Angel Fire (11 page)

“Thanks again, Matt,” I said. “It’s cold out. Gonna run.”

“Sure. See you tomorrow.”

I slammed the car door and rushed to the side of the house where we had a separate entrance.

By the time I got inside, I was cold and miserable.

I wasn’t expecting Barry to be standing there in front of me, and I wasn’t expecting the look of rage in his eyes. “You bitch!” he accused.

“What?” Completely confused, I strained to figure out what he was angry about.

“You two-timing whore!”

I gasped and put my hand to my mouth. “What?”

“I saw you from the window with that ass, Matt Childers. What, he doesn’t get enough at home, he’s got to come sniffing around his employees? My wife?”

I made the connection. Barry must have been watching from the basement window, and the frost must have distorted the view from the house. To Barry’s jealous eyes, it would have looked like Matt, when reaching over to open the door for me, was leaning over in an intimate embrace.

My eyes darted around the basement suite, looking for an escape. Several empty beer bottles decorated the coffee table, the television was tuned to the cartoon network, and an empty pizza box had fallen on the floor.

“Barry, I didn’t—nothing happened!”

He grabbed me by the arms and shook me. “You lying sack of shit!”

That’s when the package I’d shoplifted fell out from under my jacket.

The small box spilled out of the brown paper bag when it hit the floor, and it took Barry a few solid seconds to read the label and register the meaning. His paranoid brain leaped to the wrong conclusion.

“A pregnancy test?” he roared. “That bastard put a baby in you?”

“No, Barry, I swear! It’s not like that!” My next words of protest went unspoken when he backhanded me across the face.

“I don’t believe you!” He picked up the box and hurled it against the wall. “You lying, cheating little bitch! I’m not good enough for you? Is that it? You have to go and get yourself knocked up by that geek?”

On the floor, reeling from the pain in my jaw, I struggled to get to my hands and knees.

“Barry,” I started to say, my voice hoarse and pleading.

“You shut your damned mouth,” he screamed.

That’s when he kicked me in the stomach.

I knew, at that moment, I hadn’t needed the pregnancy test, because Barry had just killed the child growing inside me.

My baby.

That was the last thought I had before a red rage filled me, and the entire world turned to flame.

Chapter Fifteen

I woke up
the next morning to the sound of humming and the smell of cooking bacon. My eyes were swollen from crying, and it took me a moment to focus and get my bearings. I had slept on the couch in the living room, and I must have used the armrest for a pillow; my neck was cramped. Someone had thrown a quilt blanket over me during the night.

I didn’t remember falling asleep on my aunt. Unburdening myself to her must have released all the stress I had built up. For the first night in a long while, I slept through the night without any bad dreams.

Swinging my feet onto the floor, I stretched and felt my stomach growl. With the blanket wrapped around me like an oversized shawl, I padded into the kitchen.

Uncle Edward was at the table. He looked up from his plate of eggs, bacon and toast, and shot me a puzzled scowl.

“What, did you sleep
here
last night?” he asked.

“Edward, quit being an old crab,” said Aunt Martha.

“Just a question,” he shot back in a cantankerous tone, and sipped his coffee.

Aunt Martha filled a plate for me, and set it at the table. “You must be hungry.”

My stomach growled again, and with a quick smile of thanks, I dug into the breakfast.

“Thanks for letting me crash, Aunt Martha.” I gingerly bit into a sizzling strip of bacon.

“Oh pish-posh. Our home is your home.”

“Do you know if the library is open today?”

There was one aspect of Aunt Martha’s story that reverberated in my head. My great-grandmother Beatrice had the same affliction as I did. I had no idea whether there was a rational explanation for it, or if it was some kind of curse as Beatrice had believed. But what stuck in my mind most was that she had somehow controlled it.

I had never heard any stories of raging fires in our family history. Though I was beginning to think our family had a lot more secrets than most, I was sure any kind of spectacular event such as mine would be talked about for years. Certainly, none of the newspaper reporters who flocked to our little town after my incident made any connection to past tragedies, and if there was dirt to be found, they were the ones to root around for it.

