Enjoy Your Stay (4 page)

“Hols?” Jackson’s standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the light from the hall, his eyes are wide with panic. His tanned hands grip the doorframe tightly. The fear on his face takes me a little by surprise.

“I’m okay. I think it was coming from town.”

He races out into the living room, and stares out the window in disbelief before firing off a round of expletives. Jack darts around the room gathering his keys and wallet.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I want you to stay here.”

“Stay here? Where the hell are you going?” I glance over at the window, and see the flickering orange of flames in the town below. My brain kinda goes into meltdown for a moment, just staring at the beauty of the buildings burning against the midnight sky, and then it hits me, and I sink to my knees because there are spots dancing before my eyes, and I have this insane urge to fall through the hard wood floors. “Ana.”

Jackson helps me to my feet, and sits me down on the couch. I’ve never seen him look so afraid. His sky-blue eyes are wide, and his face is ashen. “You need to stay here. I’m gonna go check it out and I’ll be back. But I need you to go lie down, okay? I just have to get down there.”

“Belle’s Pies is on fire.” I mutter, clutching at his shirt, and trying to make sense of what I just saw. “Why is Belle’s Pies on fire?”

“Hols, I need you to calm down. I have to go.”

“No. I’m coming with you.”

“It’s not safe. A fire that big has a lot of smoke. It’s not healthy for the baby.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No. You’re not.” He cups my face in his big hands. “Hols, don’t do this. My family’s down there.”

“So is mine!” I wrench myself out of his grasp, and march over to the door, holding it open for him. “If you don’t take me, I’ll take my own car, but you should know I’m not up to driving right now.”

Several long minutes later we pull onto Main Street, and Jack cuts the engine near a crowd of people, the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles make me a little dizzy. I drag myself out of the car. My feet feel like lead, and my heart is slamming against my chest so hard it hurts, and I’m hoping and praying like hell that no one I love got hurt. Logically, I can’t see how they couldn’t have. Elijah and Ana left well over half an hour ago. She had to be inside … she had …

The ground rushes up to me, but Jack’s strong arms pull me back into his chest, and then I’m not tilting anymore. The world rights itself, and yet it can never be right again if my best friend is gone.

Sammy’s wailing snaps us both out of our heads, and as Jack pushes us through the throng of bystanders, the picture becomes a lot clearer. The entire diner is engulfed in the blaze. Burnt amber flames lick at a black sky. I cover my mouth, and feel as if my world is spinning out of orbit.

There’s an ambulance on hand, and a stretcher sitting idly by, but no one on it. I’m frantic. My pulse pounds at my wrist, and my heart is beating so hard I feel like it might just hammer its way out of my chest. I can’t see anything over the crowd of people. Now is so not the time to be a tiny pregnant woman, because I can’t see jack-shit over the heads of the bystanders, and pushing them out of the way with my baby belly won’t do much but hurt the little jellybean.

“Jack, where are they?” I tug on his hand. His brow is furrowed, and his eyes glassy. It’s hard to tell if it’s from the sting of the smoke, or if he’s feeling the terror of rising panic like I am.

“I don’t know, Hols. I can’t see shit.” He stretches up on his toes, and—keeping my hand firmly grasped in his—he launches us through the crowd of dumbfounded Sugartown residents. Some have their hands covering their mouths as they study the blaze in disbelief. Others stand there like zombies, not speaking, not crying, just staring. Crazy-Eyed Callaghan sits across the street, his cart pushed up against the roller door of Bob’s Bikes, while he sings to the mangy cat curled in his arms.

“They’re over here.” Jack leads us in the direction of the screams.
Sammy’s screams
. Ice-water runs through my veins. I break out in a cold sweat.
God, please don’t let him be crying over Ana.
We finally clear the throng of people, and I see Ana and Elijah standing side by side. My heart gives a stutter of relief. Like the rest of the onlookers, she has her hands clasped against her mouth, but the tears in her eyes, and the look of sheer horror on her face sets her aside from the others. Elijah has a wailing Sammy wrapped up in his arms. He absently smooths a hand down the kid’s back as he repeats something over and over in Sammy’s ear. Beyond them, Bob is on his knees in the middle of the road; his face is twisted with grief. I’ve never seen anyone cry like this: the sound is harrowing and heartbreaking, and not at all human.
People should never sound that way.
It grates on your soul like a knife on bone.

I let go of Jack’s hand and run towards them, crashing into Ana so hard that I almost knock her down, and then I’m hugging her tight enough to suffocate her. “I thought you were dead.”

“I’m okay.” She sobs in my ear.

“Where’s Kerry?” Jack asks from behind me.

“She was inside. She had Sammy in there, too. I don’t know what the hell she was doing, but that pilot light sticks. You know I’ve been complaining about it for years.”

“Ana, I’m so sorry.”

“Elijah and I stopped off at the supermarket to get some supplies, and Sammy ran out the front door to meet us, and then it just … it just exploded. We were thrown half way across the street with the blast.”

It’s only now that I see the soot, blood and grazes on the three of them. Sammy’s scratched up pretty badly. His arm hangs limp around Elijah’s neck. It looks odd, but it could just be the shadows created by the dancing flames. I don’t think any of them are aware of their bumps and bruises, or what’s really happening. We’re all too numb.

Tears roll down her cheeks, she looks so small as she says, “It’s all gone, Hols.”

Both of Sugartown’s police officers are on the scene, trying to keep the onlookers at bay while the firefighters contain the blaze. It’s already spread to the two empty shopfronts either side of where Belle’s Pies used to be. The building groans, and then it makes this odd screaming, whistling sound as the roof caves in. Ana and I shrink back, feeling the vibration through our legs. Bob staggers to his feet. He takes an unsteady step, and then he charges toward the burning buildings.

