The hall lights behind her and the purple glow of twilight at the windows did not adequately illuminate the room, but she saw that the remains of the furniture had been cleaned out; the place was empty but for the reeking ghost of the fire. The floor was blackened by soot and charred, though it looked structurally sound. The walls were smoke-damaged. The closet doors had been reduced to ashes but for a few burnt chunks of wood clinging to the hinges, which had partially melted. Both windows had blown out or been broken by those fleeing the flames; now those gaps were temporarily covered by sections of clear-plastic dropcloths stapled to the walls. Fortunately for the other kids at McIlroy, the fire had burned upward rather than outward, eating through the ceiling. She looked overhead into the mansion’s attic where massive, blackened beams were dimly visible in the gloom. Apparently the flames had been stopped before they’d broken through to the roof, for she could not see the sky.
She was breathing laboriously, noisily, not only because of the exhausting trip from Caswell but because a vise of panic was squeezing her chest painfully, making it difficult to inhale. And every breath of the bitterly scented air brought the nauseating taste of carbon.
From that moment in her room at Caswell when she had heard of the fire at McIlroy, she had known the cause, though she had not wanted to admit to the knowledge. Tammy Hinsen once had been caught with a can of lighter fluid and matches with which she planned to set herself afire. On hearing of that intended self-immolation, Laura had known that Tammy had been serious about it because immolation seemed such a right form of suicide for her, an externalization of the inner fire that had been consuming her for years.
Please, God, she was alone in the room when she did it, please.
Gagging on the stink and taste of destruction, Laura turned away from the fire-blasted room and stepped into the third-floor corridor.
“Laura?”
She looked up and saw Rebecca Bogner. Laura’s breath came and went in wrenching inhalations, shuddering exhalations, but somehow she croaked their names: “Ruth . . . Thelma?”
Rebecca’s bleak expression denied the possibility that the twins had escaped unharmed, but Laura repeated the precious names, and in her ragged voice she heard a pathetic, beseeching note.
“Down there,” Rebecca said, pointing toward the north end of the hall. “The next to the last room on the left.”
With a sudden rush of hope, Laura ran to the indicated room. Three beds were empty, but in the fourth, revealed by the light of a reading lamp, was a girl lying on her side, facing the wall.
“Ruth? Thelma?”
The girl on the bed slowly rose—one of the Ackersons, unharmed. She wore a drab, badly wrinkled, gray dress; her hair was in disarray; her face was puffy, her eyes moist with tears. She took a step toward Laura but stopped as if the effort of walking was too great.
Laura rushed to her, hugged her.
With her head on Laura’s shoulder, face against Laura’s neck, she spoke at last in a tortured voice. “Oh, I wish it’d been me, Shane. If it had to be one of us, why couldn’t it have been me?”
Until the girl spoke, Laura had assumed that she was Ruth.
Refusing to accept that horror, Laura said, “Where’s Ruthie?”
“Gone. Ruthie’s gone. I thought you knew, my Ruthie’s dead.”
Laura felt as if something deep within her had torn. Her grief was so powerful that it precluded tears; she was stunned, numb.
For the longest time they just held each other. Twilight faded coward night. They moved to the bed and sat on the edge.
A couple of kids appeared at the door. They evidently shared the room with Thelma, but Laura waved them away.
Looking at the floor, Thelma said, “I woke up to this shrieking, such a horrible shrieking . . . and all this light so bright it hurt my eves. And then I realized the room was on fire. Tammy was on fire. Blazing like a torch. Thrashing in her bed, blazing and shrieking …”