Those Who Favor Fire by Lauren Wolk (easy readers .TXT) 📕

Something terrible had happened. When Rachel finally managed to say a word, it was “Rusty,” and Joe’s arms tightened around her so she could barely breathe. “He’s all right,” she managed, realizing she had to tell him now, as quickly as possible, what had happened.

When she had finished, Joe stood up and began to walk around the clearing, panting. Then he took her by her hands and pulled her to her feet.

“Do I have to say it?” he asked her.

“No,” she said. “I’m leaving.” She picked a leaf off her sleeve. “Maybe I’ll be able to come back someday. Maybe they’ll find an excuse to tear my house down, even if I don’t sell it to them, since I won’t. I won’t do that. But it will be my land still, and maybe, up here on the hill, the house will be all right after all.”

That she could be thinking about a house now, when Mary Beth Sanderson was somewhere down below their feet, made Joe sadder than nearly anything she’d ever done. But when he looked into her eyes, he realized that although she was talking about her house, saying the words that he was hearing, she was not thinking about what she would take with her or when she might return. She was thinking about the feel of a hand on her ankle and the feeling as that hand let go. She felt, in her mouth, in her nose, packed against the fragile globes of her opened eyes, the hot, gritty dirt that had claimed Mary Beth and carried her away.

“Say it,” he said through his teeth, prodding her as if she had a boil that needed lancing.

“Say what?” she moaned.

“Say it!” he yelled.

She beat her hands against her hips. “All right!” she wailed. “Rusty wouldn’t still be here, except for me. There’s no other reason. Just that: because I’m still here. And if he hadn’t been here, and been with Mary Beth … if he hadn’t thrown a ball right to that exact spot, they might all have gotten out of here. And Mary Beth wouldn’t be dead. But she’s dead. She was only a little girl, and she’s dead for no good reason.”

Joe could barely understand her, but he knew better than anyone what she was saying.

“Everyone in this town is a part of your life,” he said. “And in some way, even some very small way, you are involved when they die.”

She looked up at him, remembering. “Maybe that’s been true until now,” she said. “But not anymore. Not like this. I can’t live this way. Nobody ought to live this way.”

When they got to Rachel’s house, their arms full of whatever they thought Rusty would have wanted them to take from the tree house and the small wooden trunk that Joe could not bring himself to leave behind, they found Ed Zingham sitting on a stump in the backyard, waiting for them.

“Angela and Rusty are inside the house,” he said. “I’m going to take them up to the farm as soon as Angela gets their stuff together. While I’m there I thought I might have a look at that spare house, if that’s all right with you, Joe.”

“Good,” Joe said. “I was hoping you would. Here.” He reached into his pocket and handed Ed a key ring. “It’s yours if you want it. Let me know what you decide.”

Ed looked at the key in his palm. “Mendelson was here a couple of minutes ago,” he said. “Seems he arrived over at the Sandersons’ just after you left there, Rachel. Took in that machine they use when they’re probing. Turns out the hole goes down about three hundred feet, registered three hundred fifty degrees, eleven hundred parts per million carbon monoxide. He thought Rusty might want to know what he’d survived.” He looked up. “But I wouldn’t let him near the boy.”

“That’s good, Ed.” Joe opened the back door. “Let’s go inside, give Angela a hand.”

When Joe saw Angela, he pulled her close to him and held her head against his shoulder. He wondered, not for the first time, why it was Rachel he loved so completely and not Angela. But then she stepped out of his arms and led him to the couch where Rusty lay wrapped in a clean sheet, his scorched face glazed with tears. And it was then that Joe realized for the first time, as he bent down and gently traced the perfect slope of Rusty’s pale ear, that the boy was far more a brother to him than a son.

“Joe,” Rusty croaked, struggling to open his eyes as if they’d been fused. “I was dreaming that I couldn’t find you. You weren’t anywhere I looked.”

“I’m where you’re looking now,” Joe said. And in an instant Rusty was asleep again.

It didn’t take long for them to get Angela and Rusty packed up and into Ed’s car. Rusty lay on the backseat, wrapped carefully and propped like a newborn, his face turned against a pillow. Angela sat in the front with Ed looking straight ahead. Since the hospital she had not said a word to Rachel, but just as Ed was about to drive away, she thrust her arm out through the car window and grabbed Rachel’s hand. “Don’t you dare fuck around here anymore,” she said fiercely. “Belle Haven’s gone. Don’t you go down with it.”

And then she let go of Rachel’s hand and Ed drove away, down the hill, and north.

Chapter 49

        Even though she could no longer hear Ed’s car, Rachel did not move. She felt completely unable to lift her feet, saw no reason to do anything but stand where she was, even if it began to rain, even if snakes began to slide up out of the dirt, the ground too hot even for them.

She expected Joe to put his arm around her, lead her inside, fix her something to eat, and perhaps, by and by, make another of his passionate speeches. She wondered what she