Slow Dancing on Price's Pier (43 page)

She saw the medics glance at one another, a secret pity in their eyes. She felt the ambulance make a slow but sharp turn.

“Your daughter's fine,” the girl said. “I don't know about the shop.”

“I'm okay now,” Thea said, pleading. “Take me back. I need to go back.”

“Just relax,” the boy said.

She closed her eyes, breathing out and coughing a little more. She didn't want to go to the hospital. She wanted a shower. She wanted to get back to the coffee shop. She thought of her parents, of Sue and Ken, of Jonathan, Irina, and Garret. The ambulance motored slowly forward. She knew it only by the light that flickered on the walls.

 

 

Jonathan was waiting for his brother at the arrivals gate, so late at night that it was nearly morning. The shops and kiosks had been closed up with metal grates and padlocks. The airport was so quiet he could hear individual footsteps on the tile floors.

Garret had no bags when he arrived and was dressed in a suit and fashionable but uncomfortable-looking leather shoes. The bags under his eyes were a cloudy purple blue. “I couldn't get an earlier flight,” he said. “Is she okay? What about the shop? Where are you parked?”

Jonathan walked with Garret away from the arrivals area, hurrying to keep up with Garret's pace. “They let her out of the hospital last night. She checked out okay. She's home now.”

“Okay. Take me there.”

“Garret . . .” Jonathan stopped walking, his heart rate high. “The fire's out. And it's four thirty in the morning. She's sleeping. She
needs
to sleep.”

Garret turned to face him. And for a moment, Jonathan was transfixed. His brother had never looked so bad—his disheveled hair, the pallor of his usually perfect skin, the defeat and exhaustion in his eyes. It was the look of a man who had been pushed to the edge of what he could bear, then asked to go further. And yet Jonathan knew that he saw only a sliver of his brother's suffering, and the rest was obscured.

“Are you . . . are you really in love with her?” he asked, if only because he needed to hear the answer.

Garret didn't speak. His dull eyes hid none of his exhaustion, his fear. He barely nodded.

“All right,” he said.

 

 

In the dream, Thea can smell the sweet tang of wood blackened to charcoal, hints of pine and cedar sap tingeing the air. The old boards pop, hiss, and steam. The rain comes, and it's so fine and cold, she feels it on her face and lashes less like raindrops and more like she's walking through a cloud. Again and again, she revisits the coffee shop in her mind. The ceiling is blackened with sprays of soot. The doorways have crumbled to wrinkly, fragile char. There is a smell of wetness—of ocean, of saturated wood, of the way the air changes after it's been bathed in flame.

Then she realizes she's dreaming of the empty catacomb of the coffee shop, and she knows she's in bed. The fire from the shop jumps to the walls of her bedroom, her house, and it licks up the doorways and alights on the curtains like a thousand fire orange butterflies. She can smell the smoke, but she can't pry her eyes open. They've been seared closed. Irina is in the next room, crying,
Please, help!
She needs to get up, to save her daughter, to save their lives—the fire is growing, if she could only wake up, she has to save them—but she can't.

 

 

“Thea. Thea—wake up. Thea.”

When Thea opened her eyes, she thought she was still dreaming. She could still smell the smoke in her hair, even though she'd shampooed it. She could still feel the heat of the flames on her face. And yet—there was Garret, looking down at her, his eyes flooded with concern. She felt his fingers brush back her hair, and she knew she was awake.

“Garret.” Tears that she hadn't cried all night came to her eyes. His arms went around her, and she cried against him, sobs she hadn't known she'd been holding back. She pressed her face against his hot neck, clutched his shirt tight. “I dreamed the house was burning too . . .”

He rocked her close and whispered against her hair. “Shh. It's okay. You're safe. Everyone's safe.”

She pulled away from him, kissed him. It was the rightest thing that had happened to her in hours, if not weeks.

He gathered her tighter. “I was so worried,” he said. “No—worried isn't the word.”

“I need you, Garret. I need you for when things like this happen. And I need you for when eveything's fine. These last few weeks without you—”

“I know,” he said. He kissed her forehead. “I've felt the same way.”

In the near-perfect darkness, she looked into his eyes. “Don't go away again.”

“I won't.”

“I just can't believe that your family wouldn't let us have this. I love them. I trust them. If they really understood what it was like, they wouldn't make us be apart. But—Garret—we can't give up. We have to make them understand.”

“Let's not think about them right now,” he said. “Sleep. We'll talk about it in the morning.”

She wrapped his shirt in her fist. “You're not going?”

“No,” he said. “I'm right here. Sleep now.”

