I started pulling on them, and they finally seemed to snap out of it. They walked with me to the front door and we stepped outside, the weather so clear, so perfect. The sun was high up in the sky. Bessie and Roland walked onto the lawn. And they were laughing. They were laughing hard. And it was difficult to look at them, they were so bright, this white, blinding light. And then they were on fire, too, these vivid red and yellow flames. They stood there, burning. And I was happy. I knew they were okay. I knew that they couldn’t be hurt. The grass turned black at their feet, and the air around them turned shimmery. It was beautiful. They were beautiful.
Inside the guesthouse, the phone was ringing, again and again and again, but I didn’t move. I looked across the lawn, and Mary was standing on the back porch, watching the children, completely unaffected, as if she were watching some ordinary birds at a feeder. I waved to her, and she waited for a few seconds before she waved back.
The kids ran in circles, the flame trailing off of them and falling to the ground, where the grass caught fire for a second before it smoldered. They burned and burned, like they were eternal. But I knew that it would die down, that it would fade away, back inside them, wherever it hid. I knew that soon they would turn back into the kids I knew so well, their weird bodies and tics. I didn’t try to catch them or put them out. I let them burn. I sat on the porch, a perfect day, and watched them burn. Because I knew that when it was over, when the fire disappeared, they would come right back to me.
Eleven
We barely slept that night, so revved up, nothing we could do about it. The minute the sun rose, the kids jumped out of bed. The sheets were sticky from the fire gel, beyond saving, and the kids took turns in the shower to wash the rest of it off. I didn’t try to stop them. It seemed pointless. Either they’d burn the house down or they wouldn’t.
When I’d finally answered the phone the day before, Carl, who sounded out of breath, said that they were coming home, driving back to Nashville. He said that Madison was handling damage control, that I wasn’t to talk to anyone. He told me to keep the kids inside the house, to cover them in fire gel. “Keep them safe, okay?” he said, and before I could ask about Timothy, he hung up.
Bessie and Roland wanted to see it again, over and over, Timothy on fire, but I unplugged the television, knew that it would only make it worse, that it was already burned onto the insides of our eyelids. Of course, I wondered what was going on outside of our house, what the newspapers would say, but I just pushed it out of my mind. I focused on these two kids.
After they’d finally stopped burning, we’d peeled off the ruined Nomex and put on a fresh set of clothes. I’d made them sit on the sofa, dumped a bunch of apples on the coffee table, and we’d read three Penny Nichols novels, my voice droning and droning, working our way through the mystery to that moment when it all comes into the light. This was how we’d survive, huddled together, words on the page, the ending of one story just a moment of silence before a new story began. And we made it. The kids were happy. They had added another to their numbers. They didn’t want to set the world on fire. They just wanted to be less alone in it.
It took some coaxing, but I got them to do thirty minutes of yoga, and while they ate cereal, I ran over to the mansion to get a copy of the newspaper. I could not imagine the angle, how the narrative would be assembled. I wanted to know if Bessie and Roland would be mentioned, to be prepared. I knocked on the back door until Mary opened it for me. “Do you want something to eat?” she asked, and I did kind of want a bacon sandwich, but I ignored that desire and got on with it.
“I wanted to get a copy of the newspaper,” I told her. She stared at me, unblinking. I had no idea whether she knew about Timothy. I wanted to say something, but it’s a hard thing to introduce into polite conversation.
“Come in,” she finally said.
All the lights in the house were off, no activity.
“Kind of spooky in here,” I said.
“Everyone else has the week off,” she said.
“That’s nice, I guess,” I said.
“Here’s the newspaper,” she said, handing me a copy of the Tennessean. And there it was, the headline: fire mishap mars roberts confirmation.
“Oh shit,” I said, looking at the picture of Jasper, his face both confused and furious, being hustled to the car, Madison right behind him. I looked for Timothy and Carl, but they must have already been inside the car.
“Mmm,” Mary said, noncommittal, almost bored.