Just as she was turning onto her street, she met two fire trucks, sirens silent, big engines grumbling, making their way back to the barn.
“Wow, look,” David cried, popping up in his seat so he could see better. “I bet those are the same ones we saw. That fire must have been right around here someplace. Can we go see it, Mom? Please?”
Summer sighed and said, “Oh, David…”
She guided the Olds around the gentle curve that marked the beginning of their residential neighborhood, a long row of mobile homes and modest houses, unfenced and widely spaced, separated by grass-pocked gravel driveways and marked by tipsy roadside mailboxes. Up ahead she could see another fire truck parked in the road, its lights still flashing.
“Mom, look.” David’s voice faded. Silence filled the car.
Summer drove slowly forward, only dimly aware that her heart had begun to pound. She saw people coming toward her now, people she didn’t know-her neighbors, walking alone with their arms folded, shaking their heads, or in twos and threes, talking among themselves, walking down the road, turning into driveways, cutting across lawns. Children on bicycles, pumping hard, racing their dogs home. The excitement, whatever it had been, was obviously over now.
Summer pulled the Olds onto the grassy shoulder and parked. A fireman in protective gear glanced at her, then went on with what he was doing, gathering up, tidying up, putting things away. She turned off the motor, opened the door and got out.
“Mom, that’s our-”
She turned, arms braced on the door frame, to face her children-Helen standing with her arms on the back of the seat in front of her, staring over it with round, avid eyes; David’s face, pale as the moon, his mouth a thin, frightened line. “Stay here,” she grated through clenched jaws. “You…stay…in…this…car.”
She slammed the car door and walked up the street toward the fire truck. Her legs felt strange, as if her knees had been hinged with rubber bands.
Someone approached her-a police officer. She hadn’t noticed the two radio patrol cars parked beyond the fire truck. “Ma’am, I’m gonna have to ask you to stay back outta the way-”
Summer shook her head. “That’s my house,” she said. “I live here.”
Chapter 4
The policeman put his hand on her elbow, at the same time gesturing with the other to someone she couldn’t see. “Uh-huh. Okay, ma’am. You want to tell me your name, please?”
“‘Yes. I’m Mrs. Robey. Summer. And this is my house.”
It was hardly true; the ugly little trailer would never be anyone’s house, ever again. Where it had stood was a blackened skeleton, a sodden, stinking, smoking gash in the landscape surrounded by yellow police ribbon. The stench of destruction was overpowering; she wanted to gag.
“May I please… I need to sit down.”
And then she was in the back of a patrol car, and someone-a policeman-was offering her something in a small paper cup. Water. She took it and drank without tasting, then murmured, “Thank you.”
A soft voice, thick and Southern, said, “Ma’am, I’m gonna need to ask you some questions, okay? You feel up to it, or you wanna take another minute?”
She shook her head. “No, that’s okay, I’m fine.” She focused her eyes on the policeman’s face, observing that he was young, black, and didn’t look like he was enjoying himself much.
The reason for that became clear a moment later when he cleared his throat, shifted his feet and said, “Ma’am-can you tell me if there was anybody that might’ve been…uh, in the building?” He coughed and made it simpler. “Was…anybody home?”
Summer stared at him. Bile rose in her throat She swallowed and said hurriedly, “No. No, there’s only me and my children-they’re over there, in the car. I just picked them up from day camp.” She stopped, then added as if it might be of importance, “We stopped for tacos.”
The young policeman drew himself up, looking considerably happier at that news. “Yes, ma’am, well, that’s good. I’m sure glad to hear it.” He coughed, then frowned again. “Your, uh, neighbors said they thought you folks had some pets?”
“Yes.” Funny, how she seemed not to be feeling this. As though she were in a plastic bubble, and the policeman’s words just bounced off without touching her. “They were at a friend’s house. I was away over the weekend.”
There was the soft hiss of an exhalation. “Well, ma’am, sounds like you were real lucky.” Summer looked at the officer, who gazed back at her with shadows in his eyes, the shadows, maybe, of memories of other disasters and people who hadn’t been as lucky. “Sorry for your loss,” he said in a more formal tone.
“Thank you,” said Summer. She looked down at the paper cup, which she had crumpled in her hand. “Is there anything else you need right now? I’d like to get back to my children.”
“Oh-sure.” He stood back away from the open door to make room for her, then reconsidered. “Uh…listen, do you have someplace to go? Somebody you can call? Any kinfolk in the area?” Summer shook her head. “What about friends?”
Friends. She thought about it. She’d been here almost a year, and who did she know? Well enough to ask for a favor of this magnitude? The answer was, with the possible exception of the Motts: nobody.
The Motts. Summer’s mind filled with the image of Debbie Mott’s plump, self-satisfied face, and her stomach recoiled. Never, she thought, in a million years. “We’ll be okay,” she said softly. “I guess we’ll probably go to a motel.” Her mouth formed the words, but her brain didn’t comprehend their meaning. Not their real meaning. She was safely encased in that nice little plastic bubble of shock.
The policeman nodded and took something out of his uniform pocket-a card. He handed it to her and said kindly, “Okay, then, I’ll let you get on back to your kids. Ma’am, this here’s the address and phone number of the local Red Cross. You go on down there and show them the police report-we’ ll see you have a copy-and they’ll fix you up with whatever you need, okay?”
Summer nodded. The Red Cross. Reality tried to push its way into her bubble along with that name. It’s true. I’m a victim. She pushed the thought ruthlessly, angrily away.
“Just one more thing.” The policeman ducked down so that his head and shoulders filled the car door’s opening. “You got any reason you can think of why somebody might want to do this?”
“Do this?” Summer stared at him. In her cocooned state, understanding came slowly. “Do you mean…it wasn’t…the fire didn’t…just happen?” Trailers burned all the time-she heard about them often on the news.
The policeman’s face was impassive. “We won’t know that for sure, ma’am, not until the investigators finish their job. But right now I have to say, it does look suspicious.”
She desperately needed a breath, but something cold and heavy was occupying the space where her lungs should have been. She shook her head and choked out the word “No.”
Apparently taking that as her answer to his original question, the officer straightened once more, at the same time reaching in his breast pocket again, this time for his notebook. “Well, okay, then. We’re just gonna need for you to leave us a number, someplace where we can get ahold of you. Work number’d be fine.”