After Sally left, Piper settled herself down by weeding her garden and picking a couple of baby zucchini for dinner. She wondered if Clate had already figured out that the private conversation she'd had with Hannah at the hospital had involved talk of poison. With Stan Carlucci thinking along those lines, it wouldn't be long before the whole town would be speculating.
Of course, Piper thought, she could walk over there and tell Clate herself.
She pitched an armload of weeds into her compost heap. She had no idea why she was so damned mad at him. It was as if she had all this pent-up anxiety that had to go somewhere, and he was just handy. Sure, in his zeal to keep an open mind, he was willing to suspect her brothers of terrorizing her. But that was nothing, really.
"You slept with him," she muttered. "Twice. That's what's bothering you."
And she was falling in love with him. Which was absurd. She knew next to nothing about his life in Tennessee and nothing at all about his life before the age of sixteen. She just thought she was falling in love with him because of the sex.
"That sure explains it," she said sarcastically, taking off inside. The temperature was still falling. The weather was never certain on Cape Cod.
What was worse, she decided as she tossed kindling into her big keeping-room fireplace, was that she didn't trust herself to know what in blue blazes she did feel. Love, anger, lust, anxiety. All of the above. If she fell in love with Clate, her life would change. There was no question of that. He was a rich, driven Tennessean who wasn't even sure he liked Cape Cod.
"Good, Macintosh. You don't know what you're doing in the next twenty minutes, and you're fretting about the next twenty years."
Twenty years. Her mind leaped into the future, tried to imagine it without Clate in her life, couldn't. Or didn't want to.
She struck a match, setting the kindling on fire. In a few minutes, she had a good blaze going. She added a small log, hoping for enough of a fire just to take the chill out of the air.
The telephone rang. She picked up the extension in the kitchen. "Piper Macintosh."
"Bitch. You're finished."
"That's it. I'm hanging up and calling the police."
"You're too late."
She slammed down the receiver. Too late or not, she'd had enough. A strange, vaguely threatening call was one thing. This was direct and to the point. She picked up the phone again, breathed in, and started to dial.
But she stopped, hand in midair.
Someone—something—was in the house with her.
Adrenaline sliced through her, but she didn't move. Had she heard a noise? Had the events of the past days made her hopelessly paranoid?
No. Someone was here.
Trying to pretend she was invisible wasn't going to help her situation. Grabbing an antique cast-iron poker from her fireplace, she started for her back door, the quickest route outside. She had her car keys in her pocket. She'd jump in her car, lock the doors, and either head next door or straight into town.
No, not next door. Clate might not be home. Straight into town made more sense. But she wanted him. Here, now. She wanted him desperately.
If she hadn't thrown her cell phone into the bay, she could have called the police. Her portable phone was out. No way was she doubling back a single step.
A gust of wind tangled her hair and penetrated her cotton shirt, sprouting goosebumps on her arms. She raced through her herb garden, out onto her lawn, and past her vegetable garden.
Where she stopped dead and breathed.
Smoke.
She stared up at her roof. Red-orange flames shot out of her chimney. Thick, black smoke billowed.
The presence she'd felt wasn't someone in the house with her. It was fire. Not a contained fire in her fireplace. A chimney fire. She knew the signs.
The poker fell from her hand. Her stomach lurched. A chimney fire was a nightmare for any house, but particularly an old one. Two-hundred-year-old timbers burned fast. Her father and brothers' services had been called upon after more than one chimney fire.
Her paralysis lasted less than a couple of seconds. Stifling a wave of nausea, she raced back inside. She needed to close down the dampers in each of the fireplaces to shut off the oxygen to the fire before the heat of the intricate brick chimney caught the walls on fire, before sparks hit the roof.
Her smoke alarms were screeching. She snatched the portable phone as she flung herself at the keeping-room fireplace, smelling the smoke inside now, hearing the crackle of the fire up in the chimney. She had a chimney sweep coming at the end of the summer. He came every year. She knew the dangers of a chimney fire.
She hit the automatic dial, got the dispatcher. "Alice, it's Piper Macintosh. I've got a chimney fire.
Ouch!"
