Cook the Books (21 page)

But I was wrong.

“Jesus Christ!” said Josh, panicked.

I looked up to the top of the fire escape. Like the windows visible from the front of the building, those at the back of the building were dark, but light from the house next door showed heavy smoke billowing from inside Ade and Owen’s apartment. Owen was nowhere in sight. “Owen!” I screamed. “Owen!”

Josh rushed forward and started to climb the fire escape. “Call nine-one-one!” he yelled.

I fumbled in my pocket for my cell as I ran to the front of the house, where the streetlights would let me see the buttons on the phone. Once I reached the sidewalk, I dialed 911 and, pressing the cell to my ear, ran up the front steps in the hope that Ade or Owen had for some reason left the door unlocked. No such luck. I had a key to their apartment, but it was on its own key ring at my condo. Why hadn’t I just attached it to my key ring? Owen had probably passed out from smoke inhalation and couldn’t hear Josh’s and my screams. I frantically shouted Ade and Owen’s address into the phone and, instead of listening to what the operator said, felt compelled to keep repeating the address at top volume, as if loudly reiterating the information would somehow speed the arrival of fire trucks. Too frightened to listen, I barely heard what the operator said but was left with the impression that help was, or would be, on the way. After again trying the front door and even banging on it and kicking it, I returned to the sidewalk just as Josh came around to the front of the building.

He shook his head. “I almost got up there, but there’s too much smoke.” He reeked of it. He had his jacket slung over one arm. I knew without asking that he’d taken it off and used it to cover his nose and mouth in an effort to penetrate the smoke. “You tried the front door?”

I nodded and shoved my key ring at him. “Run to my place and get their key. It’s on top of the TV. Go!”

Josh took off running while I continued screaming for Owen.

Suddenly there was someone standing next to me. “I had no idea you were so desperate to see me, Chloe.”

“Owen!” I cried and threw my arms around him. He was perfectly safe and not lying on his apartment floor dying! “Thank God!”

“What’s all the fuss? And what the hell is that nasty smell?”

“Your apartment is on fire! Thank God you’re safe! I thought you were up there. Josh tried to get in the back way, but he couldn’t. I’m just glad no one is home.” I let out a massive sigh of relief.

Owen’s face grew rigid. “Ade and Patrick are in there!” He flew to the front door and patted down his pockets. “I don’t have my key! I don’t have my key!” He jerked the doorknob back and forth and kicked the door repeatedly, but the old, heavy door didn’t budge. “Adrianna!” he started screaming. “Her group got cancelled. She’s probably in bed sleeping. Oh God!”

“Josh is getting my key right now. I called nine-one-one.” I felt sick and panicked. My best friend and my godson were trapped inside, burning to death! As Owen continued to pound on the door, I looked around frantically. I couldn’t just stand here and wait for the fire trucks. I had to do something! There were no ladders lying around, but maybe someone had left a garden hose out back. By this time of year, hoses should’ve been put away for the winter, but I was still going to look. I flew into the backyard again and, in the light from the next house, searched the foundation for a water spigot. I found it. But there was no hose. Shit! Shit! I glanced up to the third floor and choked on a sob. The smoke was getting heavier.

Without thinking, I ran to the fire escape and started up the stairs, tripping several times. My legs were shaking so violently that I could barely put one foot in front of the other without catching the toe of my boot on a stair. “Adrianna!” I cried out through my tears. Pausing on the second-floor landing, I called her name more forcibly. I had to make her hear me! I had to! I caught sight of the first visible flame as it shot from the living room window. “No!” I screamed. “No! Adrianna! Adrianna!”

Like my condo building, this house was wooden—a tinderbox. That first flame would spread in no time. I cursed the wooden fire escape, which was as vulnerable to fire as the building itself. I’d have to descend almost immediately. Still, I continued screaming for my friend and praying that Josh would return or that the fire trucks would arrive. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes since I’d called, but it felt like an eternity.

Owen’s small grilling area above me was rapidly disintegrating as the fire began to grow. When a burning piece of wood dropped next to me, I kicked it off the landing, threw my arms over my head, and screamed with everything that I had in me. “Adrianna!”

