AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Russell had already thrown on his coat. “We’re on our way.”
“Wait.” Freddy turned toward them, hand still on the blackout curtain. “It’s not an air raid.”
Avis blinked. Had she heard him incorrectly? “But the sirens...”
“Are actual fire sirens. That’s all.”
He spoke with such conviction that she could hardly doubt. “How can you be sure?”
“I just saw the fire brigade pass by.”
Of course. That’s why the sound of the sirens had changed. Strange, so strange, to be thankful for someone else’s misfortune, but a blocked chimney or a brush fire that had caught a storage shed was a disaster so much smaller than the buckled sidewalks and destroyed buildings she had pictured. Avis nearly collapsed on the couch in relief, until Freddy added, “Avis, they’re headed toward the library.”
MARTINA
SEPTEMBER 9
At the Fire Muster—had it only been two months, and not a lifetime ago?—Gio had watched with a fascination usually saved for heavyweight matches as the men competed to roll out thick fire hoses and connect them to the nearest hydrant.
Now the same volunteers, called out in the middle of the night, were hurried along not by a competition but by real smoke billowing from the library’s roof. Martina was sure if Gio had been wandering anywhere within a mile, he’d have heard the sirens and come running to watch.
Unless he was inside the library.
The thought wouldn’t leave her, even as she agonized from the sidewalk. Her son was in there. A mother’s instinct was never wrong, and she knew her boy, proud of his new job and its responsibility, wouldn’t stand aside while it burned.
So while Russell shouted over the sirens, organizing a search and telling everyone to stay out of the way of the firemen, she slipped away, down the alley, to the back door. The door where Patrick had disappeared.
It was unlocked.
Martina had watched Louise secure all the doors before they left, checking them carefully, but Gio had a key too.
“Gio!” she shouted, stepping inside. “Where are you?”
That was a sound, wasn’t it? Maybe a reply, though it was difficult to tell over the awful crackle of flames on paper. She drew in a breath to call again, but only got a lungful of smoke and bent over in coughs, her body screaming at her to get away, stay away.
Not without my boy.
Most of the fire clustered near the south wall, where a broken window sprayed shards of glass glinting in the smoke, but ithad spread to the reference section, shelves broken and charred, onionskin dictionary pages catching like the tinder they were.
“Gio!” She couldn’t see movement, couldn’t hear him.
The words of the old prayers tumbled together in a blur of scattered sacredness, Latin and Italian and English, all mixed together.Ave, o Maria, piena di grazia, your kingdom come, your will be done.
Kyrie eleison.
Lord, have mercy.
“Here!”
That was Gio for sure, his thin cry coming from the far corner of the library, where smoke hung a curtain over her view.
Martina stumbled through the murk toward where she thought Gio’s voice had come from, past a row of smoldering books.
She hadn’t imagined his voice, had she?
There. The boy was looking all around, taking in the shelves licked with flames and a floor blocked by debris. As if he didn’t know which way to go.
Thank God.She closed the distance between them, gripping his arm.
