This is all so surreal.” She felt a sudden clutch of anxiety in her gut and remembered something. “You said you washed my clothes?”
“Uh-huh. I just heard the cycle end.”
“Oh, God.” She jumped up and hurried into the tiny laundry area adjacent to the kitchen and flipped open the washer.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, following her.
She yanked out the checked chef pants she’d had on. Plunging her hand into the pocket, she drew out the little brown plastic bottle. The label was still attached, but the bottle was full of cloudy water. She handed it to Rourke.
He took the bottle from her, glanced at the label. “Looks like all the pills dissolved.”
“You now have the most Zenlike, serene washing machine in Avalon.”
“I didn’t know you were on medication.”
“What, you thought I was handling Gram’s death without help?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Why would you think I could do that?”
He set the bottle on the kitchen counter. “You are now. You have been all morning. I don’t see you freaking out.”
She hesitated. Braced her hands on the edge of the counter for support. Then she realized the posture accentuated her boobs in the tight sweatshirt and folded her arms. On a scale of one to ten, the doctor had asked her the night Gram passed away, how anxious did she feel? He told her to ask herself that question before taking a pill so that popping one didn’t become a habit.
“I’m a five,” she said softly, feeling a barely discernible buzz in her circulation, a subtle tension in her muscles. No sweating, no accelerated heartbeat, no hyperventilating.
“I know those aren’t your clothes,” Rourke said, “but I’d say you’re at least a seven.”
“Ha, ha.” She helped herself to another orange. “The doctor said I’m supposed to ask myself how anxious I feel on a scale of one to ten, consciously assessing my need for medication.”
Rourke lifted one eyebrow. “So if you’re a five, does that mean we should make an emergency run to the drugstore?”
“Nope. Not unless I feel like an eight or higher. I’m not sure why I don’t feel more panicked. After everything that’s happened, it’s a wonder I’m not having a nervous breakdown.”
“What, do you want one?”
“Of course not, but it would be normal to fall apart, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t think there’s any kind of ‘normal’ when it comes to a loss like this. You feel relatively okay now. Let’s leave it at that.”
She sensed something beneath his words. A certain wisdom or knowledge, as though maybe he had some experience in this area.
The morning air felt icy and sweet on her face as she followed him outside. He made sure the dogs had food and water and that the heater in the adjacent garage was on so they could come in out of the cold if they needed to. He closed the gate and then, with a flair of chivalry, he opened the door of the Ford Explorer, marked with a round seal depicting a waterwheel in honor of Avalon’s past as a milltown, and the words Avalon P.D.
Then he came around and got in the driver’s side and started up the car. “Seat belt,” he said. He noticed her looking at him and she wondered if he could tell she was thinking about what an enigma he was to her, the first person to distract her from her grief over Gram. He was being chivalrous because he was chief of police, she reminded herself. He would do the same for anyone.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked. “You’re looking at me funny again.”
She felt her face heat and glanced away. She was supposed to be in despair about losing her grandmother and house, yet here she was having impure thoughts about the chief of police. Please don’t let me be that girl, she thought.
“Other than these clothes,” she said, “I’m fine.”
He took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s focus on today. On right now. We’ll deal with things one by one.”
“I’m all ears. See, I don’t know the drill. No idea what happens after the house burns down.”
“You make a new start,” he said. “That’s what.”
His words took hold of her. For the first time since Gram died, she began to see the situation in a new light. Drowning in grief, she had focused on the fact that she was all alone now. Rourke’s comment caused a paradigm shift. Alone became independent. She had never experienced that before. When her grandfather died, she’d been needed at the bakery. After her grandmother’s stroke, she’d been needed at home. Following her own path had never been an option … until now. But here was something so terrible, she wished she could hide it from herself—she was afraid of independence. She might screw up and it would be all her fault.
Although she’d stood around the previous day and watched her house burn, even feeling warmth from the embers, she felt a fresh wave of shock when she got out of the car. With all the equipment gone, there was nothing but the scaly black skeleton surrounded by a moat of trampled mud, now frozen into hard chunks and ridges.
“What happened to the garage?” she asked.
“A pumper backed into it. It’s a good thing we got your car out yesterday.”
The loss barely registered with her. It seemed minuscule in the face of everything else. She could only shake her head.
“I’m sorry,” he said, patting her shoulder a bit awkwardly. “The fire investigators will be here soon, and you can have a look around.”
She felt an unpleasant chill. “Are you thinking this fire was set deliberately?”
“This is standard. If things don’t add up for the fire investigator, he’ll call for an arson investigation. The insurance adjuster said he’d be here soon. First thing he’ll do is give you a debit card so you can get the basics.”
She nodded, though a shudder went through her. A swath of black-and-yellow tape surrounded the house at the property line.
Seeing the house was like probing a fresh wound. The place was a grotesque mutation of its former self. Against the pale morning sky, it resembled a crude charcoal drawing. The porch, once a white smile of railing across the front of the house, had blackened and blistered into nothing. A couple of tenuous beams leaned crazily out over the yard. There was no front door to speak of. All the remaining windows were shattered.
The plumbing formed a strange, Terminator-like skeleton from which everything else had burned away. In the charred ruins, she could pick out the kitchen—the heart of the house. Her grandparents had been frugal people, but they had splurged on a double-door commercial fridge and a huge double oven. More than five decades ago, Gram had created her first commercial baked goods right in that kitchen.
The upstairs was down now, for the most part, and some of the downstairs
