Ashes of Another Life (8 page)

It had frightened them terribly, waking to the sound of screaming. After I popped the lock, I should have taken them to safety. Damn everyone else; I should have gotten them out first.

She immediately felt bad for thinking it. Every second the other children spent locked in their smoky rooms was potentially fatal, but right now, she could only focus on the horror in her own brother and sister’s eyes as Father dragged her, kicking and screaming down the hall.

Father’s gone mad. He’s so strong. How can I save them? How can I save myself?

Jackson and Susie didn’t have the good sense to run away from him now, while he was occupied with their big sister. She wished there was some way to tell them, telepathically.

Run!
Run away! Go outside!

Father pulled her across the threshold. “Get back in bed!” he demanded of his two youngest children. They looked at Tara Jane, then up at their father. Snot oozed from their noses as tears doused their panicked faces. Trembling, they obeyed.

I could grab them. We could run… if I could just get free…

Father attempted to close the door with his free hand, her ankle locked firmly in his grip, but flames spread across the door before he could slam it. He jumped back and yowled in pain. He turned to her, glowering, a desperate need for death in his eyes. “You’re just like your mother,” he said. “Defiant. Rebellious. Out of harmony with your family. That’s why God punished her.

“Don’t you see, Tara Jane? This is a sign. It’s our chance. It will save us from the outsiders who would deliver us straight into the arms of perdition!”

Something in Tara Jane snapped when Father spoke of mother’s death, as if it had been a punishment from God. A guttural sound like a mix between a wild animal and a monster erupted from inside her. Her vision swam. Rage coursed through her, hot and panicky, and her whole body shook. With one last, desperate effort, she kicked him as hard as she could.

His fingers loosened for a moment, and a moment was all she needed. She delivered a blow to the only place she knew would incapacitate him. Father buckled over as her foot smashed into his groin, and now it was his turn to howl. The children watched from the bed, whimpering. Their cries worsened, and Tara Jane clenched her teeth and growled, a mother bear protecting her cubs.

She swiped her leg under his feet in an attempt to trip him. He lost his balance but didn’t go down. He scowled, regained his footing, and locked eyes with Tara Jane. Not a hint of love remained in those dark, menacing orbs. They shook angrily in his face, distorted by the heat waves.

She scrambled over to the bed and scooped a child under each arm. They were heavy, but she only had to make it outside, as far away from Father as she could manage.

We will be free. We will never come back
.

She spun around. Her heart froze to see Father standing close. He shoved her with both arms, and she went flying onto the bed. Susie and Jackson spilled onto the mattress, and Tara Jane let out a sigh of relief, thankful they hadn’t hit a wall and sent molten debris raining down on their heads.

He reached for her, but Tara Jane ducked under his arm. She dove onto the hardwood floor and landed on her side. Father spun around, flames dancing in his eyes. She couldn’t fight him. She had to get help.

Black clouds distorted her vision. Her clothes were soaked with sweat, and her lungs burned, but Tara Jane pushed to her feet and ran. She looked over her shoulder as Father lunged for her. His muscular arms reached out and narrowly missed grabbing her arm. He gave chase, but his foot got caught on a pillow that had fallen to the floor. He lost his balance and tumbled down.

The top of the door frame almost fell, but instead it dangled in the doorway, charred black, pouring embers onto the floor. She ran to the door and ducked under the hanging wood. She stopped, looking back.

Father was on his knees now, sobbing, talking to God again. Jackson and Susie were huddled close to each other on the bed. They looked more frightened than she had ever seen them. At the thought of leaving them behind, she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t make her legs move.

My world, my whole world is trapped in that room with him. I can’t lose them.

“I’ll get help,” she told them. “I’ll bring someone to save you!”

Father leered at her and rose to his feet. Jackson and Susie never moved from the bed. It was getting hard to see through the smoke, but still, they looked so sad and innocent.

She glanced down the hall toward the other bedrooms. Their screams were beginning to die out. A lump rose in her throat, and she couldn’t decide if she wanted to cry or vomit. Instead, she turned and dashed for the front door.

Black smoke filled the living room, but she managed to find her way, certain that Father would catch up any second. She fumbled with the door, flung it open and burst outside.

She ran. The cool breeze felt magical on her skin. Her lungs were grateful for the fresh air. She fought the urge to cough, wetting her mouth with fresh saliva and swallowing hard. She had to keep running. Had to get help.
They’ll die if I don’t. Please God, no. They’re only kids.

When she had cleared the yard and was heading down the road, she looked back at the humble one-story home, filled with a flickering orange light. Flames flickered in the windows of the sister wives’ rooms, smoke filling the night sky.

That’s when it hit her.
The sister wives.
Why hadn’t they helped the children?

Unlike the children—whose rooms were simple additions built hastily into the largest bedrooms—the sister wives
all
had windows. They should have escaped and went back in for the children. But they hadn’t. Goosebumps rose on her skin. And she knew. They must have been obeying Father’s orders. Obedient unto death.

The true horror of it weakened her, buckled her knees. She felt dizzy now, but no… she had to keep running. The nearest phone was five houses away.

Tara Jane was seeing spots by the time she arrived, struggling to stay conscious. A fit of coughs exploded from her lungs when she finally stopped. She pounded on the front door, taking deep breaths between coughs.

It’s too late,
a little voice in her head said.

She placed a call to 9-1-1 and ran the distance back home, hoping the firemen could save her family. She’d made a promise to Jackson and Susie that she would come back with help. Yet when help arrived, there was nothing left to save.

