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

“I have to use your phone,” he said, and started for the stairs.

Chapter 31

        “Mrs. Corrigan?”

“Yes?” the woman said, her voice rough with sleep.

“Ardith Corrigan?” he asked, paused, switched the phone to his other ear. “Look,” he said, when she did not immediately reply. “I know it’s the middle of the night, but it’s important that I speak with Ardith Corrigan. Emily’s mother. Are you—”

“Has something happened to Emily?” she said in a rush and then, almost immediately, asked, “Who is this?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Corrigan. My name is …” And here he had to stop, had to open the lexicon of his former life. “My name is Christopher Barrows.” He was astonished that, with Rachel nearby, he had lowered his voice.

“Christopher Barrows?” She was silent for a long moment. Then, “What do you want?”

Taken aback by her tone, he too paused before saying, “If you are Emily’s mother, I hope you’ll be able to tell me where I can reach her.”

“Why?”

“Well … it’s a long story.” He was beginning to think he had made a terrible mistake. “I’m trying to find Emily so I can talk to her about my sister, Holly Barrows. They were roommates at Bryn Mawr. Emily—”

“Look, young man,” the woman interrupted. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but you had better leave Holly alone.”

His hand trembled. He grabbed his jaw. “She’s alive?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Holly.”

“I’m going to hang up now,” said Mrs. Corrigan. It was clear that she was nervous, angry, afraid.

“Don’t,” he said. “Please listen to me for a moment.” He carried the phone over to Rachel’s kitchen table and sat down awkwardly, as if his brain were too consumed with what he was saying and what he was hearing to manage anything more. “My name is Christopher Barrows,” he said once again. “Most people call me Kit. Or they did,” he amended. “I have a different name now. I last saw my sister, Holly—Harriet—over two years ago, and a few days after that I learned that she had died.”

He heard the gasp, had expected to hear it.

“But she didn’t die, did she?” he asked, and even though he had come to suspect this, it wasn’t until he heard her say, “Of course not,” that he allowed himself to believe it, truly to believe it, and then his relief was so enormous that at first he did not understand what she said next.

“But you did,” she said quietly.

“Excuse me?”

“You did,” she repeated. “You died. Holly’s father tracked her down, told her that you had died in a car wreck the day after she left home.”

“He told her …”

“That you had died. He told her you had died.”

“And he told me that she had,” he said.

“Oh, my God,” Mrs. Corrigan whispered fearfully.

“My own father. My own goddamned father,” he said, standing up in the middle of the small kitchen.

“Oh, you poor, poor children,” Mrs. Corrigan said, and he heard her begin to cry.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Corrigan,” he assured her. “Everything’s going to be all right now.”

And in a safe corner of her own, warm kitchen, Rachel felt the marrow of her bones grow cold.

Almost immediately after calling Mrs. Corrigan, Joe fell asleep on Rachel’s couch with Pal at his feet.

As she had on another night, long ago, when Joe had called his father and learned of Holly’s death, Rachel sat nearby and watched Joe sleeping. He had changed since that earlier time. Grown thinner. Stronger. His hair was longer, brindled with sun. His hands showed signs of work. And the arrogance that had once hardened his face had been replaced with sensibility, so that even in sleep he appeared to be aware of the world.

Before she returned to her bed, Rachel stopped in front of the mirror at the foot of the stairs and looked at herself. She did not seem to have changed nearly so much.

In the morning Rachel gave Joe breakfast and listened when he told her again, in fits and starts, what his father had done. Through all of it he was preoccupied, dazed. She watched him carefully the way a mother watches an ailing child. She waited for him to touch her, and when he did not, she closed her hands into fists and crossed her aching arms.

After breakfast she waited outside while he called his sister. She waited for a long time. Then she drove him out to the Schooner so he could pack a small bag, took him back to town afterward, to her bank for the money he’d need to get to San Francisco.

“What am I supposed to call you now?” she asked him as they waited for the Greyhound in front of Frank’s Gas ’n’ Go.

When he turned to her, she saw the sudden warming of his eyes. “Call me what you’ve always called me,” he said, putting his arms around her. “Joe. Just Joe. I love that name.” But even as he kissed her she felt him again retreating. And at the sound of the approaching bus, the light again receded from his eyes.

When they could no longer see the bus, Rachel and Pal walked slowly down the street to Angela’s Kitchen. She was not hungry, wanted no food, but was not quite ready yet to be alone.

“Joe’s gone to see his sister for a week or so,” Rachel said. She had decided to spend the afternoon helping Angela make peach cobbler and corn bread while Dolly took care of the tables. It was a hot July afternoon, and the few customers who straggled in off the shimmering street ate cold sandwiches, drank their lemonade from weeping glasses, and wandered off in search of shade.

“His what?” Angela asked, her mouth full of peach.

So Rachel told her what Joe’s father had done.

“That son of a bitch,” Angela said. “He ought to be shot.”

“Well, maybe.” Rachel nodded. “He won’t see his children again. Or grandchildren, if he ever has any.” Rachel chose a peach from the basket at Angela’s elbow. “He’s a director of several large corporations. He’s