Aunt Martha leveled a disapproving gaze at me. “Yes, it’s open this afternoon from one until three. But first, you need to get cleaned up for Mass.”

“Church?” I balked.

Uncle Edward pointed a fork at me. “Yes, church. You’d best mind your Aunt. It’d be good for you to let folks in town see you’re trying to blend back in.”

It had been uncharitable of me not to give Aunt Martha more credit. She wasn’t blood, but she was family, and she and my mother had been closer friends than most. That she had stepped up in the last few days to become like a surrogate mother to me meant more than I could express. My only concern, however, was what she thought of me now that she knew the truth. Did she think I was a freak of nature? Or that there was something more sinister at work here?

I had to start thinking about more than myself, as well. No telling what my presence here had done to my aunt and uncle’s reputations. After I’d left for prison, business had suffered; I was certain that wasn’t the only aspect of their lives which had changed for the worse.

Aunt Martha was looking at me expectantly.

I nodded and smiled. “Of course I would be happy to go.”

“Besides,” Uncle Edward said in a voice pitched low, “if I have to go, you have to go.”

“What was that, Edward?” Aunt Martha asked.

“Uh, I think I heard a customer ring the service bell. I better check.” He made himself scarce, leaving his empty plate and dishes on the table.

“I swear.” Aunt Martha clucked her tongue in disapproval. “That man!”

* * *

We never really talked about religion when I was growing up. Although my grandparents attended Mass every week, my parents had never been particularly religious, and we usually only went once or twice a year, at Christmas and Easter. By the time I was old enough to make the decision to go more often, or not at all, I suddenly found more interest in boys, clothes, cars and parties.

My father had always been more scientific-minded in his worldview. When I asked him about it once, he quite simply told me that religion had its place. As a long-time observer of nature, he said he believed there was more to the world than could be explained, but until someone proved their beliefs with hard data, he would reserve judgment.

At twelve-years old, I had no idea what he was talking about and never asked him again.

Uncle Edward, I judged, went to church mostly to appease his parents and, later, his wife.

I couldn’t tell if church was more a spiritual sanctuary or a social event for Aunt Martha. She wore a long burgundy dress with a white sash and white pumps. The sleeves came to her elbow, and she clasped both her hands together as if in prayer when we went inside. She wore a thick pearl necklace and—to my astonishment—wore makeup. In her left hand, she rolled her fingers over the beads of a rosary.

I wore a knee-length dark blue skirt and a plain white blouse at Aunt Martha’s insistence. While I preferred my hair either loose or in a ponytail, she made me tie it up in a bun. I felt like I was six years old.

As we made our way through the entrance, Aunt Martha nodded, smiled and mouthed greetings to everyone we passed, while Uncle Edward continually adjusted the neck of his collar and grumbled. We found a pew, and I was about to sit down when Aunt Martha stopped me with a tap on my shoulder. With her eyes, she instructed me to follow her actions: she bent to one knee at the entrance of the pew and crossed herself before she continued down the length of the bench. Uncle Edward performed the same ritual, and I followed suit, and sat down in the spot closest to the aisle.

The priest introduced himself as Father Tomas. I didn’t recognize him, but I knew the church occasionally transferred their ministers from parish to parish. He was a plump older man, balding with smiling eyes. The deep, resonant voice he used as he went through the rituals of Mass would have lulled me to sleep, if not for all the standing up and kneeling down every few minutes. I had no idea what I was doing, and just followed everything my aunt and uncle did.

After a while, though, my mind wandered back to what Aunt Martha had said about my great-grandmother, and how she had the same affliction as I did. I wished there was some way to find out more details. Beatrice was very religious; was there any truth to her conviction that this affliction stemmed from biblical times?

Part-way through the priest’s homily, he suddenly had my full attention as his words and my thoughts fell together.

