Anna leaned against the doorframe, her heart pounding. For a few painful seconds Isabela’s words rang with a degree of convincing truth. But as the sun sank behind the rows of fruit trees, Isabela’s breathless exhortations and any pretense of sense behind them dissipated into the orange-scented evening.
The idea of Naldo losing all sense of propriety almost made her chuckle. He must have defended Anna’s presence to his sister. Told her the cook’s daughter was staying put.
A shimmer of pride in Naldo warmed her, along with the tropical evening breeze. Maybe things would work out for the best in ways she couldn’t even begin to imagine.
She certainly couldn’t predict the future, but one way or another, she was home right now. With that reassuring thought she ate her dinner, went to bed, and drifted into a heavy sleep.
The digital clock read 1:23 a.m. when she woke up. A tickle in her throat alerted her to the smell of smoke in the air.
Smoke? This house didn’t even have a fireplace.
She snapped on the light. Everything looked normal. The hum of the air conditioner drowned out other sounds as she strained to hear something. But something was wrong.
Adrenaline sneaked through her as she climbed out of bed, the acrid smell stinging her nostrils. On instinct she pulled a T-shirt and shorts over her flimsy pajamas and slipped her feet into sneakers.
The bare bulb in the hallway made her blink. She still smelled smoke, not any stronger though. Not thick even.
Nerves crackling, she tiptoed downstairs.
Then she saw it.
An orange fireball of flame framed by the kitchen window. It took a moment to figure out that it was her van, totally engulfed, flames leaping several feet into the air and sending a shower of sparks into the black night.
She grabbed the phone and dialed 911, her breath coming in hard gasps. She struggled to stay calm as she described the emergency, but as soon as she hung up the phone she let out a shriek of terror as she ran for the garden hose.
Where was it? She could barely remember the location of the outdoor faucet in the smoke-thickened darkness. The roar of the fire was deafening. Her heart flew to her throat as she realized that if the van exploded the house would catch fire. The burning vehicle was parked only a few yards away, right on the front lawn.
Lucky thing she hadn’t been able to afford to refill the tank, she thought grimly, as she struggled with the tangled garden hose and the corroded brass knob in the writhing orange light of the fire. It took a full minute to coax out a stream of water, and that pathetic trickle looked to be no match for the seething, crackling mass of light and sound.
She half gasped, half screamed as she noticed the first trail of fire streaking into the grass. Then another, and another. Flying sparks and flames from the van leapt into the dry, long grass now parched by the nearby inferno.
She turned the hose on the stray embers and they extinguished easily, but as soon as she put one out, three more sprang up, leaping and creeping closer and closer to the cottage.
“Hey!” A shout made her jump. Naldo ran toward her, his face tightened against the heat and light of the flames. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. I just smelled smoke.”
“Give me that.” He grabbed the hose and started to lay a line of water around the side of the van nearest to the house. But at that moment the windshield exploded.
Naldo hurled himself at her, crushing her hard against the ground, knocking the breath from her lungs. Her knees and elbow stung. “Stay down. The gas tank might blow.”
“It’s empty,” she gasped, under the weight of him. “But there’s other stuff in there. All my mom’s things.”
Her heart stuttered as she thought of all the precious things she’d packed, immolated by the cruel flames.
Naldo scrambled to his feet and pulled her roughly to hers. “I called the fire department, but they’re fifteen minutes away. Ricky’s getting water from the irrigation house; he should be here any minute. What happened?”
Anna stamped out a spark in the grass, then another, as Naldo poured more water on the scorched grass.
“I don’t know. I woke up and smelled smoke.” The heat of the fire was becoming unbearable, like fierce midday sun on unprotected skin. “The van was already engulfed.”
She stamped and stamped at a stubborn patch of smoldering grass, only to notice too late that a thick ember had leapt from the van onto the grass in front of the steps. In an instant the ancient wood steps ignited, flames licking along the paint and into the dry wood.
Naldo ran forward and poured water on the flames, but the thin stream from the hose was no match for the burst of flame that ran up the wood trim and ignited the small decorative cornice above the door with a loud whoosh.
Anna stamped at the grass, losing ground against the hail of sparks and streams of fire spreading across the lawn in all directions.
The front window of the house exploded, hurling glass at them, and she screamed as she threw up her arms to cover her eyes. Fine particles scratched her skin.
“Are you injured?” Concern contorted Naldo’s features.
“Oh, my God. The flames are inside.” Through the black hole of the broken window she could see flames roaring up the old flowered curtains.
“Ricky! Drive it right up here.” Naldo gestured furiously as a tractor came into view, pulling a big plastic water tank on wheels. Other workers came pelting into view through the thick black smoke, carrying buckets and shovels.
“It’s spreading across the road, toward the groves,” Ricky shouted through the din of the fire.
“Make a firebreak. Don’t let it get into the groves,” Naldo shouted back. He seized Anna’s arm and pulled her close, his voice right in her ear. “It’s probably too late for the cottage. They have to protect the groves. You and I, we’ll do what we can.”
“Oh, God.” An upper-story window blew out and flames shot through the vent of the air conditioner. Naldo tugged her away from the rain of glass and sparks, around to the still dark rear of the house.
Her hands shook. “The cookbook. It’s upstairs. I took it up there to read. And the jewels, they’re in the attic.”
“There’s nothing we can do about them.”
“I have to save them. I can go up through the back door.” She stared at the black rectangle of glass, pulse pounding in her head as adrenaline flooded her limbs. No flames had reached this side of the house yet. There was still a chance.
“No.” Naldo seized her arm roughly. “It could go up at any moment.” He had already turned the hose onto the dry grass behind the house. Embers were flying through the air thicker and faster as the fire grew. Unmowed and scraggly, the grass pricked her ankles as she hopped from one foot to another, or beat the grass with her bare hands.
“I should have let Ricky mow it,” she said quietly, biting back harsh tears rising in her throat.
“Yes.” Naldo focused on creating a strip of wet grass about ten yards away from the house, between the fire and the small grove of Summer’s Shadow trees his father had planted behind it.
Then he grabbed a shovel from the small tool shed and started to dig a trench behind the area. In no time he’d dug a wide, shallow firebreak across the lawn. Then he started on another. She soaked the grass as far as the hose would reach.
She looked up with a start as the high-pitched wail of the first fire engine pierced the roar of the flames and the roar of panic in her brain. “The fire department is here!”
But already the upper windows now glowed orange with flame.
A window under the roof blew out with little more than a whoosh and orange flames licked the gutter.
Unshed tears tightened her throat as panic pounded through her. It was all going up in the merciless rush of flames. The house, the jewels, the cookbook-everything that tied her to Naldo’s world.
