his check. She was going to have to do it as a bald woman.
Suddenly, she was exhausted. She dropped to her knees in a fatigue so deep, it threatened to overwhelm her. And in this fog, she remembered that she still had to deal with the fire department.
* * *
They arrived, having been informed that Hellenor Wallis had reported that her sister, PJ Wallis, was burning in a fire. Pandy took one look at the grim-faced volunteer firemen and realized she simply didn’t have the energy to explain the mix-up. She would take care of it in the morning.
It was so much easier to go along with the notion that it was vaguely true.
“And your name is Hellenor Wallis?”
“Yes,” she said.
“And your sister was in the canoe—”
Pandy tried to say no, but her teeth were chattering so much, she couldn’t get out another word. She pulled the blanket she’d wrapped around her head and shoulders closer as three more men came up the drive, shaking their heads.
They’d found what they presumed was Pandy’s cell phone, now a twisted, charred piece of unidentifiable material. They explained that they were truly sorry, but because the house was so remote it wasn’t technically in the jurisdiction of the township and they could only file a report.
And then the nice man with the gray mustache told her that she would need to make a citizen’s report to the local coroner. She could do it on their website.
When she haltingly explained that the house didn’t have an internet connection, the man must have felt sorry for her, because he offered to file a paper report instead, in which he would describe the fire. The coroner’s office would be out in a day or two to comb through the ashes when the site had cooled.
Pandy nodded, propping herself against the wall in utter exhaustion. By then, of course, it would all be sorted out. Finally they left, their red taillights flickering down the drive like fireflies.
When the last one had winked its red eye, she turned back to the house, determined to do what she’d been needing to do forever, it seemed:
Curl up into a little ball and go to sleep.
She stumbled into the mudroom, kicked off her boots, and fell onto the couch in the den. She pulled the acrylic comforter her grandmother had knitted over her. As the world slowly blinked out around her, her mind circled down into long-ago memories. Like the night twenty years ago. When she and Hellenor were sitting on this very couch. When they’d gotten the news. In addition to the house, she and Hellenor had each been left fifty thousand dollars.
“Spend it wisely,” the lawyer had said.
Pandy’s brain clicked off like a light jerked by a string.
She slept like the dead.
PART THREE
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE DREAM was always the same:
It was Pandy’s birthday, and SondraBeth Schnowzer was there, her face pressed next to Pandy’s as they laughed in the flickering orangish light from the hundreds of birthday candles on Pandy’s cake.
The dream vanished as Pandy gasped and hinged upright, the afghan clutched under her chin.
Where was she?
She took in the gloomy atmosphere and sighed. She was in the den. In Wallis. Her book about Lady Wallis was dead, and now the boathouse had blown up. Another great beginning to another fabulous day, she thought bitterly as she went into the kitchen.
She filled the electric kettle and clicked it on. She opened the cabinet, and, from among several different types of tea, she and Henry being aficionados, removed a sachet of double-bergamot Earl Grey.
Strong tea. She had that tiny thread of Englishness in her bones that believed the right cup of tea might possibly make everything better, no matter what the situation. Catching a whiff of the still-burned strands of her hair, she realized that in this case, “the situation” was as simple as being alive.
And that has to be something, right? she reminded herself as she poured hot water over the tea bag. In any case, for the first time in a long time, she was happy to feel her body. It actually felt like a bonus, as opposed to a large steamer trunk.
She sighed and dropped the tea bag into the garbage. She was alive, but the boathouse was gone. There had been an explosion. The volunteer firemen had come. And now she was supposed to go on some website to report that she was dead. Except, of course, she wasn’t.
It was just like life, she thought,