By Design (14 page)

“Shrimp puffs, anyone?” At her guests’ unanimously stricken looks, she muttered, “Oh. Sorry.”

Emmie retreated to the kitchen to find her mop and bucket, just in case all did not go well in the bathroom. By the time she emerged from the broom closet with the necessary cleanup items, she found herself facing a mass exodus. Nearly everyone had their coats on or were lined up to pull them out of the closet. Her guests froze, guilty, as she stared at them.

“Weather’s getting bad, sweetheart,” Travis rumbled. “It’s gonna be rough going to get home. You understand.”

Emmie could never be mad at Travis, so she willingly fell into his big bear hug when he stretched out his arms, deeply inhaling the scent of his leather coat. “Drive safe,” was all she said. “Wouldn’t want anything to happen to John, would we?”

Travis chuckled. “And deny Mrs. Polschuk a second chance to take him apart? Never.”

Wilma barely nodded to her before he dashed out the door, followed by the rest of her guests, in a veritable stampede. Not that she blamed them. Heck, if it weren’t her party, she’d be beating a hasty retreat as well.

Bob Brewster and Concetta didn’t run out the door, and Emmie appreciated the older generation’s better manners.

As her father helped Concetta with her coat, he said to Emmie, “You’ll be all right here?”

“What, with the barfer? She’s probably limp as a wet noodle by now. I can take her.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, Dad, I know. I’ll be fine.”

“It was lovely meeting you,” Concetta said. “It was a very nice party.”

Emmie winced. “It’s nice of you to say so, Concetta.”

Her father ventured, “Perhaps we can all get together another time, without . . .”

“Howling dogs? Vomiting girlfriends of ex-boyfriends? Clients yelling at Wilma?”

“Something like that.”

Emmie closed the door behind them, heaved a sigh, and leaned her forehead against the heavy, solid wood. It was over. So much for her great idea, and Graham never even showed—but that meant he wasn’t treated to the travesty she thought she could call a party. All good in the end. She reveled in the calm of her nearly empty house, the shush of the snow on the porch roof—

“Hic.”

Well, at least the hiccupping Caitlynn sounded more composed than she had five minutes ago. No whining—that was an improvement. And no projectile-vomiting noises—even better. Emmie decided she would just make sure the bathroom was decent, and if Kyle didn’t have any cleanup duties to attend to, she’d usher the two of them out the door and finally have some peace and—

“I should go home . . .”

Emmie whirled around. There in the middle of the room stood—or, rather, wobbled—Juliet. An absolutely hammered Juliet. In the partygoers’ mad rush for the door, Emmie hadn’t even noticed that she wasn’t among the escapees. And now the little candy cane looked half melted and, to be honest, pretty sad. Her makeup was a bit smeared, her curls weren’t neatly in place, and overall she definitely looked a little rough around the edges.

“Can I have my coat? I think my keys are in the pocket. I didn’t bring a purse, did I?” And she started for the closet.

Emmie stepped in front of her. “Uh, Juliet? I don’t think you’re in any condition to drive.”

Juliet brightened a bit. “I should wait for Graham?”

“Er . . .” Emmie hesitated, then admitted, “I don’t think he’s coming, to be honest with you. Sorry.” What was she apologizing to Juliet for? Graham had stood
her
up, not Juliet. Well, okay, Juliet, too . . . but it was
her
party!

Alarm breaking through her drunkenness, Juliet exclaimed, frantic, “I’ve got to get home!”

“Okay,” Emmie said placatingly, “okay. We’ll get you home. Um, can we call Kevin?”

“No! He’s with the kids. I don’t want him to leave them alone—”

“Or wake them up and put them in the car. I get it. Okay,” she said again. Emmie knew the town’s taxi service was nearly nonexistent, so with a sigh, she said, “I’ll drive you. Give me one second.” Juliet just stood there, swaying slightly. “Juliet?” Emmie prompted. “Did you hear me? Nod or something.” Juliet nodded. “All right, then. Stay right there.”

Emmie knocked on the bathroom door, where Kyle and Caitlynn were still holed up. “Kyle? Everything all right in there?”

Someone turned on the faucet. Kyle said over the sound of running water, “Everything’s cool, Em.”

“Fantastic,” she muttered drily. “Come on out of there. I’ve got to leave.”

Pause. “Uh . . . can you give us, like, five, ten more minutes?”

“Are you cleaning up a mess or something?”

Another pause. “Yeah. Cleaning.”

Emmie sighed. “I’d rather not wait, Kyle. Is Caitlynn all right?”

“I’m fine,” came a clearer response than Emmie had expected.

