She woke up coughing. Smoke billowed around her.
Susan got as low to the floor as she possibly could and took a deep breath of air that was somewhat clear. She felt for the gun next to her thigh where she’d dropped it when she fell, but it wasn’t there.
The couch was engulfed in flames now. As she moved along the floor from the kitchen to the doorway, she was blocked by fire. The air in the room was so hot, it hurt Susan to breathe. She coughed again, this time from deep inside her chest.
Susan couldn’t get air into her lungs. There was smoke all around her. Her body rioted against her attempts to breathe. Her legs gave an involuntarily jerk and her chest burned from inside.
She pushed her body further down to the floor, trying to find a pocket of air. Susan took one more breath and choked on the smoke. She heard the door slam closed. She sensed she was alone in the trailer.
Everything around her burned. Everything she felt was pain.
She clutched her hands to her throat, but no one was there to see. The smells around her were violent, singed hair and skin.
She lay down and curled her knees to her chest. Susan’s last thoughts weren’t of her children. Or her husband.
They were of Tom.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT LAURA
Through some unspoken understanding, Simon and Laura worked together to carry Addy out of the trailer. Joyce screamed for Simon to leave them behind, but he wouldn’t listen.
Laura had noticed Simon fold the lighter into his hand. The paper towels were left from triaging Addy.
And her home was a tinderbox of cheap construction.
As the flames grew brighter, their group made their way to the oak tree Laura hid behind earlier that evening, when Joyce and Susan first arrived unannounced. Which made her think for a split second of Rosie and wonder how much time had passed. Laura had no way of knowing. She didn’t wear a watch, and the surges of adrenaline in her body were confusing any natural sense of time she might have.
Laura sent up a quick prayer to anyone who was listening that her friend wouldn’t stumble into this mess. Laura was going to fix all of this before another one of her friends was hurt.
She didn’t want to think about Susan inside.
She turned her attention to Simon and Joyce, who were wrapped up in a tight knot of limbs next to Addy. Simon was crying. Laura had pegged him for a crier, from the moment she’d spotted him at Dermot’s apartment. He’d seen her appear around the corner, and his face looked so stricken by the fact that a nearly naked girl was with Dermot that Laura almost felt sorry for him. His mouth collapsed in on itself, and after Dermot introduced her as a friend, Simon turned away, wet streaks staining his cheeks.
It didn’t track, she thought. Dermot bringing everyone in to love him, and not loving a single person in return.
Addy moved slightly, perhaps from the pressure of Joyce and Simon tangled so near to her. Simon struggled against Joyce’s arms, and she kept whispering in his ear that it was going to be okay. Just listen to her and let her fix everything. A rush of sick rose in Laura’s throat.
She wasn’t safe with Joyce. Neither was Addy.
“What should we do with Addy?” she asked Joyce, motioning down to her.
Joyce looked at Laura, although she kept her hold on Simon’s shoulders firm.
Laura needed to think fast.
No one told you, when you were a child, how quickly life can shift. Everything seems to stretch in time when you’re a kid—long afternoons where nothing happens, hours at a desk at school wishing for class to be over. And then the universe snaps its fingers and suddenly, in one space between breaths, someone dies or someone is born or an elegant woman shows up at your door and wants to destroy every bright piece of your life.
Laura didn’t just have herself to worry about anymore. She thought about her baby. She’d read online that this far into the pregnancy it was still only the size of an almond. But it would get bigger, he or she. Her baby would need her more than anyone had ever needed her.
Joyce approached Laura, her face resolving in Laura’s field of vision like a bad reception on the television finally tuned.
“Simon and I are going to leave,” Joyce replied coolly. “We’re the only people who haven’t killed anyone here.” Joyce held the gun at Laura. It was like an old silent film, with the gun poised at Joyce’s waist level and her mouth barely moving as she spoke.
Of course Joyce grabbed the gun. Laura watched her take off her fancy high heel and whip it at Susan’s knees while she was distracted by Simon’s firestarting. Laura had been too focused on getting Addy out of harm’s way to pay attention to the gun.
Stupid mistake. Now she and Addy were both in trouble.
“Didn’t Simon kill Trina’s fiancé?” Laura knew she’d struck a nerve, because even in the gloom of the evening she could see Joyce’s jaw clench.
“That was an accident,” Joyce responded. Simon gave a small yelp.
“Just like Dermot was an accident.” Laura said it as firmly as her cold lips would allow.
“Oh was he? You didn’t purposefully kill the man who got you pregnant and then abandoned you?” Joyce tipped her chin.
Laura took a step towards Joyce, ignoring the gun pointed at her.
“Move back,” Joyce commanded.
“No.” Laura stayed where she was. “If you want to shoot me, you’re going to need to do it to my face.”
“I said, get back!” For the first time all evening, Joyce’s voice wavered, and Laura realized that Joyce might not be as callous as she wanted everyone to believe.
“Put the gun down.” Laura took another step forward and held her hands out. The toe of her boot brushed against Addy’s arm, which felt limp and lifeless, and Laura choked back a scream. She was a normal girl, once. Before her parents died. Before everyone in her life decided to leave her.
Laura wished Terry were here. He was a bull in a china shop of a world, but he was her brother and she loved him. He didn’t want her to become a mother. Maybe he even suspected what she’d done to Dermot. Love was a funny thing. Terry had gone to rob a store—the store who wouldn’t give him a job—to get the money she’d need for an abortion and give Laura a fighting chance. She wanted to believe that, at least.
It was better than thinking he’d died a senseless death trying to get money for drugs.
“You’re not going to shoot me,” Laura cautioned Joyce.
“Oh really? Why’s that?”
“Because then you’d be a killer. You’d be just like me.”
“I’ll never be like you,” the older woman replied.
Laura lunged at Joyce. Her fingers clasped the cool metal of the gun.
In that motion, Laura remembered all of it. Every moment that ticked by after she found Dermot in his hotel room, alone. Trina had left for the evening, her hair tumbled and her face and neck red from Dermot’s five o’clock shadow. Laura watched her go, hidden in the edge of a doorway by the front stairwell.
She hadn’t gone there with the intention of hurting Dermot, although she was trembling with a certain rage when she knocked on the door and he gave her a look like she was the last person he’d wanted to see.
He was drunk, stumbling around the room in hastily drawn-up boxer shorts and his skin slick with sweat or drained bourbon. Someone had smashed the champagne bottle she’d ordered for him. The carpet was soaked underneath the silver stand.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, turning his back to her and rifling around the bedstand for something. There were some pills scattered along the surface, but no prescription bottle.
“I came to see you,” she said.