“Dad!” Ana screams. Sammy starts wailing again. Jackson tackles Bob, and pins him down on the pavement.

“Let me go! My wife is in there,” Bob bellows.

My heart feels like it’s snapping in two. I don’t know how much more suffering this family can take.

“No, mate, she’s not,” Jack grunts as he wrestles with the bear of a man beneath him. “You need to pull your shit together.”

“She’s my wife. My wife’s dead!”

“And your kids just watched you try and jump in the blaze after her,” Jack spits, and then releases him anyway. For a minute I’m about to call Jack out on that shit, but then Bob is on his feet and stalking toward him like a man hell-bent on burying him in the ground. “You wanna hit me, Uncle?” Jack makes a beckoning gesture. “Come on, then.”

And he does. Bob’s fist swings out, but Jack ducks the first hit and bounds away. Ana screams as Bob charges at Jack. I try to hold her back by looping my arms around her waist, but she’s stronger than I am, and slips free. Elijah steps in front of her, and says, “Leave it, babe.”

“Leave it?” Ana glares up at him with wounded eyes.

“They’ll be okay.” he whispers, and frees up one of his arms that’s supporting Sammy’s weight. He tucks her into his side and kisses her head as she sobs.

A guttural cry pulls my attention back to the fight. Bob punches him square in the jaw. Jack’s head rocks to the side, and he spits blood on the ground, but he remains glued to the spot all the same as Bob hits him again and again. Jack never falters. He takes the beating Bob dishes out without even flinching. He takes it willingly, until Bob can no longer do anything but cry, and drop to his knees again. Jack sinks down beside the man who has always been like a father to me, always been more loving than my own, and comforts him. His face is all bloody, one eye is swollen already, and his lip is sporting two new cuts. For the life of me, I can’t understand what the hell just happened, but Bob is now embracing his nephew and silently sobbing into his shoulder.

Constable Miller has finally realised what’s going, and he steps up to intervene, but he’s a little too late. Jack’s face is a bloody mess. Belle’s Pies is burning, and a family has been ripped apart. There’s not a whole lot the men in blue can do now.

“Ana,” I say, touching her arm and saving her from having to watch her dad fall apart. Again. They’ve both been through this before when Ana’s mum died. It hurts me to see Bob this way, so it must be damn near killing her. “We need to get Sammy checked out.”

“You’re right,” she says robotically.

“Ana wherth Mummy?” Sammy asks from over Elijah’s shoulder.

Ana covers her face to hide the tears sliding down her cheeks and whispers, “How do I answer that?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do I say to him, Hols?” she pleads.

“Mummy’s not here, little man,” Elijah says and strokes his back. “We gotta let the doctors fix you up, and let the firemen put out the blaze. I’m gonna need you to be really tough for me, okay? Can you do that? Can you be brave?”

“Uh-huh,” Sammy says through his whimpering.

“Thatta boy.” Elijah stalks over to the ambulance, and starts demanding the ambos look after Sammy. He leans right over the stretcher, and talks to Sammy the whole time they’re assessing him, blocking the kid’s view of his distraught father.

“What are we supposed to tell him? He just saw his mother get blown to pieces. If Elijah and I hadn’t stopped, maybe none of this would have happened.”

“Shut up,” I say, grabbing the tops of her shoulders and shaking her. “If you had been here ten minutes earlier, it would have been all of you we’d be mourning right now. This situation sucks, Ana, but we’ll get through it. We always do.”

Jackson seems to have calmed Bob down a bit. I don’t know how he did it, but the man went from ready to rip Jack to shreds to a haunted mess of a man who just lost his second wife, and the mother of one of his children. He sits on the bitumen, and stares as the flames eat away the dream that belonged to his first wife. The paramedic comes over to tend to Jackson’s face, but Jack shoos him away.

I cough, and Ana snaps her head up to look at me. “Holly, you need to go home. This much smoke is not good for the baby.”

“Yeah, I just had to make sure you were okay. I thought … I thought you—”

“I know.” We both stand back, and watch the fire swallow the building that’s held so many memories for the two of us. It might have been her mother’s dream, but as much as Ana may complain about it, in a way it’s her dream, too. And in a matter of minutes it’s been reduced to ash and rubble, just like the lives of all the Belles.

At the hospital, Jackson refused to be seen until after the others, even though his injuries were about the same. He didn’t have grazes from the explosion like Ana, Elijah and Sammy, but Bob wears some pretty hefty biker rings, and they did more than a little bit of damage to his face. Earlier, we’d dropped Elijah back at the house. Ana had ridden in the ambulance with Sammy, and Elijah would follow us to the hospital in my car so he could bring the others home once Sammy’s fractured arm had been placed in a cast. Bob and Sammy are going to stay with us in Elijah’s old room for the next few days until we’re able to go through the house, and sort out what survived the smoke damage and what is ruined beyond repair.

Now, I lie awake in bed. Unable to switch my mind off. Unable to stop replaying the sight of the flames, and devastation.

I’d hated the Dragon lady.
Couldn’t stand the bitch
. But the sadness I feel is for the rest of my family who did love her. Ana wasn’t a fan of Kerry either, but she knew how much her father and brother loved the trampy wench, and despite what she’d have me believe, I knew deep down they’d been growing more accepting towards one another, so I know she’s hurting, too.

I push back the covers and pad slowly across the hall into Jack’s room. It’s not until I quietly shut the door behind me that I wonder what I’m doing here. The sound wakes him up, and he does this half snorting/snoring thing that I ordinarily would have made fun of him for, but I don’t, because I feel too fragile right now to play our back and forth game.