“Hey, Emmaline, why don’t you go on ahead,” Kyle said from behind the still-closed door. “We’ll finish up here and let ourselves out. How’s that sound?”

“No way. I’m not leaving you two alone in my house. Now move it.”

“Can’t you just wait—”

“I said no!”

Juliet tugged on her arm—more like pulling on it heavily—and Emmie wasn’t sure if she was trying to get her attention or remain standing.

“I have to get home!” Juliet whined again.

“I heard you the first time,” Emmie hissed at her.

Her bathroom door remained closed. Emmie rattled the handle. Locked. Juliet pulled on her arm again, and Emmie nearly fell into her.

“Oh, for . . . Fine,” she snapped. “Fine. But I want you guys gone by the time I get back. I have to drive Juliet home.”
The sooner the better.
“And I sure don’t trust you guys to do it,” she muttered. “Caitlynn,” Emmie ordered, “do
not
use my toothbrush, got it?” She grimaced when she thought she heard the girl whisper, “Oops,” and made a mental note to dig a new one out of the bathroom cabinet when she got back. “And don’t forget your crap in the garage, Kyle.”

“My what?”

Emmie paused and stared at the door suspiciously. He sounded distracted, and a distracted Kyle was never a good thing.

“The stuff you came here for,” she reminded him.

“Oh—right.”

“And try to leave at least one wall standing.”

Kyle forced a laugh. “You can trust me, Emmaline.”

Emmie rolled her eyes and tried not to think too much about that. “Gone by the time I get back. I mean it!”

No answer. Emmie glanced around her living room, past a confused-looking Juliet—who would be gone soon enough, thank goodness—at the forlorn remnants of her party: half-eaten appetizers, empty glasses, empty house. She sighed.
So much for festive,
she thought as she started blowing out tea light after tea light and unplugging her fairy lights. What a miserable night.

Emmie inched her Honda down the road, leaning forward, her nose almost touching the windshield, as if that would help her see better. The only thing she saw, however, was snow, snow, and more snow. That was it. The tiny flakes swirling madly in her headlight beams were giving her a headache . . . or perhaps it was the culmination of the entire night’s adventures. But the snow assault definitely wasn’t helping.

She stopped at a red light. The intersection was completely empty. She was the only idiot on the road. As she stared up at the stoplight and listened to the hiss of the frozen pellets as they scuttled across the roof of her car, Emmie started to wonder if she should have insisted on putting Juliet up for the night—a blanket on the couch and a bucket beside her—but it was too late now. They were more than halfway to her house; she might as well keep going, unless someone on cross-country skis or snowshoes lapped her. She’d take that as a cue to turn back.

The light turned green and, after a couple of quick glances to the left and right to make sure nobody was unwillingly sliding through the intersection, Emmie slowly started the car rolling again. She caught a glimpse of Juliet in the passenger seat, completely silent, her head resting against the side window. Her curls were mashed up against the glass, creating swirls in mist that quickly turned to frost. Emmie was a little worried about her—not only because she was completely shitfaced, but also because she seemed so out of sorts. The usually bubbly Juliet had turned into a maudlin drunk, and it knocked Emmie off-kilter. She knew how to deal with a giddy Juliet, even if it was fake cheer, but this sad clown, not so much. Juliet’s mood was going to have to wait, though. Right now she needed to focus on not getting them killed.

Her passenger heaved a sigh. “You must hate me.”

She sighed back. “No, I don’t hate you.”

“Graham hates me.”

“No.” She sighed again, trying to remain patient. “I’m sure Graham doesn’t hate you, either.”

“Oh, he does. You don’t know.”

Juliet sniffled, and Emmie realized she was crying daintily. Trust Juliet not to be a sloppy crier even when she was drunk. That irritated Emmie even more. Her temples were throbbing, and she caught herself clenching her jaw. She wondered how long she’d been doing that. Judging by the intensity of her headache, quite a while.

Juliet whisked some tears off her cheeks. “He’s going to break up with me, you know. He is.”

“Juliet, you’re just”—
totally plastered
—“out of sorts. Things will look brighter in the morning and all those clichés.”

“No,” she protested again. “He didn’t come tonight because of me. I RSVP’d for both of us because I was afraid he wouldn’t bring me. And then—and then he got mad . . .”

“Well, you did read his e-mail.”

“I know.” She groaned. “It was wrong, I admit it. But I just . . . just . . . I don’t know . . .” Juliet started snurfling in earnest. “I’m losing him,” she wailed. “And it serves me right.”

Well, that much is true,
Emmie thought. But Juliet was such a mess, it brought the untouchable angel down to earth, suddenly, and Emmie didn’t really want to kick her in her bent wings. So instead, she said, “Juliet, if you want to make things right, maybe you should, you know, decide who you want to be with and then . . . do it.”

