A Fireproof Home for the Bride (50 page)

Emmy pursed her lips and sipped in a thin stream of air.
We’ll.
“Yes,” she said. “I remember.”

“It’s not too late for us,” he said, turning the truck onto the highway toward Moorhead. “You don’t know everything about Bobby Doyle, but once you do, you’ll see that we’re meant to be.”

“You’re married to my sister,” she said quietly, but with enough calculated tenderness to placate a child on the verge of a tantrum.

He slowed the truck and turned onto a side road. Emmy’s hopes dropped with the confirmation of his instability. She settled her bag on the seat between them and laid a gloved hand on his arm as a sign of peace. “I need to go to work,” she said. “Now. At
The Fargo Forum.
”

“I know where you work,” he said, a slightly lower note in his voice as he shrugged off her touch. “And I’ll get you there, in time.”

Emmy’s temper rapidly shot above her fear. “You’ll get me there now,” she said as sternly as she could manage.

“Hold on, and hear me out.” He raised a flat hand up into the space between them. “There are a few things you need to understand. One, I’m not the father of that child. John Hansen took advantage of Birdie, and I did what was right to protect your family by marrying her. If I hadn’t, they would have lost the farm to us and been destitute.”

Emmy leaned forward, close to the dashboard, and tried to make out any landmark along the gravel road. Not once in all the years that she had known her sister had Birdie ever even shaded a truth. A series of calculations began to work their way through Emmy’s head so swiftly that they instantly added up to one clear thought: She needed to get out of the truck, and soon.

“If you turn left up here, you can drop me off at my aunt’s,” she said, unable to stop the quaver in her voice. “She’s expecting me for dinner.”

“Two,” Ambrose continued without heed. “You’ve strayed far enough for long enough. I know that none of this would have ever happened if I hadn’t given in to the Devil’s temptation and drank his poison. But I’ve made my amends by taking care of your sister, and now I can’t let you fall any deeper into his clutches due to my sins.” He slowed the truck at a stop sign and turned left. Emmy bit at a ragged thumbnail, restraining herself from saying anything that would turn them away from the lights of Moorhead, which she could barely make out through the driving snow. If they could just get into the town limits, she could slip out of the vehicle the first time he stopped, run to the nearest lit house.

Ambrose held the face of his watch at an angle to the speedometer’s light. Whatever he saw caused him to make the truck go faster, grinding the engine into fourth gear. “I’m late,” he said. “You’ll have to come with me.”

“Where are you going?” she asked without challenge, changing her tactics. If she could get her shaking under control enough to play into his fantasy of having a chance to save her, perhaps he’d take her home.

“To do His work,” Ambrose said. “The council is a beacon of truth, light, and liberty. We must stop the evil knocking at our doors, in the misshapen form of papists and perverts, Semites and communists. I need to save you, Emmy, from all of them.”

A numbing cold crept up from Emmy’s toes even though the heat blowing in the cab had become stifling. The truck slowed but didn’t stop as they entered the Moorhead city limits, and Emmy realized they were on Twelfth Avenue, headed for the bridge.

“The council has grown with God’s careful tending,” Ambrose said, a methodical surety fueling his speech, as though he were standing at a pulpit. “We’ve even started our own church, adhering strictly to the Good Book. With Curtis’s guidance I’ve been preaching, just like Pastor Erickson always said I should. I’ve found my voice, Emmy. People listen to me, they
follow
me. Don’t you see, they’ll understand when I let Birdie free because she’s sinned against us and God. You and I can stand together against the whores and blasphemers. The road to Heaven is paved with forgiveness. Walk with me down that road, and the Kingdom will be ours.”

Emmy lowered the window slightly to let in enough air to combat her nausea. He’s gone mad, she thought. She was desperate to get away, but the truck was still moving too fast. She moved her hand from the window crank and back to the door handle. She knew the route well from her daily trip to work, knew that once they crossed the river they would be at Elm Street, a few blocks from the house Mr. Doyle was building for her and Bobby. Where Bobby was right now, polishing the banisters of their abandoned future. The thought of her second failed engagement sapped at what remained of her patience. Emmy focused on a plan: She would throw open the door at Elm and take the back alleys to Plum Circle. There she would find Bobby and ask him to take her to
The Fargo Forum.
Two more blocks to the bridge, she counted, as Ambrose filled the air with increasingly unhinged words. He clutched her arm.

