening is solved.”

      The news station cut to a commercial, one of those homegrown ones about a family-owned car dealership, and I turned back to my cooking. This is terror, I thought. This is how they destroy not just the one who died, but everyone who sees it. This is like the aftermath of 9/11. I still had jugs of water and canned goods, probably expired now, in the basement. We had all expected bombs and war back then. The media had encouraged us to prepare. Now all they said was to stay indoors.

      I decided then and there my kids would not be out of my sight. I would drive Lila to school, no walking around town with her camera until this was over. I would be the one to drive Mia and Allie home after Girl Scouts. I would protect them from whatever this was. If it happened again, it would not be to anyone I loved. I’d rather die than let anyone or anything hurt my girls.

      “I’ve got to get some photos done. I’m going to be downstairs, okay? You’re not doing laundry down there, are you?” Lila said, suddenly behind me. I wondered how long she’d been there and what she’d seen of the news.

      “Homework?” I asked.

      “After dinner,” she said. “Not a lot. Just some math.” She retreated to the dim safety of her basement darkroom, a place where up to now I felt she’d spent far too much time. Now, I was grateful for the photo hobby and the cinderblock walls I hoped could keep her safe.

      The phone rang and it was that voice, that deep soothing voice from this morning and it said, “Ms. Taylor, I owe you an apology.” And the knot in my gut I hadn’t acknowledged responded. I felt a letting go in the muscles in my neck. My grip on the phone loosened.

      “It looks like there was more than one person you needed to talk with today,” I said. “I just saw the local news.”

      “Tune into CNN,” he said. “They’re all in town. All the news stations. As a matter of fact, you should look outside. There may be news vans watching your house.”

      I carried the phone to my front porch as he kept talking. He explained how he was diverted to the scenes of the other fires. I looked out and watched an Eyewitness News van passed slowly, then I saw a CNN van idling down the street at the curb.

      “I’d still like to talk to you,” he said. “Is that still possible?”

      “Yes,” I said simply.

      “Who was the woman in the woods?” I asked. I didn’t know Ann Neelam, the woman I failed to save. My children attended a different elementary school and I did not know Elizabeth Lindsey. I knew a lot of women in town through PTA and the early moms support group I’d started upon my return from Bangalore, from the YMCA, and my yoga studio. It was surprising that Bruce Gilbert was the jogger who saw her die. He was a bit too short and round of body to fit the stereotype of a jogger, but he was an actor. He had also been my contractor for my kitchen renovation when he was between acting jobs. I now shared an experience with him. I felt an urgent need to call him and wondered if this Doug person had already.

      “Her name is Cynthia Barrow,” Doug said.

      “Gees,” I said. “Come over.” I hung up.

      Cynthia. Cindy. My Cindy. Our Cindy. Cindy of the Institute for Philosophy for Children. Cindy, my partner in early motherhood. Cindy, the co-founder of our mom’s group. A sister in spirit, she’d called me in a birthday card she’d once sent. I walked through my front door, dropped the phone on the carpet and there I was again in the pillows on my couch, my legs curling up to my chest, my eyes closed. Gone. Dead. Burned. I waited for this Doug Bluestein person to arrive. And, in the stillness of my living room, the faint sounds of Lila in her darkroom below came to me and I let the soft sounds of her life overpower the pounding of my own blood pulsing just under the taut muscles in my neck. I wanted my twins home. Just then, there they were and I ran through my front door to the car at the curb, pulled them quickly into the house, barely thanking Barbara Kinsley from down the street for bringing them home. She waved at me and sped off. Now if only Pete were here. We would all be safe. Instead of trying him again I tried to reach Bruce Gilbert. It rang until the message announced his unavailability. I left a hurried message and hung up. Cindy was dead. I lifted the phone. I still could dial the number from memory. But a rush of shame and a sense of self-doubt ambushed me. Cindy and I hadn’t spoken in five years. What would Derrick Barrow think now if he heard my voice? What would he do? Hang up on me? He could be as righteous as Cindy. I hung up. This needed more thought than I was capable of right now. It was too soon.

      I turned my attention to my daughters who were seating themselves at the table in the kitchen for their daily ritual of homework. Shiny brown-haired heads bent over their work as though nothing was different.

      Cindy had been so often at this table, Brandon and Lila finger-painting or sharing play dough to create creatures and turn them into characters in a story. Cindy and I would drink tea in late afternoon. Sometimes it would stretch to dinner when Pete was out of town, which was often. Sometimes Derrick would join us as he stepped off the train from New York. These memories assailed me. She’d come in the house some mornings and immediately lift one of the twins from her bassinet and say, “Where’s the bottle?”

      Brandon would join Lila playing on the floor and we’d sit there, burp napkins over our shoulders, coffee on the table in front of us, and feed the babies and ourselves. Now, the disagreement that had severed our bond seemed so banal, so pointless, and waves of remorse and longing for those days of early motherhood washed over me. We had been sisters in spirit, until we weren’t anymore. We’d even lost our mothers in the same year, hers back in Chicago, mine just about a mile from me.

      Cindy had filled a huge space in my life. Pete never home. My sisters, Grace and Lou, never did what Cindy and I did for each other. Now I swallowed lumps in my throat and let my hair hide my face from my Mia and my Allie as tears rolled onto my chin and dripped onto my tee shirt.

      “Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.”

      - Martha Graham

      Chapter 3

       There are references and mythologies in every culture about women and fire. So many stories of burning, women at the stake, witches, Joan of Arc, fairy tales with old nasty women being pushed into ovens by victimized children. And that was just European culture. I thought about Sati, an outlawed practice in India. Burning was a purification or a punishment or a path to a different world. And, as my doorbell rang and I stood to answer it, I was sure everyone in Hillston and the surrounding area was thinking about it too.

      Bluestein stood at my door. The first observation I made was that he was tall and thin and slightly stooped so that his blazer hung limply and appeared a size too large. He looked up, despite his height, over the rim of his wire glasses like a character you might expect in a Dickens story. Blue eyes, sharp and clear, a slow smile, and that deep voice I found so soothing.

      I stuck out my hand and he held it for a beat longer than I expected. “So sorry about that awful morning you had,” he said. “Although, it was much worse for some.”

      “Yes. Thanks,” I said. “Come in.”

      He hesitated even though I was holding the screen door open for him.

      “We can sit on the porch,” he said, then, “Maybe we’re better off inside. I just heard the mayor.”

      Over his shoulder I saw someone emerge from the CNN van, a slim young man wearing a baseball cap. He lifted a camera to his shoulder and set his gaze on us.

      “Come inside,” I said. “They’re watching.”

      He followed me inside. I shut the door firmly.

      “They’re going to want to speak to you,” he said.

      “I can see that,” I said. “Let them wait.”

      “They haven’t knocked or rang your bell?” he asked.

      I

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