Bella Bella Bella.
2 Travis
Six Weeks Earlier
Carolina Beach, North Carolina
YOU KNOW HOW EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE happiness kind of comes over you like a bolt of lightning, surprising you so much it makes you laugh out loud? That’s how I felt as I worked on the molding for the kitchen cabinets of the oceanfront house. I’d been doing construction four years and always thought of it as a job I hated, just something I had to do to put food on the table for me and Bella and my mom. But construction jobs were hard to find at the beach these days, especially in Carolina Beach, which wasn’t exactly overflowing with high-end properties even though the ocean was just as blue and the sand just as white as the rest of the coast. Plus, it would always be my home. The foreman on my last job watched me work on a deck addition for a few days and he must have seen something in me because he asked me to do some custom work inside the house. He was teaching me stuff, like the detailing on this molding. He was grooming me. I didn’t know I was learning skills that, on this late August day, would make me laugh out loud when I realized I was actually enjoying the work. I was glad I was alone in the kitchen so I didn’t have to explain my reaction to any of the guys.
I was on the ladder working on the molding when I heard sirens in the distance. A lot of them, but far away and echoey, hardly loud enough to cut through the sound of the ocean, and I didn’t pay all that much attention. After a while, they became part of the white noise of the sea as I kept working. I was climbing down from the ladder when I heard someone rushing up the stairs to the living room.
“Travis!” Jeb, one of my coworkers, shouted as he ran into the kitchen. He was red-faced and winded, bending over in the middle of the room to catch his breath. “It’s your house, man!” he said. “It’s on fire!”
I dropped my hammer and ran for the stairs. “Are they safe?” I called over my shoulder.
“Don’t know, man. I just heard and ran here to tell—”
I didn’t hear the rest of what he said as I nearly slid down the stairs, stopping a fall with my hand on the banister. My brain was going crazy. Was it the screwed-up electrical in the living room? Or one of those scented candles my mother liked to burn to get the musty smell out of the air of the old cottage? Or maybe it was her damn cigarettes, though she was careful. She wasn’t the type to fall asleep smoking, especially not with Bella in the house.
Bella. Oh, shit. Let them be okay.
I ran out to my van and as I turned it around to head toward my house, I saw smoke in the sky. It was the pale gray of a fire that had burned itself out, not the black you’d see if the fire was still raging, and that gave me hope. The gray billowed into the sky and then hung in an air current drifting toward the mainland. I made the four miles to my house in three minutes flat.
There were two fire trucks, a couple of cop cars and one ambulance in front of the charred shell of the small cottage that had been my home for the past eight years and would never be my home again. Right then, I didn’t care. I jumped out of my van and headed straight for the ambulance. Ridley Strub, a cop I’d known since we were in middle school together, showed up out of nowhere and grabbed my arm.
“They took your mother to the hospital,” he said. “Bella’s in the ambulance. She’s going to be fine.”
“Let me go!” I pulled away from him and ran to the open rear of the ambulance, jumping inside without waiting for an invitation.
“Daddy!” Bella’s cry was muffled by an oxygen mask, but it was strong enough that I knew she was okay. I sat on the edge of the stretcher and pulled her into my arms.
“You’re all right, baby.” My throat was so tight that baby came out like a whisper. I looked up at the EMT, a girl of about twenty. “She’s okay, right?”
“She’s fine,” the girl said. “Just needed a little O2 as a precaution, but—”
“Can we take the mask off?” I asked. I wanted to see her face. To check her all over for damage. I wanted to make sure the only thing she’d suffered was a scare. I noticed she had her stuffed lamb clutched tight in one arm, and on the floor of the ambulance I spotted her little pink purse. The two things she was never without.
“I want it off, Daddy!” Bella picked at the edge of the plastic mask where it pressed against her cheek. She hiccupped like she always did when she cried.
The paramedic leaned over and slipped the mask from Bella’s face. “We’ll leave the O2 monitor on her finger and see how she does,” she said.
I smoothed my hands over my daughter’s brown hair. I could smell the smoke on her. “You’re okay,” I said. “You’re perfect.”
She hiccupped again. “Nana fell down in the living room,” she said. “Smoke comed out of the windows.”
“Came,” I said. “That must’ve been scary.” My mother fell? I remembered Ridley saying she was in the hospital. I looked at the EMT again. She was checking some monitor on the wall above the stretcher. “My mother,” I said. “Is she okay?”
The EMT glanced toward the open doors and I didn’t miss the relief in her face when she saw Ridley climbing into the ambulance. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Need to see you a sec, Trav,” he said.
“What?” I didn’t look up from Bella, who was clutching my hand like she’d never let it go.
“Come outside with me,” he said.
Mom. I didn’t want to go with him. I didn’t want to hear whatever he was going to tell me.
“Go ahead,” the EMT said. “I’ll be here with Bella.”
“Daddy!” Bella clung harder to my hand as I stood up, knocking the monitor off her finger. “Don’t go away!” She tried to scramble off the stretcher, but I held her by the shoulders and looked into her gray eyes.
“You have to stay here and I’ll be right back,” I said. I knew she’d stay. She always did what I told her. Nearly always, anyway.
“How many minutes?” she asked.
“Five at the most,” I promised, glancing at my watch. I’d never once broken a promise to her. My father’d never broken a promise to me, and I remembered how that felt, knowing I could always trust him no matter what.
I leaned down to hug her, kissing the top of her head. The smell of smoke just about seared my lungs.
Outside the ambulance, Ridley led me to the corner of the lot next door, away from the fire trucks and all the tourists who’d gathered to watch somebody else’s disaster.
“It’s about your mom,” he said. “Neighbor said she was outside hanging laundry when the fire started and it went up like a … just real fast. Your mom ran in for Bella and she was either overcome by smoke or maybe had a heart attack. Either way, she fell and—”
“Is she okay?” I wanted him to get to the point.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Trav. She didn’t make it.”
“Didn’t make it?” I asked. The words weren’t getting through to me.
“She died on the way to the hospital.” Ridley reached a hand toward my arm but didn’t touch me. Like he was just holding his hand there in case I started to keel over.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Bella’s fine. How can Bella