was amazed that so little of the house remained. Curls of wire, warped pipe, some dark, wet mounds of gypsum, and a few clumps of charred clothes were scattered among the black embers. Something caught and reflected the dying sunlight, a bright beacon in the blackness.
It was the hand mirror her mother had given her, a family heirloom. Renee had passed it down to Mattie. The ornate silver framing had melted into shapeless slag, dark ashes stuck to the metal, but the glass was intact.
Renee edged the line of cinder blocks that had served as the basement wall. She was wearing slacks, and her shoes would be ruined, but she worked her way down into the hole that had once been her house. A jagged strip of sheet metal cut into her ankle. She hissed the beginning of a cuss word then stopped herself, as if she were committing sacrilege on hallowed ground. The burnt wood crumbled under her feet, black dust rising and clogging her throat and nostrils.
She reached the spot fifteen feet from the wall where the hand mirror's surface gleamed between the twisted hulks of two rafters. She pushed a path to the mirror and picked it up, then knelt in the rubble and placed it against her heart.
When she had given the mirror to Mattie, she had told her the story of Snow White, and how the wicked stepmother had asked the mirror about beautiful women.
'Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?' Renee had said, in her most gravelly, cruel voice.
'Who, Mommy, who?' Mattie replied, bouncing her bottom on the bed, eyes wide enough to reveal white sclera all around the pupils.
Renee turned the mirror around so that Mattie could see herself, rosy lips and crooked baby teeth, softly curving nose and pink cheeks, hair as golden as her mother's, but much finer. 'Why, you are, silly,' Renee had said.
She looked up at the darkening sky. That magical moment had taken place twenty feet above her, on the second floor in a land of happily ever after. And the mirror had absorbed that moment into its family legend, so that Mattie could never look into the mirror without wrinkling her nose and saying, 'Why, you are, silly,' sometimes changing the emphasis of the words to say, 'Why, you are silly.' Renee couldn't believe the daughter who had owned the mirror was now less substantial than the twilight haze that hung in the trees.
Renee jerked the mirror up and peered into its blurred surface with the childish hope that she might catch Mattie's reflection. But the silver-backed face had slipped off with the spirit of the girl who had died in the fire.
When you die, you take all your reflections with you.
How much different Mattie's ceremony had been than the disaster with Christine's. It was more than just Jacob's absence. A coffin, even as small as the one that held Christine, carried the suggestion of a human form. Planting a loved one at least gave the illusion of renewal. Sliding a pot into the square concrete sleeve of a mausoleum wall brought no sense of completion, even after the greasy-haired man in coveralls had screwed the wrought-iron cover into place.
She tilted the mirror so she could see her own face in the dim light. She had aged, and her skin was tired and drawn. Her eyes were streaked with lightning bolts of red, her jaws clenched with tension. But she wasn't looking for physical signs of reassurance. She was searching herself to see if her face still held any hope.
'A Wells never fails,' she whispered. 'But I'm not a Wells.'
A noise came from the rear of the property, where a line of azalea and forsythia gave way to an untamed tangle of forest. Probably some dog was sniffing around, drawn by the strange smells. Maybe to its hypersensitive nose, the aroma of roasted meat still wafted-
Renee stomped back to the block wall, the mirror under her arm. She carefully perched the mirror on the grass outside the rubble, then lifted herself up. She'd scuffed the knees of her slacks, and her hands were black. She wiped her hands but the stains remained. The noise came again from the forest edge, where street-lighted gray met night black.
'Who's there?' she said. She wasn't scared. Someone who had just lost a child, had lost two children, had already faced the worst. Ordinary fear no longer had any power over her.
A stifled giggle came from the shadows. Probably one of the neighborhood kids, responding to a dare.
Betcha won't go over there, Scaredy Fraidy Baby. Betcha won't touch the house where Mattie died. Especially in the dark.
Kids had their own way of dealing with tragedy. They poked dead things with sticks, resorted to morbid humor. They scared themselves silly on purpose. They went looking for ghosts.
Isn't that what you're doing?
No. Her ghosts had dissolved, slipped through her fingers as she watched, and all she had was a bottomless mirror.
Mattie had been so brave about Christine's death. Part of it had been Mattie's ignorance of death's permanence. Christine was still so new to the world. Mattie hadn't gotten the opportunity to form a sisterly bond. The closest she had come was taking her turn holding Christine, rocking her when she suffered colic, and singing 'Hush Little Baby.'
And Mattie had, even more than Jacob, brought Renee through the foggy months of anguish. Mattie needed her. Not just for the everyday things like clean clothes and rides home from school, but for advice on what to do when Tommy Winegarden tried to kiss her on the playground. Or an explanation of how tadpoles could turn into frogs when they didn't even have any legs. Or why Jesus loved the little children but let them smother in their blankies.
The giggle came again. It hadn't been her imagination.
'Hello?' Renee called to the trees, wondering which of Mattie's friends was hiding there. Sydney, Brett, or Noelle.
The only response was a snapping of twigs and the hushed rustle of branches.
She walked toward the noise, the marred mirror held before her like a talisman.
'Don't be afraid. I just want to talk to you.'
Sydney Minter, two houses down, had come over one afternoon to play Barbies with Mattie. They both pretended dolls were really lame. Then Renee showed them how they could make a house of wooden blocks and have Barbie crash G.I. Joe's jeep into it and, afterward, Mattie's room grew loud with happy shouts and fantasized combat. Renee hadn't seen the Minters at Mattie's service.
She reached the cold fringe of the woods and tried once more. 'Come out where I can see you. I miss her, too.'
The giggle came again, and this time it carried no wariness, no hesitancy. It was followed by a low, rasping reply from a counterfeit voice: ' Wish me.'
The voice sounded electronic, as if coming from a toy. Mattie had owned a Barbie doll that allowed the owner to record bits of song so the doll could sing 'like a real rock star.' This sentence carried that same compressed, static-filled quality, as if someone had whispered into the device at close range and then played it back on an amplified setting.
Who would play such a cruel joke? No child would be so vicious to a grieving mother. Nor as creative in cunning. Renee lifted the mirror as if to hurl it in the direction of the voice or deflect the unreal mirth. 'What do you want?'
The reply came ten seconds later, from a different dark space behind the wall of trees. Again with the electronic stage voice of someone imitating a B-movie demon: 'I saw what happened.'
'What happened where?'
A pause, time for record and playback. 'The night of the fire.'
Renee fought her way among the sharp, grasping limbs of the landscaped bushes, ignoring the scratches to her skin. 'Stay where you are,' she said, her breath and heartbeat filling her ears.
She plunged into the woods, a pine branch slapping her face and making her eyes water. The canopy of leaves overhead merged into a ceiling of utter blackness, and only a few jagged strips of distant light leaked between the tree trunks. She spun, confused, trying to orient herself toward the direction of the voice.
This time, it came from behind her, deeper in the forest. 'He went through the door.'
'What door?'
Another five seconds for record and playback. 'The door that swings both ways.' The source of the voice was retreating even as it spoke. Renee couldn't tell if it was child or adult, male or female. She held her breath,
