He reached the embankment and started to climb.
Desperately she pulled at the ropes, knowing her efforts were wasted, knowing it was over for her, everything was over, and she would never see Annie again, or a blue sky, or her own face in a mirror.
Useless to resist. Death by fire was her destiny. As a child she had cheated fate, but not this time.
This time-she moaned again, pressing her cheek to the dry earth-this time she would burn.
30
Sunrise brightened the windows of Annie’s living room, spreading a limpid film of light over the glass. She sat up on the sofa and rubbed her bleary eyes.
Last night she had snatched less than four hours’ sleep. A nightmare had shocked her awake-some confused memory of the fire in her parents’ house, as usual. This version of the event, however, had been strangely different from her previous dreams in two respects.
First, in the nightmare she and Erin had been not children but adults, planted incongruously in the bedroom they’d shared as young girls. Second, while Annie had escaped, somehow Erin had been left behind in the infernal smoke and heat.
And she had burned.
Annie shuddered, reliving the nightmare for the hundredth time since waking. The image that haunted her was vivid and surreal, some detail out of Dali or Bosch. Irrationally she shut her eyes to block out the sight-a useless defense when the vision was imprinted not on her retinas but on her brain.
It was Erin she saw, Erin clothed in flame, hair writhing, skin blistering, limbs thrashing, mouth stretched wide in an endless scream.
That terrible fantasy lingered in her mind as she took her morning shower. She stood under the hot spray for many long minutes, letting the needles of water numb her, until the nightmare finally had been banished.
Then she changed into clean clothes and ate breakfast, barely noticing the taste. Stink received a saucer of milk, in which he displayed his usual perfunctory interest.
Already the day was getting warm. The announcer on the news-talk station predicted unseasonably high temperatures for the rest of the week.
Twice Annie phoned Erin’s apartment from her living room. She no longer expected her sister to answer. The calls were a senseless ritual now.
It didn’t occur to her to check her own message machine in the study until after eight o’clock. The red LED was flashing excitedly-three bursts, endlessly repeated-three messages.
Had Erin called?
Annie fumbled with the controls, rewound the tape, listened to the playback. Slowly her hopes dimmed, then finally died.
None of the messages was from Erin. All three were from friends Annie had phoned yesterday afternoon, when she’d been trying to track down her sister.
“Jeez, Annie, hope I didn’t wake you-this is Darlene-I’m awfully worried…”
“Sorry to call so early, but Greg and I wanted to know if there’s been any word…”
“Did you find her? Oh, sorry, uh, this is Rhonda, it’s about seven. So did you? Call if there’s any news, or if you want to talk
…”
All of them must have phoned while she was in the shower, letting the water wash away the sleepless night.
She would have to return these calls and update some of her other friends also. No doubt most of them were equally concerned but had wanted to keep the line clear.
Well, she could call from work. No chance she was going to be able to concentrate on selling flowers today, anyhow.
There was a time when running her shop had seemed important to her-exciting and even glamorous. Was it as recently as yesterday morning she’d felt that way?
Now the shop was only a distraction. Still, even a distraction would be welcome in the absence of any productive avenue of inquiry she could pursue.
At eight-fifteen she raised the garage door with her remote control and backed the red Miata into the driveway, blinking at the bright sunshine. Under other circumstances she would have thought it was a beautiful day. Dark-boled mesquite trees and slender, pale eucalyptus rustled their tresses of leaves, green against the deep blue of the sky.
At the end of the driveway, she stopped the car opposite the mailbox. It hadn’t occurred to her to check her mail yesterday. She got out and lowered the lid.
Bank statement, credit card bill, news magazine, advertising circular, and a business-size envelope.
Her breath stopped, heart froze. For a baffled instant, she didn’t know why.
Then her conscious mind registered what her subconscious already had identified.
The envelope was made out in Erin’s handwriting.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
Embossed on the envelope was Erin’s return address. But there was no postmark, no stamp. Her sister must have personally delivered the letter.
With shaking hands she opened the envelope and extracted a single sheet of pale olive paper.
Dear Annie,
I need some time to myself, so I’ve decided to go away for a while.
Don’t worry about me. Everything is fine.
Take care, Erin
Annie stared at the letter for a long time. She read it more than once, read it until the simple message had been committed to heart.
Then she replaced the other items-bank statement, credit card bill, magazine, circular-and shut the mailbox lid. She slipped into the car again, holding the letter and envelope, and then she just sat there, gazing at the words her sister had written, her vision muddy with tears.
A couple of years ago she had submitted an article to a gardening magazine, a brief, humorous piece on ladybugs. The rejection slip that accompanied her manuscript by return mail had been more heartfelt than this letter in her hand.
Incredible to think that Erin could treat her this way. I need some time to myself — what the hell did that mean?
To abandon her patients, her friends, and Annie herself-and then write a damn letter that didn’t even say why, didn’t say anything…
How could Erin do this?
Abruptly her tears stopped. She lifted her head and gazed out the windshield, striped with morning glare.
“She couldn’t,” Annie whispered slowly. “That’s how she could do this. She couldn’t.”
Erin would never, never, never be so thoughtless, so unfeeling, as to write this letter under these circumstances.
A tortured six-page confession maybe. But not these two paragraphs, these three meaningless sentences, the cheery Take care tacked onto the end like the punch line of a bad joke.
The letter was a fake.
Oh, Erin almost surely had written it. The handwriting, unless forged by an expert, was unmistakably hers.
But she had not composed the letter of her own will. She had been forced.
The heat of the sun was beginning to bake her in the car. Annie rolled out onto the street and left the complex, heading south on Pontatoc Road, thinking hard.
At a red traffic signal, she took a second look at the envelope.
The street address read 505 Calle Saguaro. Annie lived at 509.
Erin knew the correct address, obviously. She’d made a deliberate error in writing 505.
Peering closely at the number, Annie saw that the fives were rounded. Erin didn’t normally write that way. Her script was jagged, sharp-edged.
These fives looked more like letters than numbers.
Of course. Not 505.
SOS.
Behind her, a driver tapped his horn. The light had changed.
Annie headed east on Sunrise, driving fast.
Harold Gund’s gray van was parked outside the flower shop when she arrived. She pulled alongside it and saw Harold unlocking the front door, using the set of keys she’d given him yesterday.
She left the Miata’s engine idling as she ran up to the doorway.
“I’ve got to go somewhere,” she said breathlessly. “I’m sorry.”