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Her words must have cut right through, because the next thing Albert said was, “I’m connecting you to rewrite.”
Theresa heard Albert shout across the newsroom before patching her through.
“Brad Myers,” answered the overnight rewrite man.
“Brad, it’s Theresa. I’m in Altadena right now, just off East Loma Alta Drive.”
True rewrite man that he was, Brad’s only question for her was, “What have you got?”
chapter fifty-three ADELE
October 1907
As soon as Macalister and Hildy were out of sight, Adele snapped into action. He had told her how important it was to clear all the gutters and remove anything flammable from the roof of the house and the caretaker’s cottage, so she tucked up her skirts, gathered all her courage to her, and hauled the wooden ladder he’d pointed out over to the house to climb up and scoop dead leaves out with her hands. It was messy work—and slow, owing to all the times she had to climb down and move the ladder—but when the job was finished, she pushed on to her next task. She ran to the shed where Macalister kept all manner of tools and took up a rake with a wooden handle to sweep up all the dead leaves and twigs she’d knocked down into a pile to be wheeled to the far end of the property, well away from the house.
Then she set a bucket under the tap of the well and began to pump. When it was full, she hauled it up to the top floor of Rosewood House, opened the window, and tipped it all down the roof over the porch, doing her best to tilt the bucket so that the water flowed as widely as she could make it.
She worked her way around the house, opening windows and dumping water. She was making a mess slopping buckets on the hardwood floors, but she had more important things to care about.
After an hour or so of work, she began to cough as the air became laden with smoke. The sun fought through the hazy sky, baking her as she went back and forth, back and forth to the pump, and she worried that as fast as she spread water across every exposed bit of the house she could reach, it would just as soon evaporate into nothing.
It was on one of those trips back to the house with a full bucket in hand that Adele heard the grind of wheels against dirt. She set her bucket down and hurried out to the front of the house.
When she arrived, Macalister was climbing down from the driver’s bench, a red-and-white kerchief tied around his mouth and nose.
“You’re back!” she called out, looking around for any others who might have come with him.
“I tried,” he said, seeming to read her mind. “None of them would risk it.”
“But you came back,” she said.
He gave her a nod. “We’re on our own.”
She opened her mouth, intending to thank him, but she began coughing again. He reached into his back pocket and freed another cotton handkerchief.
“Hold still,” he said, and without asking a word of permission, he folded it in half and tied it around the back of her head in a knot so the fabric covered her mouth and nose.
“Thank you,” she said.
“It isn’t perfect, but it’s better than nothing,” he said.
“What did you find out in town? Can you tell where the fire is?”
Although she couldn’t see his mouth, she imagined from the hard set of his eyes that his lips thinned. “It’s out north of Mount Lowe.”
“But that’s not seven miles from here!” she cried before stopping short. “Did you say north of Mount Lowe?”
He nodded. “Why?”
“My husband is building a hotel near there a little farther up into the mountains, on San Gabriel Peak. Do you think it will burn?”
“It all depends on the wind, which is why we need to get moving,” he said. “Show me what you’ve done.”
chapter fifty-four THERESA
July 2, 1960
After filing her first report, Theresa spent the day racing in and out of Rosewood House to use the phone. Occasionally she would pass Miss Pearce with a hose or Matt up on the roof clearing gutters of dried leaves, but mostly she was focused on the story.
