Page 37 of Heart of Stone
“Where’s your mom?”
She wriggled to free herself from my arms. “My mom, she’s still in her room. She blocked the door.” Her sobs were strangled by a coughing fit. I handed her off to Slade. “Take her outside now.”
“No, man.” Slade’s voice wavered. “You need to get out too.”
“I’ll be right out.” A large slice of the family room ceiling lost its tenuous grip on the beams. It fell to the floor right next to us. Sparks flicked off of Slade’s arms as he held tightly to Amy.
“Get her out of here!” I yelled.
Slade dashed through the ashes and flames and out of the house. I forged a path through the smoke back to the hallway. I reached her mom’s bedroom door. It was too hot to touch. I braced myself against the opposite wall, the searing plaster was blistering the skin on my back as I shoved the door with both feet. The heat and smoke and lack of air in my lungs made it take several good pushes. More smoke billowed out from her room. I lowered my face and squeezed inside. I shoved the dresser away from the door. The bed was completely engulfed in flames.
I stumbled back to avoid being caught by them and tripped hard over something. My tailbone smacked the dresser. I swept the smoke from in front of my face, and through the hazy clearing, I saw Amy’s mom stretched out on the floor. Her robe was singed and her face was still as death. I jumped up and swept her up into my arms. She felt like a ragdoll, lifeless and filled with cotton. I could hear sirens growing louder. Red spinning lights lit up the curtain of smoke, making it glow red like the surrounding flames.
My chest, throat and eyes burned as if someone was taking a blowtorch to them. I crossed the front room in four big steps. The outside air, even clouded with smoke, felt like cool water rushing over my singed skin. Fire trucks and the flashing lights of police lit up the street making the whole damn scene like a clip from a movie.
The top two steps were glowing with heat. I stepped over them and busted through the shield of ash and smoke that circled the house. Dozens of people had gathered on the sidewalk and street to watch. There was yelling and the firemen were calling orders to each other. A loud cheer went up as I stepped onto the front lawn. I could hear Amy’s small cry as it squeaked through the chaos.
My eyes followed the direction of the sound. She was yanking off her oxygen mask. She pushed away the restraining hand of the medic and came racing toward me. Her mom hadn’t moved one muscle since I’d picked her up from the floor. When my mom died of an overdose in her bed, I had grabbed her and tried to make her sit up. I was a kid, and in my shock I’d convinced myself that if I sat her up, she’d start breathing again. But as I held her, I knew I was holding death. I looked down at the woman in my arms. I was holding death again.
Amy leaned down over her mom’s face and kissed her. “Mom, wake up.” She patted her ash covered face. “Mom.”
A medic took her from my arms. He was a big guy, maybe thirty and the look he shot me as he took Amy’s mom from me assured me he knew what holding death felt like. He carried her to the waiting gurney.
“I was so scared—” she sobbed as she fell into my arms. “Hunter—” her words broke off.
I led her down to the ambulances. Slade was sitting on the back of one getting some burns treated and wearing an oxygen mask.
He looked at me over the mask. I shook my head just slightly, not wanting to let Amy see. She held tightly to my arm but was in too much shock to notice. But Slade saw. He dropped his face and his shoulders sank down.
Mr. Ames walked up to us. We hadn’t spoken in a long time. He was one of the neighbors who liked to look the other way when one of us drove up.
He stood in front of me and looked me right in the eye for the first time. He looked pretty shaken. “It’s funny, you form an opinion of someone and then something, ignorance, I suppose, makes it stick as if it is written in stone. I’m sorry, boys. I had it all wrong.” He stuck out his hand for me to shake. I took it. “We should have done more—” he said with a crack in his voice. “Back when you boys were young—” He turned his face for a second.
I patted his shoulder.
The medic walked up. “We need to look at these burns, Mr. Stone.”
Amy patted my arm. “I’m going to watch them work on my mom. I need to be there when she wakes up.” A nervous laugh rolled from her mouth. “She’ll be convinced the aliens did this, and I don’t want her to freak out.”
I glanced at the medic with a questioning look. Just as I had done, he shook his head slightly to let me know what I already knew. “I just need a minute,” I told him. He nodded.
Amy turned to walk away. I wrapped my arm around herwaist and pulled her back against my chest.
“What are you doing, Hunter? I need to be there. She’ll be scared to death when she comes to.”
I picked her up into my arms and carried her past all the spectators and to Mr. Ames’s front yard, away from the chaos. She wriggled in my arms. “What are you doing?” she asked, sounding more frantic. “Hunter?” Tears fell from her eyes. She kicked out and pushed free of my arms. I grabbed her before she ran. Again, I pulled her back against my chest and wrapped my arms around her.
“No,” she cried. “No!” She dropped to her knees and I knelt down behind her. “No. You’re wrong.” She pounded my arm with her fist, but I held her. She crumpled in front of me and I spun her around and pulled her against me.
“She was humming this morning,” she sobbed. Her tears ran down my chest as she pushed her face against me. “She was humming show tunes.”
I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight.
TWENTY-FOUR
AMY
It was a dreary, foggy day. I’d hoped for a better one for my mom’s send-off. She deserved at least that, some sun to warm the breeze as it carried her ashes away. The five of us, the brothers and my best friend, Jade, my only family now, stood along the starboard side of theDurangoand watched the gray soot scatter over the choppy, emerald green water. The ashes stayed on the surface for just a brief second giving it an almost iridescent sheen before dissolving into the cold, briny water for good. Now she’d be with my dad. It was what she’d wanted. I could still remember the conversation well because, like the morning before her death, she’d had one of those completely rational moments. We were eating some donuts I’d brought home from the store, and she told me that when her time came she wanted to be cremated and her ashes scattered on the sea. She added that she was holding out hope that dad would be a nicer entity in the afterlife.
