A Fireproof Home for the Bride (49 page)

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she said, placing the phone’s base back on the table and slinging the strap of Jim’s bag over her head. The weight of the worn leather pressed on her shoulder like a steady hand, giving Emmy renewed confidence to complete her assignment. Jim’s urgent voice had rattled her.

“Good,” Jim said. “I don’t want you anywhere near the council.”

“Okay,” Emmy said, cradling the phone and heading to the stairs. “I’m going up to see Birdie,” she said to her mother. Emmy glanced through the open kitchen door as she swiftly made her way to and up the stairs, down the hallway on quiet feet, and into her grandmother’s bedroom, closing the door carefully behind her. The lumpy shape of her sister’s form lay still on the bed. Emmy tiptoed over to the edge and looked at Birdie’s flushed face in the low light of the lamp. The carefree innocence was still there in sleep, though Emmy suspected it to be merely a slumbering mask that would fall away upon waking. Checking her watch, Emmy hurried over to the rolltop desk and lifted the wooden shutter front up noiselessly, searching the little drawers and pockets for any usable clues in the dim light, but finding only random collections of coins, tacks, ink bottles, and other casual inhabitants of the desk’s warrens. She opened the flap of Jim’s satchel and quickly tucked a couple of rubber stamps and a tiny black address book—the only items of interest—into the bag. After another minute of investigation, she grasped the handle of the drawer where she knew the cigar boxes to be. As before, the wood was stuck, and she had to jiggle, lift, and jerk the drawer while sweat began to dampen her brow. The drawer flew open on the third, more rigorous attempt, leaving its rails entirely and crashing to the floor, the contents tipping and scattering across the rug.

“Emmy?” Birdie said, the bed groaning under her shifting weight. “What are you doing? Why are you here?”

“I’m looking for something I left here,” Emmy said, rifling through the drawer. She had no idea what she could possibly find that could help them write a story that would put an end to Mr. Davidson’s influence, but a quick inventory of the mess in front of her revealed six boxes, the inside lid of each scrawled with a different year, and containing the same types of square pieces of yellowed paper slips. Emmy heard Karin’s feet on the stairs. Emmy looked at the paper on top of the stack, raking it for information that might mean something. It was a driver’s license, in the name of Julio Alvarez. Emmy frowned.

“Everything okay?” Karin called out.

“We’re fine,” Emmy said toward the door. “I just dropped something. We’ll be right down.” The footsteps retreated, and Emmy pushed the boxes and cards back together as neatly as she could, stowing a handful of the small papers in the satchel before lifting the drawer onto its runners and pushing it closed. She turned to see her sister sitting up, her bare legs dangling over the edge of the bed. There were a number of small dark marks on her shins, and tiny red lines on her arms. Birdie followed Emmy’s stare with her own, and flinched, throwing the chenille bedcover over her exposed bruises.

“The belly makes me clumsy,” she said, her eyes turned to the floor. “I keep bumping into the furniture.”

Emmy approached the bed slowly. “And your arms?” she asked.

Birdie rubbed at the marks and laughed nervously. “Ambrose was trying to teach me how to whittle, and I slipped a few times.”

“Did he hurt you?” Emmy asked, dismay sharpening her vision. Birdie’s face registered shock at the suggestion.

“Oh, God, no,” she said, with her hands shaking. “He would
never.
” The girl’s sweet mask crumbled, leaving the map of heartbreak etched underneath. Emmy drew her sister into an embrace, stroking her soft hair and shushing.

“I’ve missed you so much,” Birdie said through her heaving. “I’m so alone now.”

Emmy withdrew from the hug but held her sister’s face between her hands. “Hush,” Emmy said, wiping away a tear with one of her thumbs. “It’s okay, I’m here.”

Birdie’s eyes crinkled shut, and a line of water leaked from her nose. “He doesn’t love me,” she cried, as much plaintive as befuddled. “I’ve done everything I can, but he still loves you.”

“I’m sure you have,” Emmy said, knowing it was true but incapable of adding to her sister’s misery by agreeing with her assessment. “Who wouldn’t love you more?”

Birdie clasped Emmy’s wrists. “He follows you. Everywhere.”

Emmy glanced at the window, darkened by the lamp. “Nonsense,” she said. “You’re mistaken.”

