Charlotte's Homecoming

The house lights had sprung on behind her, and Faith wasn’t a minute behind her, running in some kind of thin nightgown and flip-flops like Charlotte’s.

“You called 9-1-1?” she yelled as she ran past, and Charlotte yelled back, “Yes!”

There was another faucet round back, Charlotte remembered, but a minute, two minutes, passed before a second stream of water joined hers. Faith had probably had to hook up a hose.

The scream of the siren wasn’t far behind. They were lucky, so lucky, that the volunteer fire station was less than half a mile away. The first truck roared in, the headlights spotlighting Charlotte but not her sister, who was behind the barn. She kept the stream of water aimed at the barn even as the firemen ran toward her pulling a hose that made hers look like a child’s toy.

“Get back, ma’am, please get back!” she was told, and she let the nozzle fall from her shaking hand.

Adrenaline roaring through her, she backed away and kept backing until she felt mown grass under her feet again. She was hugging herself when Faith reached her and they grabbed each other and held on, neither of them looking away from the fiery scene and the eerie sight of water soaring in great arcs to cascade down over their 100-year-old barn and the licking flames.

“Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no,” Faith moaned.

“Everything inside will be wet,” Charlotte whispered.

Faith whimpered and buried her face briefly against her sister’s neck, then lifted her head again as if she couldn’t stand not to watch her dreams burn.

The smell now was stomach-turning: smoke and the wet, charred odor of a campfire doused in water. Something else, too, Charlotte thought in one corner of her mind. Gasoline, maybe from the fire trucks?

The fire sank back quickly, not big enough to defy a drowning. Faith and Charlotte clung to each other and kept watching as firemen prowled outside and stepped through the hole burned in the side of the barn to check, presumably, for hidden embers.

Eventually, one of the firemen, bulky in a cumbersome yellow suit, crossed the yard.

“Faith, is that you?”

“Yes, and Charlotte, too. Char, you remember Tim Crawford?”

She nodded. “Of course I do. I’m … um, really glad you got here so quick, Tim.”

He’d been one—two?—years ahead of them, and best friends with Jay Bridges, quarterback, whom Faith had gone with her freshman year. Charlotte had liked Tim better than Jay, not that either of them were her type.

“We’re confident we’ve got the fire out,” Tim was saying. “It’s real lucky one of you noticed it before the whole barn was engaged.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Charlotte said. “I was just going to come out and sit on the back steps and admire the stars. But I smelled smoke the moment I got outside.”

“Lucky,” he said again, nodding. “Five, ten more minutes, you’d have lost the barn.”

A shudder ran through Faith. Charlotte tightened her arms around her sister.

“How do you think it started?” Charlotte asked.

“It’s arson,” he said bluntly. “Can’t you smell the gasoline? And I know it’s hard to see the smoke at night like this, but it was black. I’m going to make sure someone is out here in the morning to talk to you about it.”

“Can we, um, look inside?” Faith asked shakily.

Sounding kind, he said, “Why don’t you wait until daylight? Get a good night’s sleep. Didn’t look like that much damage to me.”

“Oh.” Faith nodded, and kept nodding. “Oh, okay.”

“Thanks, Tim,” Charlotte said, and steered her sister toward the house. Behind them, the volunteer firemen were reeling in their hoses and climbing aboard the two trucks. Engines started before the two women reached the house.

In the kitchen, Charlotte said, “I don’t know about you, but I want a drink. Do you have anything?”

“Daddy keeps some bourbon up top of the refrigerator, but I’d settle for tea.” Faith sank into a kitchen chair as if her legs had just failed her. “In a minute. When I can stand up again.”

Charlotte shook her head. “I’ll make it.” She thought wistfully about a slug of the bourbon but instead got down two mugs, plopped in tea bags, filled them with water and stuck them in the microwave. One minute later, and the water was hot. Without asking Faith, she added more sugar than she liked to one of the mugs, then carried them both to the table.

“Thank you.” Faith smiled wanly at her. Soot streaked her face, which was paler than it ought to be considering she had a good tan. Her thin nightgown had gotten a blast of water at some point and clung revealingly to her. Below the hem, her feet were filthy.

Charlotte looked down and realized she looked just as awful. Her feet were not only filthy, but one of her toes was also bloody. She had a vague memory of stubbing it. “You know I had three showers today?” she said. “And now I’m going to have to have a fourth?”

“It’s tomorrow now,” her sister pointed out. She stirred her tea, then lifted out the bag. “So this won’t be your fourth shower of today, it’ll be your first shower of tomorrow. No, today.”

Suddenly they were both giggling.

“Oh, Lord,” Faith finally said on a sigh, her hand pressed to her stomach. “I was sound asleep. I never would have woken up. It really is a miracle you happened to go outside.”

Charlotte met her sister’s eyes. “Rory was awfully mad the other day.”

“It could’ve just been a teenager. Why would Rory do something like this? He wants me back. He’d have to know that would blow any chance….”

Charlotte set down her mug hard. “Does he have a chance?”

“No!” Faith glared at her. “How can you even ask me that?”

“You’re the one who just implied …”

“I did not! I was trying to explain how he thinks!”

Charlotte let out a frustrated breath. “When you called, you sounded like he’d been angry lately when he came around. And he was nasty from the minute he walked into the barn day before yesterday.”

“There’s a big difference between …”

God give her patience. “Yes, there is. But if he’s getting angry, it’s because he’s realized he doesn’t have another chance. You thought he’d just go away once he realized that, didn’t you?”

Stricken, Faith finally closed her mouth and nodded, just once.

“But when you were married, he got violent every time he thought he was losing control of you.”

“Yes,” her sister whispered.

“Maybe after he put you in the hospital he was ashamed of himself for a little while. Maybe he thought if he gave you time you’d forgive him eventually. But if he’s finally realized you aren’t going to, do you really think he’s not going to make some … I don’t know, some parting gesture?”

Head bowed, gaze fixed on her tea, Faith looked … broken. “I don’t know. I guess I was more afraid he’d get mad and hit me. This seems so … sneaky.”

“He must know how badly you want to keep the farm going, for Dad’s sake, and because it’s ours.”

She heard herself and thought, Ours? Where had that come from?