the tragedy of time.
“See? All better.” Grief absently stroked the back of Grace’s neck. “A little truth,” he said. “A bit of a shock at first, but good for the soul in the end.”
Grace opened her mouth to speak, though she couldn’t imagine what words she would say.
“Hush.” Grief smiled broadly, exposing his yellow teeth, and turned back toward the women. “I want to hear the rest of the story.”
Grace didn’t need to hear the story. She’d lived it that day and every day since. Daisy’s screams, raw, feral, fractured, had compelled everyone within earshot to rush outside and bear witness. Grace, clad only in her slip, flew out the door and into the yard.
As Daisy ran toward the house, fire swallowed her dress and seared the flesh beneath.
“Lord Jesus. No!” Grace had screamed, wrapping Daisy’s flaming body in a rag rug she hadn’t remembered grabbing. She pushed the child to the ground, rolled her over several times, and dropped on top of her, smothering the last of the fire with her own body.
Owen reached the yard on Grace’s heels. Burned flesh saturated their senses. Thick, sweet, biting. Heat rose off Daisy’s body as he opened the rug. A leathery patchwork of red, black, and mahogany reared up and settled itself where the dress had once been. Owen gingerly lifted the afflicted child, carried her toward the house, and whispered, “Be brave, little lady. Daddy’s here.”
Owen, Grace, and Daisy entered the kitchen as one.
Violet remained behind, feet rooted to the desecrated soil.
Being the closest neighbors, Louise Davies and Alice Harris showed up immediately. Doc Rodham arrived at the house not ten minutes later. One of the local children had run to get him, though Grace never knew which one. As with any calamity, so many people, including the young ones, claimed to have played a role that day.
Once Owen placed Daisy on the girls’ bed, Grace pulled a rocker up and studied what parts of her were still whole. Eyes, lashes, brows, nose, mouth, ears—the head in its entirety, untouched. She struggled to find comfort where she could. A disfigured body could be hidden under clothes; a disfigured face was another matter. It drew any manner of unwanted attention, and that would prove difficult for a girl. Grace’s eyes skirted past the worst of it in search of hope. The right hand seemed intact, though the same could not be said of the arm. Still, Daisy was right-handed. Feet, ankles, calves, unimpaired enough for boots. So she won’t be a cripple.
Grace held onto the promise of a mouth that could speak, feet that would carry, and a hand to be used in the service of the Lord. “Mother’s here,” she whispered, confident her daughter could hear her words. Daisy lay still but with eyes open, conscious and alert on the cotton sheet. Another good sign.
Doc Rodham entered the bedroom carrying his medical bag and the piano stool from the parlor. He placed the seat on the floor, cleared a small table, opened his case, and lined up his medicines. “I’m sorry for your troubles,” he said, extending his hand to Owen. He draped a stethoscope around his neck and rolled his seat over to his patient. The fire had ravaged the front of her little body, thighs, torso, most of her right arm, and the whole of the left. He discarded the stethoscope, placed two fingers on the pulse at her neck, and looked into her eyes, so blue.
“Hello, young lady,” Doc Rodham said to his patient.
“Hello,” Daisy answered.
“Thank you, Jesus.” Grace added speech to her list of blessings.
“Am I going to die?”
Her directness seemed to momentarily unnerve Doc Rodham, but reassurance of a kind quickly fixed itself on his expression. “Not on my watch.” He smiled. “Now, tell me where it hurts.”
“My feet,” she said. “They’re so cold.”
“Mrs. Harris!” Doc Rodham yelled loud enough to be heard in the kitchen.
A moment later she poked her head through the door, stole a glance at Daisy, and winced in spite of her best intentions.
“I’ll need hot water bottles.”
She nodded and ran off down the hall.
Grace found it strange that Alice Harris happened to be waiting for instructions and wondered who else might be milling about her house. The notion unsettled her. Had she even finished cleaning up the spilled pie? And could that have really just happened this morning? Concentrate, she thought, and scolded herself for thinking such things mattered.
“Any other pain?” the doctor asked as he removed the stopper from a bottle marked, Laudanum.
Daisy shook her head slightly.
“Thank God,” Owen said, “Thank God.”
“An ounce of prevention,” Doc Rodham said. “Open up.” He placed several drops of medicine onto her waiting tongue. “And four drops every two hours,” he said to Grace, who nodded.
“What about the hospital?” Owen asked.
Grace whirled around, looked directly at her husband, and said, “We’ll not go there again, Owen Morgan. Not after Rose. Not ever.” She turned back and looked to Doc Rodham for confirmation.
Doc Rodham shook his head. “No use,” he murmured, “she’d not survive the . . .” He glanced at his patient. “Home is the best place for her just now.”
Although most of Daisy’s clothing had either burned or fallen off, here and there, flecks of fabric cleaved to the skin. Had the doctor not treated his share of miners over the years, whose bodies were burned in explosions, he might have mistaken the remnants for seared flesh, but as he later explained, he could tell the difference between the two. Charred cotton curled up at the ends. Burned skin pursed beneath the surface. Doc Rodham soaked a piece of linen in saline solution, wiped the affected areas, and peeled the fabric off with tweezers.
“Now let’s see.” He worked at a particularly stubborn section on her torso. “How long have we known each other?”
“Nine years,” Daisy said.
“That so?” He picked the loosened material away.
“You delivered me,” she said, as if surprised he’d forgotten such an important fact. She eyed her father, but he was turned toward the window.
“You don’t say.” Doc Rodham spun around to his work table, palmed a syringe, and swung back toward his patient. “You sure have a good memory.” He pricked only the largest blisters, the ones stretched to the point of breaking.
Grace grimaced at the sight of the needle, but Daisy seemed not to notice. “Tell me a story.”
The doctor gently patted the pierced blisters with cotton batting, soaking up the fluid. “Which one would you like to hear?”
“About the day I was born,” she said.
“Now that’s a good story,” he replied, saturating several linen strips in carron oil. “March 1, 1904. Bet you thought I wouldn’t remember.” He placed the bandages on top of skin that was only burned,
