He turned the car around at four a.m. By the time he got back to Acorn Street, there were two fire trucks, an ambulance, and two police cars blocking the road. It seemed that, in the hour and a half or so since he’d left, there had been a fire. He slowed the car and rolled down his window to get a better look. There were no flames anywhere. He wasn’t even sure which house was the problem.
But the smell of smoke was unmistakable.
Many of the neighbors were outside, boots and parkas thrown on over their pajamas, a few still wearing their New Year’s party outfits. They stood on their lawns, speaking quietly to each other, shaking their heads in disbelief. Half the street was blocked off, so Drew parked the car as close as he could to the action and got out, scanning all the faces, looking for any sign of Joey. She was nowhere to be seen.
The first knot of fear formed in his stomach.
He made his way closer to the house, his old house, Joey’s house. The side door leading to the basement apartment was open, and a firefighter in full gear stood just inside the doorway.
A second knot of fear tied itself around his heart.
“Drew,” someone said, and he whirled around. “Hey man, I didn’t know you were back in town.”
“Rick.” Drew was relieved to see someone he knew. His former neighbor was a few years older, with a wife and small kid, and lived three houses down. “What the hell happened? I can smell the smoke, but the house looks okay?”
“The fire was contained to the basement,” Rick said. “The alarm must have been going off for a while before any of the neighbors heard it, because the upstairs tenants are out of town. The trucks got here quick, but…”
The fire was in the basement.
A third knot of fear tightened around his throat.
“But what?” Drew forced out the words, his voice strangled.
Rick blinked and then looked around, as if he couldn’t believe he was the one who had to tell him and was hoping someone else would magically appear to take over the conversation.
“I’m so sorry, man,” Rick finally said. “Joey … they said Joey didn’t make it.”
His former neighbor had spoken actual words, and Drew had heard them. But strung together in that order, those words didn’t make any sense. “What do you mean, Joey didn’t make it?”
Rick shifted his weight from right to left, clearly uncomfortable. “I overheard one of the firefighters saying it was the fireplace. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but they think it started there. I didn’t realize that house still had a wood-burning fireplace in the basement. We had ours filled in when we renovated last year, because the contractor told us it wasn’t up to code. They … they couldn’t get Joey out in time.”
Drew stared at him, waiting for the punch line. It didn’t come.
“But I was just here,” he said, and his voice sounded strange to his own ears, almost like it wasn’t him speaking. “I was just here, and she was fine, she was … she…”
He saw the firefighter step out of the basement entrance, and a few seconds later, a paramedic appeared. He was holding one end of a stretcher, slowly shuffling backward as he maneuvered his way out the side door. Drew could see a lump the shape of a body emerge. It was covered in a yellow plastic tarp.
He bolted toward it.
“Hey,” a police officer said, getting in his way. “Sir, this is a—”
“I live here,” he said instinctively, unable to take his eyes off the yellow tarp.
“You have ID?”
Drew pulled his wallet out and held up his driver’s license. He’d never bothered to update it when he moved to Vancouver, so it still showed this address.
“She’s my … she’s my girlfriend,” Drew said. “I need to see her.”
The officer let him through.
Drew kept walking until he reached the paramedics, who were preparing to lift the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. Without thinking, he reached for the edge of the tarp, but a paramedic stopped him.
“She’s badly burned,” the EMT said. “I really don’t think—”
Drew lifted the tarp a few inches, not realizing he had pulled it from the top. He caught a glimpse of burned hair and a face that … wasn’t a face. The skin looked both raw and charred, a horrific mix of pink and white and black, and the odor that wafted out was unlike anything he’d ever smelled. Before he dropped the tarp and sprang back, he caught a glimpse of the necklace. Joey’s necklace, the one she’d had since she was a kid, the birthday gift from Charles Baxter. It was still around her neck, intact, and though the gold chain was blackened, the ruby in the pendant was still red.