“Chloe!” The male voice came from below.

I glanced down. Even in my petrified state, I was stunned. “Kyle? What—?”

My cookbook partner stood at the base of the fire escape. “Chloe, what are you doing? Get down! Get off there now!” He took a step onto the wooden stairs.

“Get away from me!” I hollered as I moved up to the next step. “You did this! You started this fire, didn’t you?” I yanked my arms out of my coat and threw it over my head in the hope of protecting myself from any more falling debris. Kyle scrambled higher until he was only a few steps away. I couldn’t go up any farther. “Josh!” I screamed. “Owen! Help me! Help me!”

“Chloe, you have to get down from there!” Kyle begged.

“Don’t get any closer to me, you psycho!” I swung my leg out as a warning. “Ade and Patrick are in there!”

“What? No! No!” He froze and stared at me, his head shaking back and forth. “Adrianna!”

Kyle lunged past me, knocking me to the side. I grabbed the railing and caught myself just before I toppled down the stairs. Frightened of Kyle and knowing that I was unable to save Adrianna and Patrick, I made my way downward. As I descended, the wail of sirens finally began to fill the air. Reaching the ground, I backed up and watched as Kyle reached the stairs to the third floor, the stairs that led to Ade and Owen’s landing. He coughed over and over as smoke swirled around him, and then he suddenly leaped the stairs, two at a time, to reach what was left of the landing and the back door.

“Kyle!” I yelled uselessly.

He blindly shot an arm forward to touch the door and screamed in pain, fell backward, and hit the railing behind him. Within a fraction of a second, the railing, none too sturdy to begin with, gave way, and Kyle plummeted three stories down and hit the ground. Feeling sick and sickeningly overwhelmed, I turned away.

Josh’s voice rang out over the sirens. I turned to see him jogging up the lawn toward me. “We got them! We got Ade and Patrick!”

“Are they okay?”

“I think so. Yeah.” Josh wrapped both arms around me and pulled me against him. “It’s all okay now.”

I clung to him tightly and buried my face in his chest. Nobody in the world could make me feel as safe and as right as Josh could. God, I had missed this feeling. “But, Josh. Look.” I pulled away and walked slowly toward Kyle. He’d landed on his back. Blood seeped from his nose and from the side of his head, and his legs were splayed at awkward angles. As I watched, he turned his head slightly; miraculously, he was alive, although maybe not for long. “Josh, get the EMTs.”

Josh nodded and took off. I knelt down next to Kyle and spread my coat across him. He was mouthing something, struggling to speak. I leaned my ear close to him.

Kyle looked up at the sky and blinked rapidly. “It wasn’t supposed to be them, you know. Right? It was supposed to be Owen. We could have been together. I could have made her happier than he could. I’d have taken care of her. You’d have taken Patrick. I know you would. You love him. You’d have been the perfect mother.”

“Just hold on, Kyle,” I said evenly.

“See, Dad?” he continued. “Now I have the wife, the beautiful wife, and cookbook, and nobody is going to ruin it this time.”

“You started the fire at Digger’s, didn’t you?” I asked softly, leadingly.

“Oh, I had to. Hank Boucher wouldn’t have liked what Digger had to say about me.” His lips curled into a small smile. “That wouldn’t have worked out at all. I think I need to rest now.”

And with that, Kyle’s head rocked to the side. I pulled the coat up over his face and walked away.

“WHERE’S
Patrick? Who has my baby?”

“He’s right here,” I said gently. “I’ve got him. He’s fine.” I carried Patrick out from my bedroom and handed him to Adrianna.

“Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m still freaked out.” Adrianna reached out and took Patrick from my arms. She tightened the blanket around her son and kissed the top of his head. “Thanks for letting us crash here, Chloe. Obviously we can’t live in that house any time soon.”

“I doubt you’ll ever be moving back in there, Ade.” I put my hand on her shoulder and leaned in to give her a hug.

“True. This is the opportunity that our landlords have been looking for. A good excuse to renovate the apartments back into a single-family house. I don’t know where we’ll go.”

“We’ll find you guys something. How are you feeling?” I asked. I couldn’t hide my concern. “I know the hospital wanted you two to stay only one night, but I can’t help worrying.”

