the wheel for the first time. Her blue eyes sparkled with excitement as she closed the door. “This is kind of fun,” Elena admitted as she pressed the power button and put the car into gear.
Julie let her pull out and followed her. She walked to the garden hose because the gardener had failed to coil it behind the bush to keep it out of sight.
“Wait, Julie! I almost forgot.” Her mom jumped out of the car and hurried over with something in her hand. “These are for you. The candy you bought from Margaret’s granddaughter came in.” Elena’s cleaning lady Margaret seemed too young to have a granddaughter, but Julie loved the perks of buying candy and Girl Scout cookies. “I had these in my purse from yesterday.”
Julie took her “World’s Finest” chocolate bars and grinned. “Glad you remembered. I would’ve been pissed if these had gone to Arizona and I’d had to wait for them.”
“Trust me. If they’d been in my purse for the trip, you’d never have seen them at all.” Elena laughed and hugged her. “Bye, love. See you next week.”
“Bye, Mom. Drive safe.”
Elena turned and moved toward the car, still powered in the driveway. She got halfway there, when it exploded into a huge ball of fire.
Chapter Twelve
Flames rocketed into the air as the boom shattered the quiet day. The force and heat threw Julie back about eight feet. Dazed, she opened her eyes. She’d landed on the lawn near the front flowerbed. Debris covered the yard. Little patches of flaming embers dotted the grass. The for-sale sign had snapped in two and the top half had landed in the street. Her mother lay in front of her on the lawn, unmoving.
“Mom!” she called. She forced herself up. Her leg burned as she ran, but she didn’t care. “Mom!” she screamed again as a wave of panic and despair made her tremble. She knelt by her mother. Scratches covered her face and arms and blood seeped from a wound on her head. “Mom,” she said more quietly this time. Tears flowed freely as she struggled to get her phone from her back pocket. Her fingers shook so bad she could barely press 9-1-1.
“I n-need an ambulance. There was an e-explosion,” she stammered as soon as a man answered. Her voice shook. All of her shook. She rattled off her address. “My mother is hurt. Please hurry. Oh God, you have to hurry.”
“Help is on the way. Are you hurt, ma’am? Do you need help as well?”
She shook her head and realized he couldn’t see her. “I don’t know. I don’t think so,” she said. “I need to do something, call someone...” Who? Who should she call?
The dispatcher said something, but she wasn’t paying any attention.
A face popped into her head. Troy. Troy would help her. He’d know what to do. He’d been there for her when she’d needed him most.
“I have to go, I need the phone,” Julie said.
“Ma’am, don’t hang up!”
But Julie disconnected the call and fumbled once again with her phone. She had Troy’s number in her call log.
He answered on the second ring. “Hey there, I—”
“Troy!” She all but sobbed his name, her panic and fear as evident as the burning car in front of her.
“Julie, where are you? What’s wrong?” His upbeat tone disappeared and the serious voice she knew too well demanded answers.
She took a breath, but every muscle shook. “At home. I’m at home. My car... I need help!” She held back another sob as she stared at her mother. She needed to help her mother, and Troy couldn’t do it from wherever he was. Where was her brain? “I have to go. My mother... I have to go.” She dropped the phone and bolted into the house. She grabbed some towels from the front bathroom and ran back outside.
“Mom, please don’t die. Please, please don’t die.” Julie rocked back and forth and her phone rang from the grass. Troy’s name flashed on the screen. She picked it up, punched the screen.
“Don’t hang up on me. Goddammit. Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No.” But even as she said it, she noticed the scrapes and cuts along her arms and they made her look more closely at the burning in her leg. Her jeans were wet, dark on her thigh. Something had cut her. “Yes. A little, but I’m okay. My mom is hurt. She’s bleeding.” Sirens wailed in the distance, still at the bottom of the canyon. “She’s unconscious.” A