In her fury to get the dampers shut, she scraped her knuckles on the brick. "It's okay, I'm just trying to—"
"Piper, get out of the damned house. We'll have someone there in five minutes."
Two more fireplaces to go. Piper cut Alice off and raced into the living room, where the smoke was heavier. She dropped to her knees. It'd be worse upstairs. Smoke rose. She'd never make it. She'd collapse. Her eyes stung with tears and smoke, and she reached up into the chimney and hit the damper, trying not to think.
My house, my house.
Even on her hands and knees, she was coughing, choking in the smoke. She couldn't make it upstairs. She dropped all the way down onto her belly and half crawled, half slithered out the front door. The fire department would be too late.
Energized by adrenaline, panic, determination, she charged around back. Damned if she'd stand there and watch her house— her dream—go up in flames.
She dragged out her hose, slung it over one shoulder as she clambered up the sturdiest of her trellises. Rose thorns pricked her arms and face. She could feel the trellis giving way under her. But she grabbed hold of a gutter with one hand, the edge of the roof with the other, and hoisted herself up onto the shingles. The wind, which mercifully had abated, was pushing the smoke in the opposite direction.
Hot tongues of flames roared three feet into the air. The fire was still getting enough oxygen from the one remaining fireplace in her bedroom. Crawling to her feet, Piper dragged the hose up the pitched roof. It caught on the trellis. She tugged gently, impatiently, careful not to tear it or kink it or pull it off its spigot. The spigot was on. She'd left it on after watering her tomatoes, after her walk, but before she'd realized Sally was there. She'd meant to come back and give her entire garden a good drink. The sandy soil was so porous.
"Think," she shouted at herself. "Concentrate!"
She could feel the heat of the fire. The house could already be burning under her. In a minute, she could go through the roof.
Sirens wailed in the distance, coming closer.
"Piper!"
Clate's voice. Not happy. She coughed, nearly blinded by smoke, her eyes stinging and tearing. She got the hose turned on, the water spraying out at the flames as she moved closer.
"Piper!" Her brother's voice now. Andrew. Furious. "Get the hell off the goddamned roof!"
The stream of water from her hose hardly dampened the flames. If she could only get it straight down the chimney.
She moved closer. Were the shingles hot under her feet? She couldn't tell. Maybe it was just the heat from the sun. Tears streamed down her face, mostly from the irritation of the smoke and soot. She was too caught up in her task to cry.
An arm clamped around her middle, and Clate took the hose. She hadn't heard him on the roof, hadn't even felt his presence. "The fire truck's here." His voice was soft, his drawl melodic. "They'll take care of it."
"My house." She gulped for air. "I keep a clean chimney. I always keep a clean chimney."
"It's all right, Piper. It's all right."
He edged her down the steeply pitched roof onto her ladder, which he'd set against the rose trellis. The fire fighters were already setting up their own ladders, chasing into her house with their axes and hoses. She stumbled on the ladder, half blinded, choking, her knees shaking.
When she landed on firm ground, Andrew dragged her away from the fire fighters. He looked ready to tear her head off. "Jesus Christ, Piper, do you have to do everything yourself? You could have been killed up there!"
She spat something black and icky over the fence into her vegetable garden. "I tried to get the dampers shut first. I couldn't get upstairs."
He inhaled sharply. "Too much smoke?"
She nodded, and Clatc came up. A film oi black sool covered his face, arms, the V at his neck where his black shirt was open. She glanced at her own arms, her shirt, her pants. She was head-to-toe soot. "Dick Van Dyke," she said.
Andrew glared. "What?"
"In
Mary Poppins."
This from Clate, his tone soft. "He played the chimney sweep. There's a scene where he looks pretty much like your sister does now."
"Christ, the two of you."
Piper had her back to her house. She couldn't see what was happening. Clate and her brother urged her down the yard, toward the marsh. She could hear yelling, talking, urgent sounds of the men and women doing their job, but she couldn't distinguish words. It was as if her mind wouldn't let her understand what they were saying.
"Here." Andrew handed her a folded bandanna from his back pocket. "It's clean."