She felt his arms around her: She was safe. He loved her. All was not lost. She settled into the crook of his arms and sighed against him, the deafening clamor in her head dwindling, the threat of another nightmare retreating like driftwood floating gently out to sea. She was nearly asleep when one last pang of panic caught her in its grip. And she had to work hard to fumble the words out.

“Garret. How did you get into the house?”

“Jonathan unlocked the door for me.”

The words barely registered. “
My
Jonathan?”

He smoothed back her hair, and she felt the deep pull of sleep already drawing her back into unconsciousness. “We'll talk about it in the morning.” His breath was warm on her cheek. “I love you,” he said.

But she never heard the words. She was falling deeper into his arms, deeper into his love, and deeper into sleep and gentler, safer dreams.

Thea stood near the Dumpsters behind the Dancing Goat. Behind her, the sounds of happy conversation and laughter were clipped off by the slamming of the door at her back. She was breathless and tired, her feet sore from hard work—and yet she felt good. An hour ago, she'd propped open the door of the shop for the grand reopening. All her baristas were working at high speed to get drinks out to the crowd. Lettie had been chatting with a young mother who had a dark-haired little baby on her hip. Tenke was singing along to the music, mostly for the benefit of a few teenage girls who had wandered in. Even Dani had been roped into lending a hand.

Thea knew there was still much work to do, but she needed a break—a moment of quiet. It struck her how ironic happiness could be, that a person sometimes had to step back from it to take it all in. All of her regulars had turned out in support of the shop's relaunch. Hollis and Dean had come with their chessboard, and they'd only grumbled a little when there wasn't enough room or quiet for them to set it up. Sue and Ken had staked out a table in the corner, and they watched in happy admiration as Irina worked the room. Only Jonathan had been a no-show—but Thea wasn't mad. He'd been at the shop last night helping her put in a new faucet at the last minute. Today, he had a long-standing appointment to meet his new girlfriend's parents. Thea wished him luck.

She heard the
whoosh
of the door opening behind her, and she turned.

“Doing okay?” Garret asked. He came to stand in front of her, and he held her loosely by both hips. She still couldn't quite comprehend how easy it was to touch him now that the stormiest part of the year seemed to have blown over. To be able to reach out her arms to him, to hold his hand . . . such gestures became so much more beautiful as they grew more and more insignificant.

“I'm great,” she said. “It's a madhouse in there.”

“And you wouldn't have it any other way.”

She smiled. She knew they still had a hard road ahead of them. But they would go slow. Though the future was promising, everyone was still sore and raw from the past year. More than once, Thea had heard her daughter shout
Fire!
in her sleep. But sometime after Christmas, the nightmares had all but vanished. Thea and Jonathan began spending more time with her—the three of them meeting for dinner at least once a week—and Irina's reckless misbehaving had tapered off. She was a handful, but she wasn't malicious. She was getting used to a new idea of her family.

“Did you see the photographer from the paper?” Garret asked.

“Yes. It's really cool.”

“People love this place,” he said. “It's gets in your blood.”

“I guess it does.” She took a deep breath. The spring air was tinged with salt. Somewhere, the water was sloshing at the tall posts that held up the pier, and Thea thought about how long it had been here, weathering the years. The seaside was not an easy place to live—or make a living. Salt corroded anything that could rust. Wind peeled paint down to chips. The sun bleached the boardwalk and burned skin. And in the winter, ice storms inflicted their glassy chill on stairs and railings and stones.

And yet, when Thea had thought about taking the insurance money after the fire and starting over, starting somewhere easier and new, she realized there was nowhere else she wanted to be.

“Sometimes, I'd give my left foot to know what's going on in that head of yours,” Garret said.

“You do,” she said.

He kissed her, then opened the door. The sounds of the party streamed like sunlight into the late afternoon. “I have to get back to work. Are you coming inside?”

“I'm right behind you,” she said.

Great big heaping armfuls of thanks: To my editor, Cindy Hwang, for her keen eye and great taste in sushi, and to everyone at Berkley, including Erin Galloway, Leis Pederson, and Rita Frangie. To my agent, Kim Lionetti, for her encouragement, expertise, and lovely, musical laugh. To Rhonda and Jon Mallek (and also Jessica Maarek) of the Fine Grind in Little Falls, New Jersey. (Note: if you're in northern New Jersey, stop in!) To Lee Hyat, who knows I'd like to carry her around like an angel on my shoulder. To Mike P. Meeker, for policing sections of this book for errors. To Albry Montalbano, plotter, schemer, and friend. To my family—there just aren't enough words. To fellow book nerds who hang around my blog (you know who you are!): thank you—so much—for inspiring me with your funny, insightful, and supportive comments. Love love love!