Now, the memory of the fire had left an ache in her chest. Her heart ripped anew like mother’s hand-me-down dress Tara Jane had worn that night, the freshly mended hem ripping as Father dragged her down the hall. Her pillow was soaked with tears. She peeled the side of her face away from the cold, clammy fabric and sat up.

Here in this new home, she had her own bed and a thousand opportunities to succeed. Her foster parents were good people who would do anything to make her happy. Still, she didn’t want this life. She pined for her old life. She missed her family, so much it hurt. Even Father, in some way, though she missed the memory of what he used to be and not what he had become. She sat with her knees pulled to her chest and gnawed on the thumb of her closed fist. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. She’d never felt so alone.

She tried to convince herself that it wasn’t her fault. There was nothing she could have done to save them. At least that’s what everyone said. “Tara Jane, you did everything you could,” Mrs. Wendell, her caseworker, had assured her.

Tara Jane didn’t believe it. She couldn’t because it wasn’t true. Most people aren’t given a chance to affect the outcome of a loved one’s life or death. They don’t know how many times a person can run through the same scenario and find a thousand different ways to respond. Some days the guilt was so bad, it made her lightheaded.

The love of a sibling is a special kinship, a comradery that on some levels holds a deeper sense of trust than any other relationship. An undercurrent of love, forever flowing behind the petty arguments and rivalries. The last time she had looked at Jackson and Susie, they were alive and trusting her to help them. No matter what anyone said, she had failed. In her brother and sister’s last moments, they had realized as much.

Father hadn’t set the fire. The police let Tara Jane know this information as soon as they discovered it, thinking it might provide her with some peace of mind, but it did nothing to ease her pain. Father had kept his family locked up inside while the house burned to the ground. Nothing would ever make that okay.

Tara Jane went over the circumstances leading to her family’s death, and she gritted her teeth.

I don’t blame the police officers for the raid. They were only protecting the law. But the journalists, the media… they came to exploit us. They broadcast our private lives on every news channel. They are as much to blame as anyone.

Federal officers had been shocked to discover the family sizes in Sweet Springs, some with as many as twenty wives and over a hundred children, but it was the media who took careful count as the children were removed from their homes, snapping photos. The secret lives of Sweet Springs residents were suddenly headline news, plastered everywhere.

What people didn’t know was that the Family Services office, overwhelmed by the sheer number of children, had released them to their parents the next day. Quite simply, there were too many children to accommodate and the matter would have to be sorted out later.

When Tara Jane had learned the fire was intended as a “prank” on the adults in the family, the arsonists who delivered the Molotov cocktails having no idea the children were inside, it only deepened her emotional wound.

So pointless
. And then another thought came, unbidden:
If you play with fire, you will get burned.

None of that mattered now. She didn’t care about the arsonist’s vengeful, misguided actions. It was Father who was really to blame. Father, who saw the fire as a sign from god, a chance to avoid perdition.

He hadn’t set the fire that had killed them, but he
had
burned his family alive. He’d been fasting and praying all day, asking God how he could keep his family together as the government tried to rip them apart. In his mind, this was the answer to that question. A fire, to cleanse them of a troubled life and carry them to the next. “It is the will of god for us to begin our next life together, before we are torn apart in this one,” he had told her.

His anger for her that night, the insanity in his eyes, it was because he didn’t want her to go. He loved her, in his own deranged way, and he didn’t want to leave her behind. She knew this, but it provided little comfort.

Father had taken everything from her.

Chapter Ten

Officer Robert McKelvey stood over the dead woman with his thumbs hooked through his belt, frowning. Her pasty lips looked crooked on her broken jaw, mouth open wide like she wanted to scream. He’d never get used to working homicide, not if “getting used to it” meant growing callous and detached like a good number of his colleagues.

The two deputies who had directed him to the bathroom had since vanished, leaving him alone with the corpse.

They think it will help me focus… help me tap into that sixth sense of mine.
He rubbed his brow above his right eye, thinking,
Not this time. Not today.

He was good at what he did. He had earned the medals to prove it. He’d even been the hero of a few positive press releases (a rarity and a blessing). But once upon a time, he had thought his passion for justice was a common thread among all his peers, and now he knew better. In the long run, the force had fallen short of his childhood fantasies of police work. In moments like this, confronted by the corpse of a once-beautiful woman now covered in blood and laying in her own waste, he thought,
maybe you’re not cut out for this anymore, old man. A nice, cozy desk is what you need.

He groaned and rubbed his forehead. To others, he would appear to be nursing a migraine, but in truth he just needed to block the murdered woman from his sight, if only for a moment. His hands covered his eyes for a few ticks of his wrist watch. He dropped his arms to his sides and she was back again, her chalky skin drained of color and her slit neck yawning like the unhinged jaw of a snake.

He turned away and barely recognized his own reflection in the mirror.

That’s not you
.
Just an old man with bags under his bloodshot eyes and tears wetting his pitiful cheeks.

He wiped them with his fingers.

McKelvey had known this victim. He had spoken to her in person. He could picture her bright blue eyes, now clouded over, and hear her voice, forever silenced. She’d been a sweet young woman, the “bleeding heart” type with good intentions and infectious ambition.

He faced the tub again. A lump rose in his throat.

Who could do this? Why? Why do this?

He closed his eyes and exhaled. He had to tell Rita, but he would wait until later this evening and deliver the news in person. Rita was the type of woman who would need an entire box of tissues and a two-hour shoulder-crying session after hearing this kind of news.