Finally, Wyatt leads me to the car that will take me back to the motel. I get inside and the drive is a blur. The nighttime landscape of the panhandle looks like a sea of inky darkness in the night. I roll down the window and gaze heavenward. The stars prick the black velvet background like pinpoint holes letting sunlight into an otherwise darkened space. I roll down the window and my hand finds its way to the breeze, riding it like a wave all the way back into Guymon.
The agent that takes me back arranges for another key to my room. I go inside. My belongings are still on the ranch, I realize. My cell phone. My car is out there. Everything that I need to function in society. But I’m too exhausted to care.
I get in the shower and turn it as scalding hot as I can stand. The steam swirls around my body, enveloping it for a moment in whatever protection it has to offer. Stepping out into the room, the air feels icy. Refreshing. I wrap my hair in a towel, and I turn on the television.
The burning compound is on every news channel. Images of people fleeing, the firefight that went on, and the flame-swallowed buildings replay on a loop on each channel. Finally, I turn it off. Unwilling to watch anymore of what I’ve already lived through.
I turn out the lights and climb into bed. The sheets are hardly thousand thread count at a luxury hotel, but they feel amazing. They are clean and they are cool. And that’s all I need.
My eyes shut on their own accord, exhaustion taking its toll. I force them to stay shut, even when the image of the man burning alive, inhaling the ash of his own flaming skin, won’t let me rest.
It dawns on me that this will probably be with me for a while. The whole thing. And then I think of Tom. The whole thing is surreal. The way his life went. The way it ended. The fact that it ended. It doesn’t seem possible.
But I know, better than anyone, that death is possible.
And it comes for all of us in the end.
IONE
3 MONTHS LATER
It’s Friday night, and that means movie night. Just the three of us. The two adults doing their best to keep Sasha pacified enough to finish a feature length film. Usually, it works. Tonight, she’s fussy.
Birdie picks her up from the couch where she lays between us.
“I think someone needs a diaper change,” she says with a smile. She holds the little girl up in the air, raising and lowering her to Sasha’s delight. The baby squeals, the first joyous noise she’s made since I got here tonight. I take a sip of my wine, glad that I don’t have to worry about the alcohol content of my breast milk.
Despite how adorable Sasha is, I’m never having children.
Birdie takes the baby and leaves the room. I seize the opportunity to refill my wine glass. It’s my second and will be my last for the evening. Birdie has paused the documentary we were watching—something on serial killers—in a moment where Jeffrey Dahmer’s face looks so ordinary. I look at him, frozen in time on the screen across the bar top from me. There’s nothing about him that seems like a serial killer.
And then it dawns on me how little we really know people.
How little I really knew Tom.
Or perhaps I did know him, and I just didn’t want to acknowledge who he really was.
Birdie returns to the room, Sasha in tow.
She sighs as she sits down on the couch with the baby. The two of us sit silently for a moment.
“Sometimes I can’t believe I’m a mom,” she says. “Bet you never pictured that.” She laughs. It’s high and nervous. I can tell she wants me to make her feel better.
“Life is strange,” I smile.
She nods. I reach for her hand.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” I tell her. I look at her. Maybe it’s the second glass of wine, but I feel particularly happy that Birdie made it out alive.
She spent a week in the ICU after the incident at the ranch. Finally, they let her move to a normal room and shortly after that she got to come home. Now she lives in Norman, only a few miles from me, with the baby and the baby’s father.
Ollie.
The two of them fell in love shortly after the ranch was built. Ollie came out right after Birdie made the land purchase. The two of them spent long hours working together, building Tom’s dream. And they soon discovered that they had dreams of their own. Before long, Birdie was pregnant. They were terrified, she told me. Tom never once expressed any notion that the baby might not be his, even though he had to have known it.
We sit together on the couch in silence for a while. It’s comfortable. Companionable. It’s the kind of silence that two old friends can lean into and relax against. It’s shelter in the storm. And I’m so glad to have that back.
Birdie puts the documentary back on and we watch for a few minutes. Then the door lock clicks open, and Ollie comes in.
“Hey,” he says to the two of us.
He swoops baby Sasha up and kisses her until she giggles once more. It seems that Ollie always puts her in a better mood.
He then kisses Birdie and nods at me.
“Ione, good to see you,” he