“He’s convinced himself that he’s not the father.” Birdie shook her headful of limp, matted hair and pulled Emmy’s hands together. “He goes on and on about John Hansen, but it isn’t true,” she said. “None of it.”

“But John’s dead,” Emmy said.

Birdie’s round eyes went wider, and Emmy thought she detected a hint of knowledge too terrible to share.

“I’m glad Dad brought me here,” Birdie said.

“Why, what happened?”

The sound of a truck door slamming cut through the quiet in the yard. Emmy jumped and went to the window in time enough to see Ambrose approaching the house. She patted at the satchel, making sure it was closed.

“Nothing,” Birdie said. “He said he forgave me, but there’s nothing to forgive.”

“Maybe it’s just nerves about the baby,” Emmy soothed, eager now to be done with the emotional ramblings of her sister and back to the abandoned exhumation. “Marriage isn’t easy.” Karin’s words were thin syrup in her mouth, but she had none that were better. “He’ll come around.”

“No, he won’t,” Birdie said sharply. She pulled a flannel robe around her shaking shoulders and drew her feet up into the covers. “He’s so wrapped up in the council and Mr. Davidson. And you. There isn’t time for me.” The kitchen door opened and closed downstairs, causing the air pressure in the room to expand and contract. Emmy swallowed the lump of anxiety rising in her throat. She honed her last bit of focus on Birdie’s claims.

“What do they do?” Emmy asked in a whisper. “This council?”

“I’m not allowed at the meetings,” Birdie said, glancing at the door as though it might spring open. She picked absently at one of the scratches on her arm, reopening the cut with a ragged fingernail. “But I’ve seen them training in the Branns’ backyard, and they’ve got a press in the kitchen where they make the election flyers, and other things. Ambrose is running for the township board.”

“So I’ve heard,” Emmy said. “What kind of training?”

“Like the army,” Birdie said. “With guns. And sometimes they stack up piles of wood and then blow them up.”

“Emmy?” Karin’s voice traveled up the stairs. “Birdie? Ambrose is here.”

The girls looked at each other for a suspended moment in which Emmy ardently wished to be back in their room in the small house. She sensed her sister was wishing the same. “Stay here,” Emmy said, moving toward the door. “I’ll tell him you’re too tired to come down.”

Birdie wrapped her arms around her belly under the covers and grimaced. “It’s true,” she said. “Be careful.”

Emmy stopped short. “Careful?”

Birdie nodded. “They’ve been meeting a lot. At odd hours.” Her eyes widened as though seeing something in her memory loom larger. “And I’ve heard strange sounds since John died.”

“The wind’s been howling lately,” Emmy said, her hand on the doorknob.

“Not like that,” Birdie said. “Like an animal in pain.”

The door opened into Emmy’s side and she stumbled slightly before turning to see her mother in the frame.

“What are you girls doing?” Karin whispered as she crossed to Birdie’s bedside and placed the back of her hand against the girl’s forehead.

“I have to go,” Emmy said, hoping that Karin had sent Ambrose away. “But I’ll be back soon.”

A look of calculation stacked the lines at Karin’s brow, as though she were thinking her way through the situation for the best way forward. “Maybe you should wait here until he leaves.”

“Why would I do that?” Emmy asked. “I’m not afraid of Ambrose.”

“He won’t like that you’re here,” Birdie said. Her voice sounded smaller.

“I can handle him.” Emmy crossed to the door, turned back. “Besides, my car is here.”

Karin studied Emmy’s face. “Then please tell Ambrose I’ll be right down,” she said, settling Birdie into the bed and tucking the sheet along the mattress. “You can handle yourself.”

Emmy could neither fully read the subtext of her mother’s words, nor did she consider them longer than was necessary to get down the stairs and into the kitchen in order to retrieve her coat. Ambrose stood next to the stove, a man so transformed by great ideas that he looked as if he had grown an inch. The hair lifted on Emmy’s arms, but she wasn’t afraid of his polished aspect, nor of what he might say to her. Their childhood friendship nagged at her core even as she brushed its innocence behind her impatiently. Too much had happened, too much still lay ahead.

“Emmaline,” he said, the light behind his eyes sparking on her name. “Your mother said you were here.” He seemed to have more hair, and his suit had the cut and flair of cloth that had been tailored.

“I was just leaving,” she said, putting down the satchel and buttoning her coat. “Birdie’s got a fever and can’t come down.”