Ade shrugged. “We’re fine. Physically, that is. I’m still in a bit of shock, though. I had no idea that Kyle was such a whack job.”

I nodded. Ade and Patrick were lucky to have needed only minor treatment for smoke inhalation. By the time Josh had returned from my condo with the key to Ade and Owen’s apartment, the fire had really picked up. Only then had the smoke alarm gone off. One of the firefighters told Owen that some smoke alarms are triggered by flames and not by smoke. Ade might have been in the deep, exhausted sleep of a new mother, or she might already have been suffering from smoke inhalation when the alarm finally had sounded. In either case, I was immensely relieved that nothing worse had happened.

“So, Kyle wanted me?” Ade squirmed uncomfortably and pulled Patrick closer. “And he started the fire believing that Owen was inside?”

“Yes. It seems that Kyle imagined that with Owen out of the way, you could be together. He took all of the things you’d been saying about Owen’s job and terrible pay and wanting a better place to live, and twisted them in his mind. He developed the idea that he was exactly what you were really looking for and that he’d get rid of Owen for you so you two could, I don’t know, run off into the sunset together.”

Ade shut her eyes and shivered. Patrick let out a small squawk, as if he were in tune with his mother’s emotions. “Sick man.” She gently stroked the baby’s back.

“He thought that you were out that night and that Owen was home because that’s what I’d told him when he called me earlier in the day. He broke the glass in the door by the fire escape and started the fire using charcoal and lighter fluid that he tossed inside and on the fire escape itself.”

“God, and then he watched the fire from the backyard?” She pulled Patrick in even tighter.

“I know. But I guess he wanted to watch. Some fire-setters do.”

“Do you think Kyle had been waiting for an opportunity to kill Owen?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t even think that his fixation on you had all that much to do with you. I think that it was all about his crazy father. He set the fire at Digger’s the night before Hank Boucher was going to meet Digger for the first time and hear what an utter failure his son had been in culinary school. The night of your fire—”

“Don’t call it my fire,” Ade said. “It’s Kyle’s fire.”

“Sorry, the night Kyle set your place on fire, he’d just been dealt another rejection from his father, and I think that it triggered another desperate and pathological reaction. Kyle was determined to create the ideal- looking family that he thought he should have—the beautiful wife and the cookbook accomplishment—and when Hank didn’t invite his own son to this prestigious dinner, it set him off. His fire-setting was more about his anger and his fear of his father than anything else.”

I immediately thought of Danny, my client, and realized how deep his rage must be at his own awful father. I would have to insist that Danny make some changes; I didn’t know whether it would be possible to get his father to come to a session. If not, my client would still have to disengage from his father and deal with the damage that had been done. I had only a month left with Danny until my six- week winter break, so I made a mental note to meet with my supervisor and come up with a solid plan for continued treatment with one of the senior therapists. And then there was Alison and her fantasies about leaving her boyfriend for an idealized man who was never going to love her.

As the parallels between my clients and Kyle became obvious, it dawned on me that I’d left my client notes on the coffee table when Kyle had been at my place. What’s more, when I’d moved my notes out of the way, he’d joked about my not wanting him to read my diary. He’d read about Alison, client A, who was desperately in love with an older man and wanted to leave her current partner for this new, suave, charming man. Kyle must have thought that my notes about A were about Adrianna and about her infatuation with him! God, this should teach me to keep my notes hidden!

The first thing that I’d done after coming home from the hospital was to pack up all of the cookbook materials and mail them to Hank Boucher. I wanted nothing to do with that man ever again. I’d turned off the ringer on the phone, and I’d refused to turn on the television or the computer or to look at a newspaper, since I knew that the headlines would be riddled with the story of famous chef Hank Boucher’s murderous son. Today, I wanted to focus solely on my friends.

“Look, Ade, you can all stay here for as long as you like. I can go crash at my parents’ house in Newton for a while. It’s not a problem.”

“Absolutely not. We’re not about to kick you out of your own home, Chloe,” she protested.

“You’re not kicking me out. I’m volunteering. In fact, I’m insisting. I’ll be perfectly fine at my parents’ place.”