The Vanishing Season (14 page)

After she ate, she climbed the creaky stairs, changed into her boxers and tank top, and crawled into bed, her room toasty and cozy because of the big radiator near the foot of her bed. She turned out the lights but couldn’t sleep. Faintly she could hear Abe barking across the field. He’d taken up the habit, in the last few days, of barking at the woods.

Maggie woke sometime later, thinking she was dreaming the howling, but it was Abe again, howling at the top of his lungs. She looked at the clock; it was almost three. She noticed an orange flicker through the trees out the window. She stood from bed, half asleep, and leaned against the glass to get a better look, her forehead turning cold. There was a strange illumination deep in the woods, flaring and retreating over and over.

“Fire,” she whispered.

It was in the woods where Liam’s house had to be.

“Mom.” She shook her mom awake moments later, after she’d pulled on her flannel pants. “I think there’s a fire at Liam’s.”

Her parents were awake and groggily pulling themselves out of bed when she took off, throwing on a sweater and her boots, pulling a blanket around her arms and running out into the snow. Hearing panting, she realized Abe was at her side just as she reached the clearing.

It was the roof. Half the roof was up in flames.

A shadow was running back and forth across the lawn, and she saw to her relief that it was Liam.

“The lake,” he breathed, thrusting a bucket into her arms. “We broke the ice; get water from the lake.” The fire licked up the sides of the house and flared along the roof. Liam’s dad appeared from around a corner with another bucket, and they began to work, coughing because of the thick, black smoke as they tried to keep the fire under control. Wherever the water hit, it seemed to chase the flames to another part of the house’s frame.

The icicles hanging from the corners of the roof evaporated before their eyes. Then pieces of the roof began to disintegrate and fall in. The beautiful cupola blackened and burned and fell inward. Her dad was behind her when she looked and said her mom was on the phone with 911, though Mr. Witte had already called them.

By the time the fire trucks arrived, the roof of the Wittes’ living room was gone. Liam and his dad stood back, panting and wiping soot from their faces, trying to get breaths of fresh air.

A light snow had begun to fall, and Maggie thought that might help slow the flames. And then a long, thick stream of water hit from the direction of the first fire truck. The fire began to shrink and die quickly under the power of the fire hoses.

They watched as the flames sputtered and died. It took several long, agonizing minutes, but it was much faster than Maggie would have imagined.

She didn’t see the letters in the yard until a little while later, when she was crossing to get a blanket from the fire truck to wrap around Liam’s dad.

MURDERER, it said in black stones, stretching across the snowy yard. And then a pitchfork, also made of stones.

She tried to kick it away before Liam caught sight of it, but looking up, she saw him standing with his hands against his hips, watching her—looking not shocked, only tired.

After they’d talked to the police and her parents had straggled home, making Maggie promise she’d follow them soon, Liam and Maggie went down to the lake, and Liam chipped at the edge of the newly, thinly refrozen ice until he reached the water. He washed most of the soot off his face, but it still clung to the edges along his hairline.

“Come here,” he said, and he took his shirt, dipped it in the water, and rubbed it against Maggie’s face—her cheeks, her forehead, her chin. Then he surveyed her. “You still look like you crawled through a chimney, but it’s better.”

“Do I look like Santa?” she asked, trying to cheer him up, and he smiled, but then looked like he might break down and cry, and Maggie wiped some of the soot off his face with the inside of her sleeve.

They were still huddled together at the edge of the lake when darkness began to give way to morning, and the sun began to show what was left of Liam’s roof.

“It could have been much worse,” he said. “It’s only the roof.”

“And everything’s wet,” Maggie said. For some reason she thought of Liam’s beautiful light show. The ceiling where they’d watched it was gone.

When they returned Mr. Witte was talking to the police, and someone was helping him make a reservation to stay at a local hotel.

“We’ll go to the hotel once we’re done here,” Liam said as they stood at the edge of the driveway saying good-bye. “I’ll call you.”

One of the women in a four-wheel-drive emergency vehicle offered to drop off Maggie. She badly wanted to stay and help, but she didn’t know what she could do. She climbed into the car and watched through the rear window as Liam and his dad stood in the yard looking helpless.