“I have!” she burst out, tears springing up afresh. “But it’s too late. He’s so distracted. Sometimes I think he’s got . . . somebody else.”

Emmie got a little thrill from that. What if it was her? And almost immediately she felt bad for being so selfish. It appeared that Juliet did care about Graham, and she really had made a mess of her life, and Emmie sort of felt sorry for her.

Emmie turned onto Juliet’s street and slowed down even more as she navigated the twists and turns of the dark subdivision lane. “What about Kevin?”

“I don’t have him, either!” Juliet wailed.

Emmie pulled into Juliet’s driveway, parked, and risked a glance at the other woman. Juliet had buried her face in her fuzzy-gloved hands and was sobbing all-out now. Emmie wasn’t sure if she should hug her or at least pat her shoulder or what. Suddenly Juliet whispered in a strangled voice, “I’m sorry. Thank you for the ride home,” and lurched out of the car. She stumbled up her front walk, fumbled with her keys, and finally half fell into her darkened home. The red door shut abruptly, and Emmie was left alone, staring into the swirling snow.

 

It took Emmie nearly twice as long to get home. The snow was even more blinding, if that was at all possible, and she took most of the drive at a crawl. Her shoulders were tight; her headache had expanded from her temples to behind her eyes and around the back of her head. Juliet’s freak-out in the car had completely flummoxed her. After months of dealing with Perfect Juliet and her Barbie Dream World, it came as quite a shock that maybe not everything was all fluffy and pink in her personal life. As Emmie eased her Honda through the main part of town and closer to her warm bed, she couldn’t resist analyzing everything Juliet had said. She thought she’d lost Graham—to someone else (that was the juicy part)—and she didn’t “have” Kevin, either? What did she mean by that? Kevin seemed like a devoted husband and father, even staying with the kids while Juliet partied. How could she not “have” him when he was firmly ensconced at home?

Emmie sighed. Maybe all of that was just Juliet’s drunken rambling. How could she trust anything the G&T-soaked, stood-up, adoration-denied woman was saying late at night in a half-snowbound car, anyway?

She braked slowly to get to a four-way stop without overshooting the intersection. Almost home. Still nobody else on the road. She thought there might be, what with it being a weekend night so close to the holidays. Seemed like there had been some event at the high school; the yellowy-orange glow of the field lights lit up the edges of the low-hanging clouds.

When she finally got onto her own street, it took her a few seconds to realize something wasn’t quite right. First she noticed even more cars parked along the curb than there had been when she had left. Then she noticed the blue lights blinking on many dashboards. Then she saw the yellow lines of hoses crisscrossing the pavement, drifts of snow collecting in their curves and bends.

Then, suddenly, something—someone—was in her headlights, holding up a massive gloved hand. She slammed on her brakes and slid a little. The figure before her skipped to one side. When her car was still, he put a hand on the edge of the windshield and leaned toward the driver’s side window. She eased it down. The volunteer firefighter’s clunky yellow helmet filled the space.

“Street’s closed for a few blocks. Have to go around.”

“What’s going on?”

He looked at her like she was an idiot. “Fire.”

“I mean . . . where? Whose house? I live on this street.”

Emmie craned her neck to see which of her neighbors were put out in this kind of weather. She could invite them in and—

“No. Oh, God.
Shit
.”

Before the firefighter could stop her, she lurched out of her car and stumbled down the street, past the vehicles of the volunteer firefighters, over the hoses, and through the drifts of snow. It couldn’t be. Of all the houses and buildings, it just couldn’t—

Another firefighter came up to her and put his hands up to stop her getting any closer. “Ma’am, you can’t be here—it’s dangerous—”

He made a face. “Ooh, that sucks.”

“You’re damned right it sucks!”

Horrified, she watched as a dozen firefighters doused her house with jets of water that iced up as soon as the water hit anything not on fire. What
was
on fire was the back of her house. She couldn’t see any flames from where she stood, but she could certainly see the glow from them—what she had mistaken as the lights of the high school—and billows and billows of smoke pushed toward her by the strong winds.

“My house!” she wailed, and coughed as ash mingled with snowflakes in the air.

“Doesn’t look like it’ll be a total loss.”

Emmie’s eyes were burning, and tears started coursing down her cheeks. “Are you shitting me!”

“No, seriously. I’ve been fighting fires for years, and I can tell you it isn’t as bad as it looks.”

Somewhere a window shattered, making her jump. Emmie shook her head in disbelief. “What
happened
?” she cried.

“Was your electrical system up to date? We get a lot of fires from frayed wires in these old homes.”

