Chương 2
He did not.
“Theo.”
His eyes found hers.
“I need you to put your arms around my neck.”
His face changed.
The fear became something worse.
Understanding.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You can’t carry me downstairs.”
“Well, that’s rude.”
Even then, with smoke making every breath hurt, he gave a little broken laugh.
Evelyn slipped one arm behind his back and the other beneath his knees.
Theo had grown. That was the first thing she thought when she lifted him.
Not how heavy.
How grown.
A year ago she could still pick him up from the floor when he transferred badly. Now his shoulder nearly reached hers. The braces added weight. His body went stiff with fear.
“Hold me.”
He locked both arms around her neck.
Evelyn stood.
Her right knee screamed.
“Oh, hell.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You said hell.”
“Fire exemption.”
She left the wheelchair.
That would bother her later.
For weeks she would remember the black chair sitting alone in the orange room, its wheels shining in the firelight, and feel as though she had abandoned something alive.
Now there was only the stairway.
She carried Theo through the gallery.
Halfway there, a ceiling light burst above them.
Theo buried his face in her shoulder.
Evelyn kept moving.
At the stairs, she had to change her grip. Her hands were shaking. Sweat ran down her back beneath the dark gray uniform she had complained about wearing to the gala because Margaret’s event coordinator had insisted every domestic employee look “traditional.”
Evelyn had asked what traditional meant.
The woman had said, “You know. Elegant service.”
Evelyn had looked down at the white apron they had given her.
“I haven’t worn one of these since 2004.”
The coordinator had smiled without hearing the objection.
Now the apron was black at the edges from smoke.
Theo whispered, “Don’t drop me.”
“I am offended you would even say that.”
“You dropped the pie.”
“That was one pie.”
“It was a big pie.”
“Theo.”
“Sorry.”
“Hold on.”
She stepped onto the first stair.
Going down was worse.
She could not see more than a few feet. Theo’s weight pulled her forward. Her knee threatened to collapse every time she lowered herself to the next step.
On the sixth stair she slipped.
Her hip struck the railing.
Theo cried out.
Evelyn caught herself with one hand.
For a second they hung there together, his weight dragging her toward the staircase, her fingers locked around the metal rail.
Then someone appeared below them.
A young man in a white catering jacket.
It was Jamal Carter, one of the banquet servers.
He had come back in.
“Give him to me!”
“No.”
“Evelyn!”
“Get behind me.”
“This is not the time for you to be stubborn.”
“This is exactly when I’m stubborn.”
Jamal climbed toward them anyway.
Between the two of them, they got Theo down.
At the bottom of the staircase, a burst of heat swept through the hall.
Jamal coughed and bent double.
Evelyn shifted Theo higher against her chest.
“Can you move?”
Jamal nodded.
“Then move.”
They crossed the entrance hall.
Outside, the crowd had pulled farther back.
Margaret stood near the foot of the steps.
When Evelyn emerged carrying Theo, Margaret made a sound Evelyn had never heard from her before.
Not a word.
A sound.
She ran forward.
Behind Evelyn, something gave way inside the house.
The noise was enormous.
Guests screamed. A burning section of decorative timber fell from above the portico and struck the stone near the doorway. Sparks scattered across the steps they had crossed only seconds earlier.
Jamal grabbed Evelyn’s shoulder and pulled.
They stumbled onto the grass.
Theo’s arms were still locked around Evelyn’s neck.
Margaret reached them.
“Theo.”
He did not let go.
“Theo, sweetheart.”
He turned his face toward his grandmother but kept both arms around Evelyn.
Margaret stopped.
The expression that passed across her face was quiet enough that almost no one noticed it.
Evelyn did.
She saw shock first.
Then gratitude.
Then something more complicated.
Shame, perhaps.
Or recognition.
The fire department arrived in force less than two minutes later. Engines filled the drive, red lights washing over white tablecloths, overturned champagne flutes, and the wet faces of people who had spent the evening discussing donations over halibut and champagne.
Paramedics took Theo.
He fought them until Evelyn sat beside the stretcher.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she told him.
“You said that before.”
“When?”
“Hospital.”
Evelyn knew what he meant.
After his spinal surgery, when he was six, she had stayed until nearly four in the morning because his father’s flight from London had been delayed and Margaret had gone home to change clothes and never returned.
“I remember.”
Theo looked at her carefully.
“No, you don’t.”
“I do.”
“What did I eat?”
“You refused Jell-O because you said it tasted like somebody had described strawberries to water.”
A paramedic laughed.
Theo relaxed.
“Okay.”
His oxygen mask fogged when he breathed.
Evelyn looked toward the house.
Water arced over the lawn from two hoses. Firefighters moved in dark silhouettes against windows that had once reflected chandeliers and family portraits. The east roof was burning now.
Margaret stood alone several yards away.
Her gown was black.
Her diamonds caught the emergency lights.
She seemed strangely small.
At the hospital, Evelyn learned she had a sprained wrist, smoke inhalation, a bruised hip, and a second-degree burn along the outer edge of her left forearm.
Theo had smoke inhalation and a shallow burn on one hand.
They were both, according to the emergency physician, extraordinarily lucky.
Evelyn disliked the word.
Lucky was finding twenty dollars in an old coat.
Lucky was an empty subway seat.
Lucky did not feel like carrying a child through a burning house while wondering whether your knee would fail.
But she was too tired to argue.
At three-thirty in the morning, a nurse brought her coffee in a paper cup.
It was terrible.
May you like
Evelyn drank all of it.
Margaret arrived twenty minutes later wearing borrowed hospital scrub pants beneath her evening coat. Someone had removed her jewelry.
