ran across the field from the gym. “It’s your grandmother’s house!” Kelly gasped as she came up to Matt. “We could see it from where we were practicing!”
For a moment Matt didn’t seem to comprehend what Kelly was saying, but then, as the smoke from Burlington Avenue billowed up, he came to life. Grabbing Kelly’s hand, he started running, Pete Arneson and Eric Holmes right behind him.
* * *
“LET GO OF me!” emily moore demanded, struggling to pull her arm free from the fireman’s grip. “It’s my house! Don’t you understand? It’s mine!”
“I know it’s yours, Mrs. Moore,” Sean McCallum replied. He cast an eye around the quickly gathering crowd in search of the old woman’s daughter. “But I can’t let go of you unless you promise you won’t try to go in!”
Emily’s eyes flashed dangerously. “I can go in if I want to! It’s my house!”
“No, you can’t, Mrs. Moore,” McCallum said doggedly. “Not until the fire’s out and we know it’s safe.”
“I have to go in,” the old woman insisted. “I have to — ”
Before she could finish, Matt Moore appeared, panting and sweating from his dash from the practice field. “Gram? Gram, what happened? Are you okay?”
“Mrs. Moore is your grandmother?” Sean McCallum asked. When Matt nodded, he eased Emily toward the teenager, finally releasing his grip on her arm. “She’s trying to go into the house. Make sure she doesn’t.”
Before Matt could reply, the fireman was gone, disappearing around the corner of the house toward the kitchen.
“What happened, Gram?” Matt asked again.
Emily’s eyes were still fixed on the house, and when she took an unsteady step toward it, Matt reached out to steady her. She recoiled from his touch and turned her angry gaze on him.
“Don’t touch me!” she cried. “Don’t — ” Her words died on her lips, and her eyes seemed to lose some of their anger. “I know you,” she finally said. “You’re — You’re — ”
“Matt,” he prompted, dropping his voice so no one would hear him having to remind her who he was.
“Joan’s brat!” Emily hissed the two words, and now it was Matt who recoiled.
“I’m your grandson, Gram,” he said. Just as Sean McCallum had done a few moments ago, Matt scanned the crowd in search of help in dealing with the old woman. “You know me, Gram,” he went on. “It’s Matt! You’ve known me all my life!”
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Emily suddenly demanded, her eyes narrowing to suspicious slits as she peered into Matt’s face.
“M-Me?” Matt stammered.
Emily took a halting step forward, jabbing at his chest with her bony forefinger. “You did it! Don’t lie to me! It was you!”
Matt could see Pete Arneson and Eric Holmes standing behind his grandmother. Both of them were grinning, and while Pete grotesquely rolled his eyes, Eric mockingly twirled a finger around his ear.
“If you two jerks don’t want to help, why don’t you just go away?” Kelly Conroe said to them as she moved close to Matt and his grandmother. “You might be a little confused, too, if it was your house that was burning.” As their grins faded, she turned to Emily Moore. “It’s going to be all right, Mrs. Moore,” she said, gently taking Emily’s hand in her own. “We’re going to take care of you.”
The old woman peered into Kelly’s soft blue eyes. “Cynthia?” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
“It’s Kelly,” Matt replied. “You know her, Gram — Kelly Conroe.”
But Emily didn’t seem to hear him. Her eyes remained fixed on Kelly, and now she was holding both of the girl’s hands, her fingers digging deep into Kelly’s flesh. Her lips worked for a moment, then she found the words. “She did it, didn’t she?”
“D-Did what?”
Emily’s rheumy eyes shifted to the burning house. “She did it,” she muttered so softly that Kelly and Matt couldn’t be certain she was speaking to them. “It was her. I know it was her.”
Seeing his mother and stepfather coming across the lawn, Matt breathed a silent sigh of relief.
“Mother?” Joan Hapgood cried, her voice reflecting the relief she felt as she spotted Emily. “Mother, what happened? Are you all right?”
The sound of her daughter’s voice brought Emily out of the reverie into which she’d fallen, and she wheeled around to face Joan. “Now look what you’ve done!” she said.
Emily’s voice rose querulously. “How many times have I told you?” she demanded. “How many times have I told you not to leave the skillet on the stove?”
Joan’s heart skipped a beat as she realized what must have happened. How close had her mother come to burning herself up entirely? And what had she been doing cooking at three-thirty in the afternoon in the first place? But she knew better than to try to argue. Better just to try to calm the old woman down. She glanced at the house, where the smoke had given way to steam and the fire appeared to be under control. “It’s all right, Mother,” she said. “Whatever happened, it’s almost over with. Everything’s going to be all right.”
But Emily Moore wasn’t about to be appeased. “You did it on purpose!” she accused. “Don’t think I don’t know… don’t think you can fool me — ”
Joan looked beseechingly at her husband, and Bill moved closer, laying a placating hand on his mother-in- law’s shoulder. “It’s going to be fine, Emily,” he assured her. “They almost have the fire out, and it doesn’t look like it got past the kitchen.”
Emily brushed Bill’s hand away as if it were a mosquito buzzing around her. “You don’t care! None of you care!” Her gaze shifted back to Joan. “You’re protecting her! That’s all you’re doing! Just protecting her!” Her voice was rising again, and Joan was acutely aware that the crowd of Emily’s neighbors had fallen silent to listen.
“Nobody’s trying to protect anybody,” Joan tried to assure her. “Whatever happened, it was just an accident.”
Emily adamantly shook her head. “It wasn’t an accident! You did it on purpose!”
Again Joan cast her husband a pleading look. “Help me get her into the car.” With Matt trailing behind, Bill and Joan led Emily Moore to Joan’s Range Rover. “I’m going to take you home, Mother. You’ll stay with us until we decide what to do.” They were at the car now, but suddenly Emily balked.
“No! I have to stay here — I have to be here when Cynthia comes home!”
As Emily made a move to turn away from the Range Rover, Joan’s hands closed gently but firmly on the old woman’s thin shoulders, and when she spoke, her voice showed none of the frustration she was feeling: even when the house was burning down, her mother was still obsessed with Cynthia. “Cynthia’s not coming home, Mother,” she said softly. “You know she’s not.”
Joan’s words struck Emily like a physical blow. She staggered for a moment, seemed about to topple over, and both Matt and Bill reached out to support her. But then she rallied, and her eyes glowed with anger again.
“Don’t ever say that!” she commanded. “Don’t you dare ever say that!” But finally, exhausted as much by the confrontation with her daughter as by the fire that had preceded it, Emily allowed herself to be helped into the backseat of the Range Rover. As they drove away, though, she turned to look back at her house once more. The kitchen window was broken, the white siding blackened with smoke. “What will she do?” she asked, her voice breaking. “What will Cynthia do when she comes and I’m not there?”
Finally, Joan’s own self-control gave way, and she turned around to face Emily. “Cynthia won’t do anything at all, Mother,” she said. “She’s dead, remember? Cynthia’s been dead for years!” Regretting her words almost as soon as she spoke them, Joan turned back, and for several long moments silence hung in the car. As Bill Hapgood turned through a pair of wrought-iron gates and started up the winding driveway toward the house that sat in the midst of the three hundred acres that had been his family’s home for five generations, Emily seemed totally unaware of where she was. But as the house finally came into view, she suddenly spoke.
“She’s not dead,” she said. “Not Cynthia. Not my perfect Cynthia.”
