before, or it simply might have been the first door she found.
He wrenched the door open.
Darkness. Silence.
No, please. Don’t let her be dead. Give me a chance, please.
Then he made out the little form, huddled in a corner.
He scooped her up. She had the doll clutched tightly against her chest, and she was shaking. “It’s all right,” he said, his voice rough—with the smoke, with fear, with relief. She turned her face into his coat and sobbed.
He cradled her head in his hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “Everything will be all right.”
Everything would be all right, he promised himself. It had to be. She would not die. He wouldn’t let her.
Behind him the fire hissed and crackled, racing toward them.
Marcelline fought bitterly, but they wouldn’t let her go back for Lucie. Now it was too late.
The fire engine had come quickly, but not quickly enough. The hose poured water into the shop, but the flames had told her how fierce and fast the fire was. With luck, they could keep it from spreading to the adjoining shops.
As to hers…
Nothing could have survived that furious fire. She didn’t want to survive, either, but they wouldn’t let her go back.
She was sick, so sick that her legs would not hold her. She sank to her knees on the pavement, her arms wrapped about her, shivering as though she were naked. She couldn’t weep. The pain burned too deep for that. She only rocked there, in a black misery beyond any she’d ever known. Mama, Papa, Charlie, Cousin Emma—what she’d felt, losing them, was mere sorrow.
She was only dimly, distantly aware of her sisters on either side—their touch on her head, her shoulders…the sound of their sobs.
Around her was pandemonium and she was in Hell, and Hell was a black eternity where the only sensation was pain, sharp as a knife.
Lucie. Lucie. Lucie.
Clevedon had to decide in an instant, and he decided against the stairs. The fire seemed to be moving from back to front on the western side of the building. That meant a conflagration might await them at the foot of the stairs. He went the other way, to the back, but keeping to the side of the passage where he’d found Lucie, in hopes that the floor would hold. Above the showroom and workrooms, packed with combustibles, the fire would burn more fiercely.
That was the gamble, at any rate.
“Hold tight,” he told Lucie. “And don’t look.” Her arms tightened about his neck and she buried her face in his neckcloth. She didn’t release the doll, and he was aware of one of its limbs tapping his shoulder blade. A bizarre thing to notice, and he wanted to break the doll in pieces for the trouble it had caused, but she needed it, and the doll was the least of their problems.
He hurried to the back, keeping close to the wall to find his way, because the way was utter darkness. But he remembered seeing a back door on the ground floor. That would give way to a yard. All he needed was a back stair or a window or even a light closet, which would contain a window.
He came to the end of the passage, and his outstretched hand struck plaster. He’d found no door frame on the way.
Now his hand met only flat wall.
No. There had to be a way out.
The smoke was thickening, the heat unbearable. Holding fast to Lucie, he slid one hand along the hot wall and struck wood—a window. He didn’t even try to wrench it open.
“Hold very tight, sweet,” he told Lucie. “Don’t look and don’t let go, no matter what.”
Then he kicked as hard as he could, and glass shattered, and wood, too. He kicked and kicked, knocking out the glass and the crosspieces. The night was dark, and he looked down, dreading what he’d find: a long leap down, for these buildings rarely offered any purchase for climbing. But his luck held, and below, he made out the outline of the yard’s back wall. Circling Lucie with his arms, to shield her from sharp ends of glass and wood, he climbed over the sill and dropped to the wall, then down, onto the roof of a privy on the other side of the wall. Though the air was smoky, it was cooler, and he could make out the faint glow of a street lamp through the smoke.
Yes, he said silently. Thank you.
His throat closed up and, cradling the child he’d feared he couldn’t save, he wept.
Marcelline was sunk so deep in grief that she scarcely noticed anything else.
At some point, though, she became aware of the atmosphere about her lightening, and the clamor abating. The street grew so hushed that she could hear clearly the hiss and gurgle of water streaming into the shop and the voices of the fire company men giving orders.
Even while she listened, their voices subsided, too, and someone cried, “Look! Look there!”
Noise again, but different. Glad noise. Cheering.
She felt hands on her shoulders, pulling. She lifted her head and thought at first it was a dream, a cruel dream.
That could not be Clevedon…that great, hulking, blackened and ragged mess…carrying…carrying a blackened bundle. Little legs dangling out from the edge of a dress…rumpled stockings…one foot missing a shoe.
Hands were pulling Marcelline to her feet and she shook her head and closed her eyes and opened them again. But it wasn’t a dream.
It was Clevedon, and that was Lucie in his arms.
Alive?
Marcelline couldn’t make her feet move. She only stood, swaying and confused, like one come back from the dead.
He walked out of the nightmare—the black monster behind him, flames still flickering in the windows.
He walked toward her, his big hand cradling Lucie’s head. She had her arms wrapped about his neck, her face buried in his chest. But as he neared, Marcelline saw the doll dangling from Lucie’s hands. She was holding tightly, to him, to the doll.
She was alive.
“Oh,” Marcelline said. And that was all she could say.
He came to her and then he looked down at the child he held. Taking his hand away from her head, he said, “It’s all right, Erroll. You’re the bravest girl there ever was. You can look now.”
As he gave her back to her mother he said gruffly, “I made her promise not to look. I thought it best she not see.”
He’d seen, though. He’d stared in the face of a fiery death. He’d faced it to save her daughter.
“Thank you,” Marcelline said. Two words. Inadequate, beyond inadequate. But there were no words. These were all the language gave her. All else was in her heart, and that could not be said and could never be eradicated.
The shop