Hurrying up her own driveway in the dim dawn light, she let herself inside soundlessly. Once in the bathroom, she scrubbed her body, threw her soot-stained clothes in the hamper, put on a thin tank top, and got into bed, pulling her fluffy, warm comforter around her like a shield, relief to be home and safe flooding her, but mingled with a heavy sadness. She fell asleep to the chirping of the birds. And then she woke to the sound of someone in her room. She remembered she had forgotten to lock the front door. She could hear the breathing before she opened her eyes.

It was Liam. He put his finger in front of his mouth and knelt by the side of her bed. “I just wanted to say thank you. I forgot to,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He looked deeply sad, a little fragile, and so tired.

“No . . .” She sat up. “
I’m
sorry, Liam. I am so, so sorry.”

He shook his head. He was staring at her mouth, and he began to sit back on his heels, pulling away, when Maggie leaned forward and put her hand on his shoulder. Gently, scared he would stand up, she stroked his collarbone, something she’d thought of doing a million times, just to see what it felt like.

He reached for her, clasped the lower part of her back, and pushed his mouth against hers. His hands were in her hair and then pulling her closer, as if she couldn’t be close enough. Then he abruptly stopped. He put his forehead against hers and looked in her eyes.

“Sorry,” he said.

“But . . .”

He stood up, turned, crossed the room in what seemed like two steps, and was gone.

15

THINGS WERE QUIET IN GILL CREEK, AND ALL OVER THE PENINSULA PEOPLE waited with bated breath for the other shoe to drop. The more days that went by without incident, it seemed to Maggie, the more people were on their guard. Even at the grocery store, shoppers and tellers seemed less friendly and easy.

Liam didn’t come back to Water Street for the next few days, and he didn’t call. Maggie tried to get it out of her system; she ran every day, despite the cold; she threw herself into schoolwork.
He’d
kissed
her
. If it had been a mistake, it had been his mistake. She didn’t need to feel embarrassed about it. What embarrassed her was how much she thought of the kiss, like she couldn’t control her brain. She wasn’t as scared of him saying he’d made a mistake, and how much it would wound her pride, as she was of not getting to feel that feeling again, that hungry, wild giddiness.

She decided to try to work on her mural again, the one she’d tried to start when she moved in. She had an idea for it. Moths, fluttering around a moon. It would take lots of dark blue for the night sky and grays and pale, pale reds for just a hint of color shading the moths’ wings. She began to sketch it, envisioning the colors vividly as she penciled in the outlines.

She jumped at a
thunk
at her window and looked up to see the dripping remnants of a snowball sliding down the glass. She looked outside. Liam stood in the yard. He lifted a hand out of his pocket and held it up toward her in a wave.

Maggie swallowed the lump in her throat and went downstairs slowly, pulling on her boots at the edge of the kitchen, then opening the front door. He was already climbing the stairs. She stepped out, closed the door behind her, and leaned back against it, unsure. They looked at each other awkwardly, and then Maggie moved to the left, shivering, to make room for him on the landing, and he moved to the left at the same time. Uncertainly he put both his hands on either side of her face. “You’re cold?” She nodded, and mid-nod he kissed her, his lips trembling slightly. Then he pulled back. He looked at her seriously but hopefully.

“I’m a lot more nervous now. Last time I was running on adrenaline.”

Maggie couldn’t get her voice to work. She reached for the lapel of his coat and held tight to it, feeling her face heat up. He reached around her and pushed her back against the railing and kissed her much harder, running his hands down her lower back. Finally she pushed him away, dizzy. “My dad’s home.”

Liam took two steps back like he’d touched something hot, and they stared at each other. “Sorry.” He shook his head. “I just . . . looking at you . . .”

“Wanna come in? Officially meet my dad?”

Liam nodded, out of breath. “Sure. Sure. I’d love to meet him. I mean, since my house isn’t on fire this time.”

Maggie’s dad was at the kitchen table over his home-repair book, where possibly he’d seen everything.

“Dad, this is Liam.”

