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Sitting up. Gesturing toward the house.
Blond hair glowing.
I’m running toward her before I know it, and when she sees me, Jules pulls the oxygen mask off her face. She’s streaked with soot and tears, parts of her hair crisped away, but she’s alive, and already reaching for me.
“Cam!”
I wrap my arms around her, hardly believing it.
“You’re okay,” I say, and one of the EMTs, a redheaded woman I think I went to high school with, gently pushes me back.
“She’s not okay. She’s got a nasty lump on the back of her head, and she’s inhaled a lot of smoke.”
“I’m okay,” Jules argues, then turns to me, insisting again, “I’m okay.”
Her face clouds then, cold fingers tangling with mine. “But Cam… Ben was in there. I don’t know about Libby, but…” Her voice breaks, a sob mixing with a hacking cough.
She tries, she really does.
And it’s good, I have to give it to her. Good enough to fool anyone else. My girl wasn’t a theater major for nothing.
But she can’t hide from me.
Maybe one day she’ll tell me the truth.
Maybe not.
Maybe she’ll wait until she’s in her seventies, and then she’ll write me a long stack of letters, letters that are actually formethis time.
That’s fine.
For now, I just hold her hand in mine and together we watch the McTavishes burn.
From the Desk of Ruby A. McTavish
March 31, 2013
Surprise! Another letter.
I’m sure you thought I was done after the last one. Honestly, so did I. I’d given you everything, darling, so what else was there to say?
But then I got your reply—now thrown in the fire, just as you asked, how very clandestine we’re being!—and, since I have some time tonight, I thought I’d jot one final missive.
Besides, I have some questions foryounow, questions I somehow neglected when we met.
Have you always been this clever? It’s just that cleverness does not seem to run in the family, no offense. (And how could I offend, given that it’s my family, too? Insulting your bloodline is insulting mine, let’s not forget, darling.)
Although, I suppose my father/your great-grandfather had a certain kind of low cunning. You have to be pretty ruthless to sell your toddler, after all. But then my mother, your great-grandmother, had the integrity to burn thousands of dollars when she could barely keep a roof over her head.
Do those two impulses balance out in you?
In any case, you were right to contact me. I had assumed your grandmother threw my card away back in 1985, and that I’d never hear from any of you again.
Imagine my delight when I got your message!
Well, I wasn’tcompletelydelighted. I do wish you’d been a little nicer, and a little less… threatening, let’s say, but still, a bit of intrigue always livens up one’s day.
I don’t think I told you the night we met, but you were very good in that play. I’ve seenArsenic and Old Lacemany times—it was one of Andrew’s favorites—and I did not have especially high hopes for a community college production in Gainesville, Florida, and yet there you were, impeccable as Elaine. Far better than the boy playing Mortimer Brewster, I’m afraid.
