Hell Fire

Familiar Strangers

The light had shorted out in the microfiche machine, as if somebody didn’t want us reading the article written about my mother’s death. As discouragement went, the dead dog offered more punch. But I was probably reading more into a minor mechanical failure than it warranted. After all, it had probably been years since anyone had used this station at all.

So I wrote it off as an odd coincidence, though the librarian made such a big fuss about calling the maintenance man, you’d have thought he was flying in from New York instead of coming up the basement stairs. When Mr. McGee finally presented himself, I understood her concern a little better. With his long white handlebar mustache and unruly head of hair, he looked like a Civil War relic himself.

This repair could take a while. The librarian frowned at us and returned to her post at the front desk. Thank God she hadn’t noticed Butch napping in the chair beside me; that would have gotten us tossed out on our collective ears. I tried to block him with my body, but Mr. McGee said, without glancing up from his work, “I don’t care a bit about that little dog. He ain’t harmed nothin’.”

So he wasn’t quite as blind as he seemed. “Are there archives downstairs?”

“If you wanna call it that. We got some boxes of junk that don’t go nowhere else. Don’t let Edna see if you’re fixing to sneak down there. You’ll get her blood pressure up.”

I took that as tacit permission, and tucked Butch beneath my arm. He whined a little but had the sense not to make a big fuss. Chance followed me as we wove through the shelves, angling toward the door Mr. McGee had emerged from. In a small town like this, it wasn’t locked, so we headed downstairs unnoticed.

The basement smelled of dust and mildew. I wrinkled my nose; Butch sneezed. Old brown boxes sat piled on green industrial shelving. Numerical codes had been scribbled on the front, but I had no idea what they meant. I felt sure Dewey wouldn’t approve.

We each opened a box at random and prowled through the contents. It was worse than it appeared. Old deeds, marriage licenses, letters and diaries had all been tossed together without rhyme or reason. As far as I could tell, the numbers on the outside of the boxes seemed to indicate a range of years for the junk contained therein. If I cared about quantities of cotton ordered by the general store in 1887, I’d be in heaven.

The air felt heavy and still, not even a hint of ventilation. Noticing that made me pause and look at the walls. “Chance, how many feet of rock would you say lie between us and the street?”

He shrugged. “A lot. Why?”

“Seems to me it would take an awful lot of power to block you in here. Why don’t you try your luck again and see if there’s anything we can use?”

“Worth a shot.”

Chance focused. The room came alive with that raw static feel, as if we were mere moments away from a thunder-storm bursting to life around us. When his eyes opened, I saw tiny sparks of lightning. There was something deliciously elemental about him when he used his talent. I shivered a little, following him over to a metal filing cabinet shoved up against a wall.

He pulled out a manila folder with the initials J.M. scrawled on the front in red ink. “This is it.”

“Whatever it is,” I muttered.

Chance flipped it open, looking dubious. Score. He’d found a bunch of random newspaper clippings. Most of the articles had yellowed with age, and they didn’t relate to any one subject, either.

I plucked out the top one and read aloud. “‘Highway Built Ten Miles West of Proposed Route; Town Council Irate.’” The next one was even less interesting: “ ‘No Cable for Kilmer.’” If we’d found someone’s secret research, I had no idea what they were doing, except maybe documenting how sad and boring this town was.

Huh. Maybe Chance’s gift just wasn’t working right.

He closed the folder with a snap. “We should just take the lot and read them later. We don’t want Edna to catch us down here.”

That seemed like a good idea, so I slipped the file into my bag. Butch went in on top of it, and then we headed back up the narrow, spiderweb-clogged stairs. My heart almost stopped when I ran into Mr. McGee. He steadied me with strong, gnarled hands, but his eyes looked weird and filmy in the half-light.

“She’s gone to the lavatory, young ’uns. Thinks y’all already left.” He sounded oddly urgent. “Don’t let her catch you messin’ around down here.”

His fervor took root in the form of dread. I had no idea what a withered old librarian could do to us, but if I’d learned anything over the years, appearances could be deceiving. We quick-stepped to the front door and out into a dismal, drizzling rain.

To my consternation, a woman I recognized met us on the way out. Miss Minnie had offered me a home after my mother died. I’d been happy there for a time. She respected my need to grieve, but she drew me back into daily life with irresistible requests for me to do this or that because she wasn’t as spry as she used to be.

Together, we baked pies and cookies, cleaned out her attic, and refinished an old wooden dresser—pretty much anything she could think of to keep my mind off my loss. And I got better in her company, crying less in the night and talking more during the day.

But the respite didn’t last long—just a few months. In the evenings, Miss Minnie would let me look through her jewelry box and tell me stories about the people they used to belong to—and I liked that. It made me feel rooted, part of something for the first time since my mama died.

And it was good until my gift sparked to life. I was handling a jeweled hair clip, a pretty piece that I’d long admired. That time, it singed my fingers, and I said without thinking, “This belonged to your great-aunt Cecilia. She was wearing it when she died.”

Miss Minnie had gazed at me, her face pinched and gray, before snatching the clip away and fussing over burns she couldn’t figure out how I’d gotten. That night, she called the social workers and said she wasn’t equipped to deal with “a child like me.” By the time I left Kilmer, she was the only one who was still halfway nice to me. Though she hadn’t wanted me living in her home after that, she never stopped trying to get me to attend the Methodist church with her, as if religion could fix what ailed me.

At our near collision, her head came up. I smiled to see her white hair wrapped up in a cheerful rain bonnet. I remembered her saying bright colors made us miss the sun a little less. She returned my smile on automatic and started to brush by me with a quiet apology for her woolgathering.

