“Let it go for now,” I said. “We can do this later.”
“No,” she said, her voice wet. “You’ve been right about everything, from the very beginning. I didn’t listen.” She looked up at Hugh’s high window. “Do you think he could see me down here, if he were awake?” Without waiting for an answer, she said, “I hope he can. I hope he sees me digging out here and has a heart attack on top of his stroke. I won’t lift a finger to help him, this time.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
“No, it’s his fault,” Marlinchen said, vehement. “I’ve been protecting him for years. I didn’t tell anyone how he treated Aidan. If I’d told someone, anyone…” She trailed off and wept, but didn’t stop digging. Out on the lake, a barred owl screamed, sounding disturbingly human.
“It’s not your fault,” I said again. “You’re hurting, and you want to be doing something right now to make things right. But it’s better, legally, if you let a technician do the digging. You could break bone hitting it with the spade, and then the evidence is damaged.”
“Evidence!” Marlinchen laughed, a high sound not unlike the owl’s. “There’s no need for evidence. He’ll never see the inside of a courtroom. He’ll be too sick. That’s how he’ll beat this.” She laughed, bitter. “It’s his fault Aidan’s dead, it’s even his fault Mother died. But he’ll never pay.”
She thrust again with the blade. “Nothing sticks to him. Nothing ever hurts him. Aidan’s teachers, who were supposed to be looking for abuse? They wouldn’t have recognized it if Dad had beaten Aidan right in front of the school! They brought his books to parent conferences for him to sign.” She sniffled. “I protected and defended him. I didn’t give you the information you needed, because it made him look bad.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, a child’s gesture. “Even before that, for years, I took care of him. After Mother died, I cooked and took care of the house and the finances, all so he’d have time to write and teach and think, and do everything but be a father.”
The wind kicked up unexpectedly, bringing a lingering scent of the afternoon’s barbecue.
“And just when I was nearly clear of all the responsibilities, he has a stroke. It’s perfect. He’s trapped me again. He’ll get better, but never completely well. I’ll be here until I’m forty, making his meals and keeping track of his medication.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” I said.
“Yes, it will. You don’t understand,” she said.
The smell of smoke was stronger, and the problem was, Marlinchen hadn’t actually lit up the barbecue pit earlier.
“Do you smell smoke?” I asked her.
“I’ll take the bones up and show him that I know. I’ll make him look at what he’s done.” Not listening to me, she spiked the blade viciously into the earth. I turned to look up at the house. An uneven reddish light flickered in the darkness behind several windows.
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
As I ran up to the house, Liam emerged onto the back deck, Donal beside him.
“Where’s Colm?” I demanded.
“Inside,” Liam said, his voice slightly hoarse. “Getting Dad out.”
Hugh, I realized with a sinking heart. A goddamned invalid on the goddamned second floor of a house with a goddamned staircase.
“We have to get Dad out,” Donal echoed, his voice cracking.
Behind me I heard footsteps and barely reached out in time to catch Marlinchen on her way into the house. “No way!” I told her. “You stay out here. I mean it,” I said, seeing refusal in her anxious face. “I’ll handle things.”
The air inside the house was hot but bearable, as though someone had simply cranked up the thermostat recklessly high. But there was also a scent of smoke in it, and I felt a thrill of nerves run through my body.
The smoke was thicker in the hallway of the second floor, where Colm was in his father’s doorway. “Come on!” he said. “Help me with Dad!”
For a moment it was tempting; Colm was strong. But I felt the heat on my skin, growing uncomfortable, and I knew that fires get out of hand so fast, become unsurvivable without warning. I couldn’t take the chance that Colm might die because I’d decided to let him help me and we were both trying to get Hugh out when the whole room flashed over.
“No!” I said, half yelling, even though we were standing fairly close together. “This is no time to be a hero.”
Colm shook his head. “It’s Donal,” he said miserably. “He was smoking in the basement. He started the fire. If Dad-”
“The firefighters will get your father down,” I said. “They have the equipment and the training.”
I spoke with more confidence than I felt. By the time the fire crew arrived, it would probably be too late for a 170-pound invalid to be borne out of the house. Colm saw that truth in my eyes. He opened his mouth to speak again, but then succumbed to a fit of coughing.
“This is how rescuers get killed,” I said.
With one last, agonized glance into his father’s darkened bedroom, he nodded agreement. I put a hand between his shoulder blades and urged him toward the stairs.
Out on the deck, much of my skin felt as though I’d been lying down on a giant skillet. It was likely that Colm felt the same way. I pushed him down in front of the spigot and turned it on, and he splashed water on his face, chest, and arms. When he moved back, I was about to do the same, when I noticed something that troubled me.
“Where is Marlinchen?” I asked.
Colm, hair dripping, straightened up to look around. Liam had his hands on Donal’s shoulders, and he too looked mystified.
“No! Fuck!” I was so angry, Colm flinched at the sound of my voice, even under the circumstances. Marlinchen had gone in for Hugh. Her words by the graveside-I won’t lift a finger to help him- were just words. When push came to shove, she’d fallen back into the old patterns. Sacrificing her welfare for his.
I faced the three boys. “Okay, you guys get back,” I ordered them. “Way, way back, down the driveway, where it’s safe. And stay there. If Marlinchen or I don’t come out, do not come in after us. Understood?”
They nodded.
Moving as quickly as I could, I dropped to my knees and turned the spigot back on. I put my head under, soaking my hair, the water like ice as it scrawled along my scalp. I pulled off my shirt, soaked that, put it back on. Then I went back in.
As soon as I looked into the house again, I knew I couldn’t get up to the second floor. The stairs were aflame; to try to run up them would be suicide. The only way up to the second floor was blocked off.
I went back out the front door, circled the house to stand under the high window, Hugh’s window facing the lake. The grape blossoms on the trellis were tightly closed, puckered and grayish. The trellis. It had held Jacob’s weight. It would hold mine.
The wooden framework groaned and pulled forward as I put my whole weight on it, but it stayed standing, and I started to climb. The leaves brushed against my face as I did, and even through the smoke I could smell a faint, sweet odor from the closed blooms.
Hugh’s sliding window was open as wide as possible behind the screen. Marlinchen’s work, I thought, getting fresh air in the room. Hugh was on the bed, chest quivering irregularly with what might be little coughs, from the smoke. I remembered the sleeping pill Marlinchen had given him, and wondered how aware he really was.
Light spilled from the master bathroom, and then Marlinchen’s silhouette appeared in the doorway. She held a bunched sheet in her hands. She’d filled the bathtub with water, I realized, and was soaking sheets and towels to fight the flames that had already spread into Hugh’s room.