“Yes! I had all the wiring redone six months ago!” She put her fingers to her throbbing temples. Her hair was damp with snow. “My house! I was just having a party and now . . .” Her rambling thoughts ended in a groan.

The firefighter took sympathy on her and steered her toward one of the rescue trucks. “Come on over here, ma’am.”

He led her around to the far side of the truck so she wouldn’t have to watch her house being destroyed, shook out a blanket, and draped it over her shoulders. She saw two figures, also under blankets, sitting on the bumper.

Emmie didn’t usually swear all that much, and certainly reserved the F-bomb for only the most dire of circumstances, when no other colorful language would do. This was definitely one of those times. “Fuck. Me.”

“Oh, hey, Em.”

“Fuck. Me.”

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Kyle tried to joke.

Emmie’s voice was ghostly, surprising even her. There was no fury—not like when she had gone postal on him at Carl’s. This time, she just stared at him and whispered, “You son of a bitch. You burned my house down.”

Kyle clutched his blanket with one hand but held up his other in protest. “Now wait a minute, Emmaline—”

“No, I will not wait a minute. I left you two in my house and was gone for an hour. I come back and . . . Kyle. What did you do?” It came out as more of a demand than a question.

But her none-too-bright ex wasn’t about to confess—to whatever it was. His face a mask of incredulity and personal affront, Kyle drew out, “Whaaaat!”

Emmie’s death glare stopped that approach quickly enough, so he switched to deflection. “Oh, sure, don’t even ask if
we’re
all right. Don’t even ask how we got out.
And
we called nine-one-one for you. So you’re welcome.”

Emmie licked her dry lips and repeated even more slowly, “Kyle. What—did—you—do?”

Kyle’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times, and then she heard the unlikeliest of voices. Caitlynn’s. “It was just one candle. One . . . or two.”

“What?”
What in the world was this bubblehead talking about?

“It was—”

“I put out all the candles before I left! I’m not stupid!” She looked from her ex to his ditzy girlfriend and back again. “You . . .
lit
. . . some candles?”

“Just one. Or two,” Caitlynn repeated, as if that would make it all right.

“I didn’t even
have
any candles anyplace but the living room!” And then the light started to dawn. “You
put
candles in my bedroom? Why were you . . .” And then she froze in horror.
“Oh my God.”

Kyle grinned sheepishly and rubbed the back of his neck—that unconscious habit that always revealed when he was feeling guilty. “C’mon, Emmaline, don’t make a big deal out of this—”

When Emmie spoke again, her voice was deadly calm, and she spoke very carefully. “Don’t talk to me. Ever again. Get out of here.”

The firefighter spoke up. “Uh, dude, you’d better listen to her. I’d be pretty pissed, too, if I were her.” Kyle still didn’t move, so he continued, “There’s nothing you can do here—just go on home, okay?” Kyle started to protest, but the firefighter stopped him. “No, man. Seriously. Go on now.” Then he turned to Emmie. “This usually isn’t part of the service, you understand, but, uh, you want me to . . . ?” And he gestured toward Kyle. “I can have a little
talk
with him after we’re done here.”

Emmie studied the fist the firefighter was displaying. It was tempting, she had to admit. But she just shook her head. “No. But thank you. You’re very kind.”

Kyle removed the blanket, pulled the other off Caitlynn’s shoulders (she held on to it for a moment, uncomprehending, but he tugged harder), and put both of them on the hood of the rescue truck. Likely remembering Emmie’s assault with the shot glasses, and realizing that anything she could grab off the fire trucks was much larger and heavier, he crab-walked toward his pickup, never turning his back on her for a moment.

When they were gone, Emmie focused only on the rasping sound of her own breath in the icy air. She barely felt the heavy, gloved hand of her caretaker on her shoulder. As if from far away, she heard him say, “What a shithead.”

“He’s my ex-boyfriend.”

“Your ex-boyfriend was . . .
you know
. . . in your bedroom . . . with another girl . . . and, what . . . ?”

“Knocked over a candle—or two—while they were . . .
you know
. . . apparently,” she said hollowly.

“Jesus.”

They stood silently, in awe of the magnitude of Kyle’s idiocy, until another firefighter approached with the news, “Fire’s out. Just have to give the debris a good soaking for a bit.”

Debris.
A good chunk of her house was now a pile of debris. Emmie stared, transfixed, at the icicles dangling from the man’s mustache as he echoed what the first firefighter had told her.

“It’s not a total loss. Just the back bedroom. Seems like it was caused by—”

“Candles,” Emmie filled in for him, her voice faint. “One or two.” She stared vacantly at her smoldering, ice-laden home. “Unbe-fucking-lievable.”