I wasn’t surprised. I’d been dishwater blond when I lived here, a mousy shade that made me fade into the woodwork. Back then, I’d wanted exactly that. I didn’t want to be noticed or discussed. I only wanted to get away.

Then she hesitated, her hand on the door. “Do I know you?” Miss Minnie squinted. “Yes, I’m sure I do. Why, Corine Solomon, as I live and breathe! I’d never forget those pretty blue eyes. It’s so good to see you.”

Reflexively, I curled my fingers into my palms and tucked them into my jacket pockets. “You’re looking well, ma’am.”

“Well, it’s a rotten day to catch up, but I’d be obliged if you came for dinner before you leave.” Her smile seemed warm and genuine. “Your young man’s welcome too, of course.”

From the confines of my bag, Butch whined. I heard the papers we’d stolen crunch as he tried to get comfortable. That gave me the excuse I needed.

“Yes, ma’am. Your number’s still in the book?”

“Same as it ever was,” she agreed.

With a wave, she passed by into the library.

The Mustang looked brighter and shinier than anything else on the street. Perhaps it was the damp or the wan winter light, but Kilmer looked as if the life had been leached out of it long ago, leaving a pale facsimile as its anchor in the real world. That thought weighed on me as I climbed into the car. Something about it resonated, but I couldn’t connect it to anything else; it was more of a feeling than a certainty.

“I can’t picture you here,” Chance said, starting the car.

“Me either.” It seemed a lifetime ago. In some ways, it was more than a lifetime. “But this is where it all began.”

He paused long enough to maneuver onto the road, though I didn’t know where we were going. “You never talk much about your dad.”

For me that word conjured up images of a man who wore a panama fedora and a two-tone shirt. He always smelled of pipe tobacco and Old Spice, and he used to sing in the shower, silly songs he made up as he went along. More than that, I couldn’t remember, any more than I could recall why he’d left. My mother never talked about it, and I figured she had her reasons.

“Neither do you,” I said pointedly.

I suspected Chance knew more than he’d revealed. More truth he hadn’t entrusted to me. I wasn’t sure where the line should be drawn, or whether I wanted his deep, dark secrets at this late date.

“Does that bother you?” He drove as he did everything else, expertly and with complete control.

It had, once. Chance was like an iceberg, only its tip showing above the water; sure, it was beautiful and bright, but you never knew what lurked beneath the surface. He’d never made any attempt to share that with me, even though he wanted me laid open for him like a watermelon at a Fourth of July picnic.

The double standard had gotten old a long time ago, and I didn’t have any interest in changing him. Maybe we’d both be better off if we just forgot about each other. Only I couldn’t do that, damn him.

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“I hate when you do that.” Though his tone was gentle, the words were not. “You expect me to know everything without your ever saying a word. You always did. You expect me to have some magical way of divining what you need from me, and that’s just not fair. How can I offer it when I don’t even know what it is half the time?”

The wipers scraped on the windshield, underscoring his muted frustration. I’d like to say I disagreed with him, but he had a point. I did have trouble articulating my needs, because the minute you told a person what you wanted, you made yourself vulnerable. They had the power, not you. If you never asked, you could pretend you were never disappointed.

But that only works if you’re happy living a lie.

I exhaled unsteadily and reached for Butch, who nuzzled my hand. I could’ve said nothing, but that was the same as an admission. I decided I might as well go all the way.

“Point to you. But I never said I’m easy to be with, Chance.” I tried to keep my voice even. “I told you before . . . I don’t blame you for anything.”

I didn’t want this to turn into an argument, as we’d never been any good at those. I got shrill and defensive; he went icy and remote. Then we made up in bed before we agreed on anything. As fruitless cycles went, it had its perks.

“That’s not entirely true.”

I fell silent, refusing to discuss it further. But he was right again, dammit. I did blame him for not explaining the risks of being with him. Maybe it wasn’t fair; I mean, how could he date someone while simultaneously telling them it wasn’t safe? I could see his point of view—what was the point in having that conversation until he was sure the relationship was going somewhere? But once he knew . . . I should’ve been clued in and given the option to choose.

That summed up my key complaint about Chance. He always seemed to think he knew what was best for me and never bothered to confirm it. Well, after I fell through the floor of a burning building, I’d put the pieces together myself.

And then I walked away, as soon as I was able.

It wasn’t just the danger of bodily harm that had driven me off. I felt as if I had to leave a relationship where I wasn’t a full partner. I didn’t want him to be my guardian; just my lover. I remained unconvinced he knew how to separate the two impulses.

We passed few cars. It was around lunchtime; there should have been people on the road heading home for a bite or looking for a likely dining spot. So far as I could tell, there was Ma’s Kitchen, the coffee shop, and the Kilmer Inn. I hadn’t seen a single restaurant otherwise—more hallmarks of a dying town.

The silence between us stretched taut, emblazoned with the inability to connect that had destroyed our relationship. He couldn’t let me in all the way—and I was afraid of giving more than I got. My heart hurt with the futility of it.

When we pulled up to the periwinkle Victorian house, I realized we’d come straight back to the bed-and-breakfast. Chance circled around back and put the car in park. Before I could move, he came around the front of the car and yanked my door open. With a start, I saw he’d gotten his expensive leather shoes muddy.

Rain trickled down his brown face, but he paid it no mind. I slid out of the car, suddenly uneasy with the intensity I’d evoked, but instead of telling me what was on his mind, he only muttered, “Let’s get inside before you catch your death.”