Даниэла Стил: Finding Ashley [calibre]

“There was a fire fifty miles from here last week,” he informed her. “We’re lucky there hasn’t been any wind. Something like that can take off in a hurry. It started in a campground, but they caught it quickly.” She nodded. Fire was a concern to all of them in a summer as hot and dry as this one. “Some of the campers don’t know what they’re doing.” Melissa was careful to keep the dry brush on her property cleared in the summer months. Norm had taught her that in the beginning. He was impressed by how much she had learned, and how avidly she followed his advice. She was a responsible property owner, and an asset to the area, although few people knew her.

He left after he’d finished his iced tea, and Melissa went back to work on the door she was sanding. It was dusk when she stopped, and went inside to take a shower and wash the dust off. She made a salad for dinner. She wasn’t hungry, and didn’t like to cook. In the summer months, she ate the fruit and vegetables they grew on the property with a meal of chicken or fish now and then. She didn’t enjoy cooking, and never had, and did as little as possible. She knew that Norm was a gourmet cook, and made a hobby of it. Sometimes he brought her the vinegar or jam he made, or some delicious treat he had concocted in the state-of-the-art kitchen that he had built for himself. Hers was much more basic, although it was adequate for her needs as a single person who never had visitors or entertained.

She had made that clear to him when she hired him to remodel the house. But she enjoyed the things he brought her once in a while. Melissa didn’t have hobbies, she put all her attention and energy into the house, just as she had put it into her writing, marriage, and son before. She was a highly focused person. She had been a powerful tennis player before, but had no one to play with now.

He was adept at dodging her occasional acerbic comments about the world, or life in general. She never turned her sharp tongue on him, and he recognized her moods easily. He was good with people, and didn’t take her taciturn nature personally. He accepted that it was just the way she was, and like Phil at the hardware store, he still thought that underneath the bristles, she was a good person. She wasn’t rude to his workers, but she wasn’t warm and friendly either. She was kinder to Norm than to his employees, because he was so unfailingly nice to her. Even Melissa recognized that she wasn’t an easy person, and admitted it to him often, though she made no effort to change. He accepted her as she was, and liked her anyway. In his opinion, despite the lack of frills, he recognized that she was an honest, honorable woman, with good values, and many qualities.

—

She watched the news that night, and heard a report about another fire that had started in a campground, closer than the last one. She wondered if she should hose down the house. But she decided the fire wasn’t close enough or serious enough to worry about. That night, in bed, she woke to the sound of a windstorm and saw the trees swaying outside her windows. She got up and went out. A fierce wind had suddenly sprung up out of nowhere.

She went back to bed, turned the news on in the morning, and saw that the nearby fire had grown to alarming proportions, and the wind hadn’t died down yet. If it continued, it could push the fire in her direction. She decided to hose down the house. Norm came by and found her doing it an hour later. Her entire home was a wooden structure, as were all the outbuildings, and she was watering down the roof when he got out of his truck and walked over to her.

“I was going to offer to do that for you.” She had already done most of it, and hosed down the trees nearest the house. She wasn’t sure how much it would help if the fire came straight for them, but did it anyway.

“It sounds like a bad one,” he commented. “I’ve been listening to the news since five o’clock this morning. I hosed down my place too.”

“It’s another campground fire,” she commented, holding the hose steady in her strong hands.

He hesitated for a moment before he answered. “They suspect arson this time,” he said in a serious tone, and Melissa looked angry. She had a short fuse, and was worried about the fire, and her house.

“If it is arson, they should hang whoever started it.” Fire was their worst fear in the summer, and the most dangerous.

“If it’s arson, whoever set it will go to prison,” Norm said calmly.

“How could anyone do something like that?”

“Do you want me to start on the sheds around the property?” he asked her and she nodded, frowning.

“I’ll come with you. I’ve done everything I can here at the main house.”

She got in his truck, and together they drove to each of the outbuildings, and stopped to hose them down. She had installed water sources throughout the property and an extensive irrigation system. When they finished, Norm left to check on one of his other clients who lived closer to the fire, which was now raging, according to radio reports. They had continued listening in the truck, and the situation sounded serious. News channels in Boston reported that night on the news that a major fire was now burning in the Berkshires, spurred on by unusually high winds that hadn’t died down yet. Melissa continued listening to weather reports late into the night, and checked the fire map on her computer that was tracking the fast-moving blaze.

By midnight, she was seriously worried as she saw the fire zone growing and getting closer. There was a river and a county road between her house and the fire, and if it jumped either one of them, her property would be in immediate danger. She dozed off while looking at her computer, and at two a.m., she was awakened by a loud pounding on her front door.

She woke up with a start, and raced downstairs, still dressed, and came rapidly awake. The wind was still blowing when she opened the door and saw two deputy sheriffs she didn’t know, with an official car with flashing lights behind them.

“We’re evacuating the area,” one of the deputies said. “You need to be out as quickly as possible. The fire is heading this way.” She stood staring at them, and made a quick decision.

“Thanks for letting me know,” she said politely.

“Do you need help? Are there children in the house, animals in the barn? You can let the livestock loose, and you’ll have to let them fend for themselves.” Several people in the area were panicking about their horses, but the fire was moving too fast now to get them into trailers and drive them out. Some homeowners were refusing to leave until their horses were safe.

“I don’t have kids or animals,” she answered. “Just me.”

“Well, get out fast. Do you want us to drive you anywhere? The main road is still open, but the smaller ones are closed.” As she looked over their heads, she could see the bright orange glow of the fire in the night sky.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured them, and they left as she closed the door.

The decision she had made on the spur of the moment was that she wasn’t leaving. She didn’t want to evacuate. She was staying, to do whatever she could to save her house. She didn’t care if she died trying. She had nothing that she cared about to lose now, except her home. It was all she had, and the only thing she loved. And she hadn’t worked that hard for four years in order to abandon it now. She wasn’t afraid of the fire itself, or getting hurt, only of the damage it would do. It would have been different if Robbie had been there with her. But he wasn’t. She only had the house to worry about, and was responsible only for herself.

The fire seemed to grow minute by minute as she watched from her windows, and the air was filled with smoke and ash, which made it hard to breathe. Her truck was covered with a thin film of ash. She went out to hose down the roof again, coughing in the acrid air, and was intent on dousing the whole roof when Norm drove up a short time later. He looked unhappy to see her there, and shouted over the sound of the hose as he walked toward her.