“I should have never let you go, it was my mistake alone,” he said, one block from the bridge. “You can’t keep running away. You’ll see. I’ll take care of your mother and Birdie, we’ll give them the farm. It can all work out if you just trust in God’s plan.”

The front tire bumped up onto the Moorhead edge of the bridge, and Emmy whistled low as they reached the center, her fondness for Jim’s strange habit lending her courage. She looked out across the surface of the river and briefly thought how cold it must be in that soupy ice-flecked pool. Moving her body slowly forward so as to block Ambrose’s view of her grip on the door handle, she steadied her breath and counted down the seconds as they approached the red sign.

Ambrose released her arm in order to downshift into a carefully glided full stop, and as he looked to the left for any oncoming cars, she threw open the door and bolted from the truck, finding her footing sure and swift. She cut through the yard on the corner and skirted around to the alley through a stand of poplars. The snow was unplowed here, as she had hoped, and thick enough to keep a vehicle from gaining easy purchase along the narrow utility road. As she passed by the backs of houses, their warmly lit interiors beckoned.

By the end of the second block, she stopped and listened for the truck’s engine, suddenly realizing that if he had been following her for months, then he would have figured out where she was headed. She needed to rethink her plan, find a phone, call Jim. The satchel! She’d left it in the truck. Thunder sounded off in the near distance, something she had heard only once before during a blizzard. She swiveled her head, trying to decide which house to approach, and whether it was less crazy to knock on a kitchen door than a front door, and what words would she use to explain her dilemma?

Pressing forward another block, Emmy thought she could hear muffled footsteps approaching from behind, and she turned to see only the two tracks made by her own boots. The snow-fogged air crackled in her ears as she stood there, frozen by the emergence of a new, more frightening sound: a cacophony of sirens began to wail, seemingly from all around, and moving toward her specifically.

The white night sky was newly rosy to the northeast, lit by the swirling lights that had converged no more than two blocks beyond. Emmy broke into a clumsy run in that direction, led as much by the sirens as the pull to see what new disaster lay ahead. There, at the intersection of Fifteenth Street and Plum Circle, Emmy watched in horror as the flames shot through the collapsed roof of the concrete house and high into the snow-speckled sky. She moved closer slowly, stunned.

“There’s another one in here!” a fireman shouted as he carried a limp body over his shoulder toward an ambulance.

Emmy felt everything around her slow to a crawl as she recognized Pete’s lanky brown hair. She tried to run in his direction but couldn’t move when she realized he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Why was he there, and not Bobby? She ran ten steps closer and saw another fireman carrying Bobby from the house, limp. Greater confusion gripped her and she spun around, fleeing in no direction other than
away.

People from the neighborhood had begun to gather: a woman in a man’s coat hastily thrown over her housedress, a rabble of young boys, eyes agleam with the thrill of explosions and fire, a handful of men looking as though they wanted to help but didn’t know how. Emmy wove past them, her breath jagged and raw in the cold wind. Clearing the main cluster of gawkers, she stopped when she saw three men standing at the curb, effectively blocking her way. Ambrose ran up from behind them and stood tall in the center, next to the much shorter Curtis Davidson. To Ambrose’s right, Frank Halsey stood, a malicious glow lighting his pointed face. Emmy bunched her fists and sprang forward, a pain suddenly shooting through her temples. She doubled over, bracing her head with one hand as she fell to her knees.

“That’s not necessary,” Mr. Davidson said to Frank. “Put her in the car.”

“I’ve got her,” Ambrose said, and Emmy could tell by his expression that he hadn’t thought things through enough to know how to handle this turn of events. He wrapped an arm around her and whispered, “It’ll be okay, just stay quiet.”

“I thought you said the house would be empty,” Mr. Davidson snarled at Ambrose as they passed, “This ruins everything.”

“It should have been,” Ambrose replied. All of his earlier hubris was gone—subservient groveling had taken its place. He bundled Emmy into the backseat of the car, moving her across the leather bench to make room for Mr. Davidson on his other side. She reached for the door handle; Ambrose stopped her. “Don’t,” he whispered.
“Please.”

“I’ve misplaced my faith,” Mr. Davidson said as he settled into the car and slammed the door.