Ambrose lifted his gaze from Emmy’s face to just above the crown of her head. It seemed to her that there was relief, not disappointment, there.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” he said, and drew on his long camel hair overcoat. The imperious cocoon of it unnerved Emmy more than the ostentatious suit. She could only imagine what all of Mr. Davidson’s polishing had done to Ambrose’s interior, if this is how he looked on the outside, though the way he had stuffed objects in the pockets ruined the effect just enough for the awkward man he really was to show through.

Emmy slung the bag on her shoulder and passed through the kitchen door. She sensed Ambrose close behind her, a feeling that was familiar, if unnerving.
He follows you.
Birdie’s words echoed.
Everywhere.
Emmy gathered the collar of her coat more tightly around her neck and walked briskly through the thickly accumulated damp snow, shocked by how much had fallen in the brief time she’d been at the farm. No matter how many years she had lived in this place, the rapid onslaught of winter caught her unprepared every November. As she approached the Crestliner, something about it seemed amiss in the yellow haze of the pole lamp: The nose pointed slightly down and to the left. She kicked the sticky snow away from the tire, unnerved to see that it was flat.

“I’ll change that for you,” Ambrose said. His face was shadowed, but his voice kind.

“This is the last thing I need,” Emmy said as she went to the back of the car and popped open the trunk, causing all the snow that was stacked on it to dump soddenly onto the spare. “I don’t even know if there’s air in this one,” she said, hefting it on her own and bouncing it to the ground. It too was flat. Ambrose took it from her and put it back in the trunk, closing the lid.

“I’ll give you a ride,” he said. “I’m headed to town.”

Emmy stepped a foot away. “It’s all right,” she said. “Mother can run me in after dinner.”

Ambrose looked up at the second floor of the house. “She should stay with Birdie, in case.”

At the mention of her sister’s name, Emmy’s temper rose, and she broke the fragile shell that had held back her hostility toward Ambrose, toward them all. “What did you do to her?” she snapped at him. “Why is she so scared?”

“It’s been hard,” he said, tipping his head down in a way that caused the snow that had already collected on the brim of his hat to fall back into a sweep of wind. “I’ve tried.”

“Not hard enough.” Emmy started toward the house.

“Wait,” he said loudly. “Let me give you a ride, please. I can explain.”

She didn’t turn. “I’d rather not.”

“Don’t you trust me?” he asked, a boyish note of disappointment in his voice. “Have you really gone that far away from us all?”

Emmy thought about the cards in her bag. Whatever they might hold, her instincts told her she needed to get back to the office quickly and show them to Jim. It wasn’t a matter of trusting Ambrose but of expedience. She balanced her weight between one foot and the other, an aerialist with no wire, not even a net. She pivoted toward his truck on her heel, confident that stepping up into the cab held no more portent than any other vehicle in the yard. He slid behind the wheel and engaged the engine, his costume suddenly at odds with everything else. Only the round segment of his face that glowed in the faint light of the dashboard struck Emmy as familiar, and even that changed as he put the truck into gear and drove slowly out of the yard. Emmy’s nerves inexplicably started firing with fright, her right hand clutching at the door handle in an attempt to remain calm. The acrid familiarity of the interior sparked images that flashed like a magician’s card trick through her mind, even as she refused to take in the sleight of hand of any of them. The truck bumped up onto the county road and Emmy bit her tongue—no blood, just pain.

“Do you have a cigarette?” she asked in order to break the maddening spell his silence had thrust her into.

“I gave it up,” he said proudly. “The council stands against any sort of vice.”

Emmy moved her sore tongue against the offending tooth, thankful for the distraction of the pain. She gazed into the swirl of snow that shot at the windshield, and contemplated the council’s definition of vice. From the little she knew, it was obvious to her that hypocrisy was not on the list.

“It’s looking pretty good for me next week,” Ambrose continued. “The election.”

“Township board?” she prodded. His smile grew wider in the scant light.

“Curtis says it’s the first step toward mayor. I know there are plenty of steps in between … and I’m willing to make them in order to serve my country.” He absently fidgeted with the radio, but finding only static, he turned it off completely and tapped out a rhythm of his own on the steering wheel. “It’s everything we dreamed of, Emmy.”

“It is?” she asked, her pulse doubling.

“Remember?” He glanced at her. “At the basketball game. You said you’d like to live in town, have a big house. Well, if all goes right, we’ll have that before you know it.”