She wiped her face and eyes, and suddenly her legs went out from under her, blood pounded in her ears, and her face felt hot and tingly. She swore even as Clate braced her with one arm, even as she knew she couldn't stay on her feet. Mortified, she felt herself being lowered onto the ground, the cool shade steadying her.
"Shove her head down," Andrew said.
"Don't you dare. I'll be fine. I just—" She stifled a surge of nausea. If she threw up, Andrew would be calling in the paramedics, getting her oxygen. "I need to catch my breath."
Clate squatted down beside her, his presence steady, unshakable. "You want anything?"
"A gun to shoot whoever set my house on fire."
"It was a chimney fire," Andrew said. "You're going to burn someone's house down, you don't set a damned chimney fire. You toss a Molotov cocktail through the window or pour on gasoline. Jesus, Piper. You're getting paranoid."
She glared at him. "I keep a clean chimney."
"Yeah, well, not clean enough."
He marched off to the fire fighters. Still squatting in front of her, Clate watched him go, then turned back to her with a small smile. "Worry makes him irritable."
Her teeth were chattering. She stiffened her muscles to control her shaking. "I
hate
this. I hate every minute. You should have left me on the roof. I almost had the fire out."
"If I'd left you on the roof, the fire fighters—most of whom seem to know you—would have cheerfully turned a fire hose on you. Piper, you can't always take on the world by yourself." He bit off a sigh. "You know, for someone so in to family and community, you sure as hell don't like taking their help. You'd rather do the giving than the receiving."
"Excuse me, but I don't need a lecture right now."
"No, you don't. You probably need a shot of sugar. You're white as a damned sheet under all that soot."
"At least I didn't pass out."
A glimmer of humor in his eyes. "God forbid."
She closed her lips around her teeth, as if that would help the chattering. She made herself glance back at her house. It wasn't engulfed in flames, at least. And the flames spilling out of the chimney had died down. But there was smoke, a lot of smoke, and the fire fighters were still inside, and who knew about water damage, smoke damage.
"Hannah's shoebox." A jolt of adrenaline launched her to her feet. "I have to get her letters. I don't have that much I can't replace, most of the family stuff is at my father's house, but Hannah's letters—"
She bolted out of the shade, Clate fast on her heels with a growl of frustration as he called after her. She didn't listen. The fire fighters wouldn't know an old shoebox contained valuable, even priceless, materials. They'd hose it down, let it burn, who knew what.
"Piper, hold up. They won't let you in."
"It's my house, damn it!"
Her father and Benjamin intercepted her before she reached her back door. She was tempted to make a scene. She held back tears of frustration, anger, grief. She muttered about her clean chimney, her little fire in the kitchen not being enough to get a raging chimney fire going, her promises to Hannah, who was counting on her.
But then Hannah was there, too. A fire fighter screamed at someone to get the old lady the hell out of the way, and she ignored him as she walked around the perimeter of the damage zone. "I heard the news from my neighbor," she said. "He's an old goat, but he has a scanner. Come, Piper. Let's sit in the shade."
Ernie, the police chief, had arrived and asked loudly if Piper needed a hypodermic to calm her down. She whipped around, planning to tell him where he could stick his hypodermic, but Andrew slid in between them and, exercising more patience than he ever had with his sister, thanked Ernie for showing up for a little old chimney fire. "Piper try to put it out herself?" Ernie asked.
Hannah's hand was cool on her wrist as she coaxed her niece to the picnic table. Benjamin and her father joined them, but Clate hung back. She glanced up at him, seeing better now that tears and Andrew's bandanna had helped clear some of the soot from her eyes. He cut such a lonely figure, she thought suddenly, unexpectedly. No one knew him well enough to yell at him.
"There, now," Hannah said. "This is much better. I noticed your wax beans are almost ripe enough to pick."
"Your hand," Piper sniffled, touching her aunt's frail, bony hand. "It's all sooty."
"No bother. I have a lovely oatmeal scrub that will take care of it."
Piper turned to her father and Benjamin, back to Hannah. "I'd invite you all in for iced tea, but my house is burning down." She blinked back fresh tears. "I can't believe it."
"It's not going to burn down," her father said. "We'll have to wait and see what kind of damage there is."