“I keep telling you he’s weak.” Frank smirked as he started the car.

“Shut up and drive,” Mr. Davidson said.

Emmy panicked as the car pulled away from the curb, and responded to her fear by taking in every detail she possibly could—if she was to escape, she would need to remember what had happened. Jim’s voice from the phone echoed in her ear:
Kidnapped his secretary. I don’t want you anywhere near the council.
As the car made a U-turn in the middle of Plum Circle, Emmy caught sight of a large sign that stood proudly in front of the burning house, proclaiming
ROBERTSON DEVELOPERS
as its builder. “Low-income housing,” she murmured, following the clumsy logic of her thoughts past the ambitious plans for Golden Ridge on Mr. Doyle’s desk, the rally held by Mr. Davidson’s mayoral candidate, the evidence in John Hansen’s murder pointing toward the wrong man—a Mexican.

“Look at that baby burn!” Frank exclaimed. “That’ll show ’em.”

Mr. Davidson grunted, but Emmy could see on his face that he was proud of the handiwork. “Take the other bridge!” he yelled. “This road is too slow.”

“What happened to John?” Emmy asked directly into Ambrose’s ear, hoping Mr. Davidson was too busy directing Frank to hear her. The snow slowed their progress to a pace unsatisfactory to him, but for Emmy, it was time she needed to recover from her shock.

Ambrose pressed his lips into a hard, small line and minutely shook his head. Something about the gesture told Emmy that Ambrose had been there, possibly held the gun himself. “Birdie?” She said the name so softly that only the harder sounds of it were audible. Ambrose winced.

Mr. Davidson leaned forward to see around Ambrose. Emmy met the old man’s eye; she was defiant now, ready to match her inherited wits against his. “How dare you,” she spat. “Take me home now.”

He scowled. “Did you bring the ether?” he calmly asked Ambrose, who on command reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a small can and a white cloth.

“Ambrose?” Emmy gasped, realizing that this had been part of his plan all along—the flattened tires, the offered ride, the incendiary display of power—clearly his goal to win her back was to be achieved by either persuasion or coercion, whatever it took. His hands shook, and he bit his bottom lip as he opened the top and spilled a few drops into the cotton. Emmy tried to pull away, to open the door, to scramble up and away from him in her seat, but the sickly sweet smell of the gas seeped into her nose and mouth as he pressed it firmly against her face. As she sunk into the oddly welcome abyss, from a million miles away she heard the words
I’m sorry.
Then nothing more.

Twenty-three

Grace Alone

The familiar odor of oil-packed earth slipped into the darkness of her dreams. Emmy knew the smell, felt the dirt cold against her cheek, the black ink of the room liquid against her open eyes. A board creaked overhead, where she could barely see a speck of light like a pinprick in the heavy wool of sky. There were voices as well, but they were distant, muddled. Emmy tried to lift a hand to her face but found her arms were linked behind her back. The pain was everywhere: in her temples, the backs of her eyes, the roughness of her throat as she tried to swallow, the interior of her right shoulder, which, given how it felt, had been pressing into the dirt floor for a good long while. Her ankles—yes, these were bound as well, and it occurred to her to be grateful that she had put on trousers at some point during that day. Logic was not there at first, but as shards of memory began to cut at her consciousness, a deep, rattling cough overtook her to the point of nearly vomiting. She rolled over onto her stomach and did as best as she could without covering herself in the mess. The sight of Bobby slung over the shoulder of a fireman was the worst of it. The noises above stilled. Screaming is not an option, she thought as she rolled as far away from the sour smell now permeating the dark. Three rolls in, she came up against something soft and warm, solid, yet quivering. Emmy curled into a ball and pulled away from the thing—the animal—envisioning in her delirium a giant rat, or a number of them perhaps.

Footsteps again now, swiftly across the floor, and a door creaking open someplace above. Emmy rolled back to where she knew the pool of vomit must be and stopped just short of it, lying on her shrieking shoulder and tipping her head aside, eyes pinned shut. A light passed over her eyelids and she fought the urge to open them, to see exactly where she was and what else was there with her. Cautious, quiet steps down a few stairs—planks—then the prickling feeling of some sort of presence in the room as the light at first moved away from her face but then stayed steadily on it.