“Hi, Liam. I prefer that if you want to make out with my daughter, you do it where I can’t see it? I’m old-fashioned that way.”

A red flush crawled up Liam’s face. “Yeah, yeah, of course, I’m so sorry, Mr. Larsen. I will . . . I mean, we wouldn’t . . .”

Maggie’s dad fake-yawned, as if to say he wanted to drop the subject.

“I think we might go for a walk or something,” Maggie said.

Her dad raised his eyebrows at them. “Bring your pepper spray.”

They stepped out into the blinding-white day and cracked up when they got halfway across the yard.

“I thought you might never come back,” Maggie said.

Liam looked at her, amazed. “Crazy.” And then he hoisted her into the air and over his shoulder and carried her across the snow. And even though Maggie had never been much of a squealer, she squealed and let him carry her as far as he wanted.

Pauline,

Things are pretty flat here. Scary as usual. Glad you are in killer-free Milwaukee, though I miss you a ton. Elsa says we (our thriving metropolis of Gill Creek) are going to be featured on
60 Minutes
next week. They’re interviewing the police chief and of course Hairica. Elsa is always the first to know these things.

Liam finished the sauna. The only thing missing is you.

Love, Maggie

A week after Liam had shown up on her porch, Maggie sat over a letter to Pauline. She told herself she was only partially obscuring the truth. She did miss Pauline. But nothing, in those middle days of January, was flat. Not the rise and fall of her breath when she saw Liam walking across the snowy side yard or the spiking and slamming of her pulse when he pulled her against a tree to kiss her on their long rambles through the woods or the way her heart spiked when she opened her door to find something he’d left her on the porch: a book on caterpillars or a pair of binoculars or a pinecone.

Maggie felt like she’d put herself knowingly in danger for the first time in her life, and it was scary and exhilarating. She wanted to talk to someone about it—her mom or Elsa or Jacie, but she didn’t know how to put something so overwhelming into words. Her dad was the person she usually talked to about big things, but talking to him about Liam would make her feel awkward and squidgy. Invisible as it might be to everyone else, she felt like she’d jumped a gap.

She put the letter in an envelope, addressed and stamped it, then sat staring out her window. At a loss, she stood and went to her shelves, found her old sketchbook, and sat again, studying the pictures one by one. She’d done them ages ago when she still drew: sketches of her mom rolling out bread dough, her apartment building in Chicago, butterflies in the park they used to go to. She’d filled the outlines in with pastels; that had always been her favorite part. The drawings were mostly gray pencil with flashes of color on cheeks or wings or eyes.

Biting her lip thoughtfully, she dug out her old charcoals and pastels and opened to an empty page. She started drawing the Boden house across the lawn, giving the windows the warm light that let you know there was life going on inside. Sketching things like this had always taken her somewhere else—to a version of life that was vivid and where everything meant “something,” even inanimate objects. She wanted to make the house reflect the personality of its residents. She remembered when she’d been little, she’d been able to sit and draw for hours at a time. Was it too late to go back to that feeling? After a few false starts in which she couldn’t get the warmth of the windows quite right, she let out a frustrated sigh. No matter how hard she tried, the angles were wrong, the house looked lifeless, and the colors she’d picked and blended didn’t fit.

“I’m too rusty,” she said to no one.

She tried a couple more strokes, getting nowhere, then closed the sketchbook and put it back on its shelf.

I’ll try again tomorrow
, she thought.
Maybe Liam will let me sketch him, for practice.

She did come back to it the next night and the night after that. Sometimes she tried to draw Liam. But always, when she did, the person who ended up flying from her pencil—with the scar down her back and the spaced-out teeth and the lit-up eyes—was Pauline.

It was amazing how quickly a roof could be rebuilt, though it was a slipshod one and needed to be shingled. Liam and his dad had moved out all their waterlogged things and pulled up the rugs. Insurance was paying for a lot, but as born do-it-yourselfers, they were reflooring the living room themselves. Liam’s room was livable, and his dad had moved down to what had been a spare room at the other end of the house until his room was ready. It was a little drafty but not too uncomfortable. The insulation had gone in almost immediately after the roof.