“
—The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his Kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace—

“What do you think Jesus meant by that? Are we to take that literally, that the unrepentant will actually burn in hell? Or is this a symbolic statement, that if someone does wrong, they will suffer internally from their own sense of guilt? Could guilt not also be a form of hell? Do we not punish ourselves relentlessly for our own trespasses?”

The priest rambled on about the nature of conscience, but my ears rang and my heart raced.

My great-grandmother Beatrice believed we were cursed because of something that had happened thousands of years ago. I had trouble coming to grips with that.

If a doctor or scientist had a test to prove it, I could almost believe we had some kind of mutation in our bloodline. But a curse passed down from generation to generation throughout history? Was that even possible?

A lot of people believed curses were real; maybe there was some truth to it. But if so, why our family? And why only some of us? Was it only the women?

The thought hit me like a fist:
I hadn’t been able to protect my unborn baby, and it had died.
Was that the sin that triggered the ability? Had my great-grandmother also miscarried? Was that what my aunt had meant by the bond of blood being broken?

My breath caught in my throat.

Suddenly, I had to get out of there.

I stumbled over the knee rest in my desperation, and sprawled headlong into the middle of the aisle. The priest stopped in mid-word, and everyone stared at me—
they all knew my terrible secret!
Father Tomas only resumed his sermon when I got to my feet and hurried out of the church.

A torrent of emotions swirled through me. There had to be a meaning to all this. A cause. A logical explanation. Curses weren’t real. Hellfire and brimstone weren’t real. God didn’t shower the wicked with lightning bolts. Or did He? There weren’t such things as fallen angels. Or were there? If so, did they want to punish us for our sins?

But it wasn’t my fault! There was nothing I could have done differently to save my baby and my parents!

By the time I got down to Main Street, I was shivering from the cold; I had left my jacket at church, and the wind had picked up.

I couldn’t go back there, not after the show I had put on, and I wasn’t ready to return home. There was no other place for me to go. I was sure Beth wouldn’t appreciate me showing up unannounced. When I passed by a coffee shop, the windows were filled with gawking faces. It was as if every person who looked at me could see all the terrible things I had done.

I found my way to the park running along Canyon Creek, just off Main Street. I sat down on the nearest bench and wrapped my arms around myself.

I stared at the hypnotic running water of the creek. A duck flew down and landed on the surface. It let the current carry it along a few moments, and then it shot its beak under the water, I assume for a lunch of minnows or a trout. It came up empty, and with a flap of its wings, took to the air once more.

I needed to think about this logically. Maybe there was a clue in the incidents themselves that would reveal the reason they occurred. It was difficult to remember everything that had happened that night with my parents because I had blacked out, but throughout my stay in jail I’d had two more flare-ups, and both were in the first few years. I remembered the initial incident quite clearly.

* * *

The first night in the penitentiary had been the worst. I think that was the roughest moment of my life. When those prison doors swung closed and the electronic locks shut me in that cold cell, the reality of how low my life had fallen struck home. I didn’t think I would make it through the night.

The misery was a thick paste in my mind. I had no friends, my parents were dead and everyone thought I had killed them. The child I’d had growing inside me was also dead because I had failed to protect it. What was left for me to live for?

I just wanted the world to stop; I wanted the pain in my heart to go away.

“Would you shut the hell up,” someone growled at me. I hadn’t even been aware there was someone else in the cell. Disoriented, I looked up through teary eyes at a woman standing over my bed. As with every other person I had seen lately, she glared at me, condemnation etched on her face like a mask.

So completely wrapped up in my own misery, I grabbed my pillow and held it like a life preserver. I tried to stop, but the tears had a mind of their own. I cried louder.

She shouted, “You just stop that right now, you little bitch, or I’ll knock your teeth out.”

“Leave me alone!” I yelled back at her, and sat up on one elbow. “You’re all the same. You all hate me.”

“Yeah, you’re right, I hate you. You’re the little psycho that killed her parents aren’t you? Should’ve let yourself get burned up while you were at it.”