Chapter Twenty-Three
It was the one thing he’d told her, promised her while the fire had blazed all around them that night. His words had been the one driving force that had finally propelled Emma to move her lead feet and go save her sister. Only she’d made that decision not knowing what Jake had already figured out.
That they’d be able to save only one of her siblings that night.
Emma felt the tremors shaking her limbs just like she had that night.
That one broken promise.
Replaying it in her head could always bring her right back into that fire like nothing else could. Bring her back to the worst night of her life, where fire as far as the eye could see scorched the very air around her, broiled her alive. Coated every inch of her with fear, stronger than what she’d thought she could overcome.
She was right back there feeling it all again.
Only this time she knew how it would end.
“Jake!”
At first she thought she’d been imagining things, seeing things through the wall of flames and smoke. But his voice came through the fire, loud and clear.
“Emma! Back up as far as you can. I’m coming through.”
He charged through the ring of fire encasing the stairwell, wrapped up in what looked like the living room drapes. He made it to her just as another large section of the ceiling fell, exposing more of the attic and the scary sight of the giant, melting hole in the roof, which was crumbling wider by the second.
“Look out!” Jake shoved her out of the way as a huge chunk of the roof caved and broke right through the ceiling. The fallen roof brought down everything with it, causing an inverted volcano of molten flames and debris burned to a crisp not five feet away from them.
They were now trapped up there with a solid ten feet of fire between them and the stairs. “Jake, what do we do? The kids are still up here—”
They both jumped back as another section of burning ceiling crashed down in front of them. The longer they waited, the more the hallways all around them were getting taken over by fire. Soon they’d be cocooned in flames from all sides.
“Are they together? The kids?”
“No. Megan’s room is down to the right, and Peyton is down to the left. I couldn’t get to either of them; the hallway that splits off to their rooms looks just like this one. Completely engulfed in flames.”
“I have an idea. But we need to split up. You save one; I’ll save the other. I’ll be right behind you.” He threw one of the wet drapery panels he’d used to get up here over her like a cloak. “This should protect you a little, but you have to keep moving. Cover yourself with it completely and run as fast as you can down the hallway.” He pulled the wet fabric down so it covered nearly her entire face. “Try to stay low and breathe under this pocket to avoid inhaling smoke.”
Another chunk of burning ceiling and scorched roof shingles fell onto the stairs, this time breaking through to the ground floor.
“We’re out of time. Go, Emma. Run!”
And Emma ran.
She used a corner of the wet drapery panel to open the burning-hot doorknob and yanked a crying Megan to her, wrapping the wet fabric around them both. They sprinted as fast as they could back down the hall to the landing, never stopping, no matter what fell on them or around them.
But when they got there, all Emma could see was fire.
“Emma! This way!”
She tried to follow his voice to get her bearings, but her eyes could barely make anything remotely familiar.
There was fire everywhere. They couldn’t move without walking into a blockade of flames. They weren’t going to make it. She hugged Megan to her and crouched lower, inching them a few steps back and forth when a new chunk of fire fell near their feet.
Suddenly a hand shot out to grab her arm. “Follow me!”
Jake wrapped his wet drapery panel around them all and pushed them through a curtain of fire to the top of the stairwell, which now had a slim opening without any debris. Jake had managed to shove aside the blockade of fire by clearing out the collapsed roof and caved-in walls using the mattress from her bedroom. Which was now laid nearly parallel with the ground over the top half of the stairwell.
“Step up onto the mattress. And don’t look down!”
So of course she looked down.
And nearly screamed.
The entire top half of the stairwell was now a big gaping hole under the mattress.
“Emma, you have to move. I can’t carry you both. The mattress is wedged against the walls, so just go across it like a bridge down to the next landing. It’s burning fast, though, so move. We have to get down the stairwell before the rest of the roof falls on us.”
He basically dragged them across the fast-charring mattress until they were on the second landing, where another tunnel of flames awaited.
The bottom steps were a blaze of fire.
There was no way to get to the front door.
Jake didn’t let them hesitate for even a second.
She felt his arm tighten around her waist and, suddenly, she and Megan were airborne alongside him.
The three of them landed in a heap in front of the staircase, just as it collapsed and got swallowed up in the fire. With the front door just steps away, Jake picked up Megan and held her on his hip while he yanked Emma to her feet. They sprinted the final few yards and punched through the front door onto the front yard a mere second before the front half of the roof came crashing down behind them.
Emma felt several neighbors helping her away from the burning house until they were a safe distance away. The cold grass felt almost painful against her skin, but her legs couldn’t keep her upright. She fell to the ground and simply lay there, dragging oxygen in by the mouthful, ignoring the jagged shards of pain in her throat with every breath.
She could feel the edges of her vision blackening. The air in her lungs felt heavy, and every cough she couldn’t contain was excruciating to let out, but she kept on breathing to keep from passing out.
There was a muscle cramp in seemingly every square inch of her body, and her skin was raw and sensitive to even the slightest breeze. People were shouting all around her, but she found she could hardly focus on anything. It was all a spinning mess of lights and noise and a throb in her head somehow beating at a different rate than her heartbeat.
The only thing that did register was Jake’s voice. Just like in the fire, it calmed her as soon as she heard it, even if it wasn’t directed at her this time.
“Shhh, Megan. You’re going to be okay. You hear that? That’s the ambulance coming to help you. I know everything is sore, sweetie. Just hang on.”
When the meaning of his words began sinking in, Emma found the strength to lift her heavy eyelids to try to make sense of what she was hearing and seeing.
Megan. Crying in pain. Something about her left arm didn’t look right. Her nightgown was burned through on her chest. Her neck was bleeding. And her cheek . . .
“Oh my God, Megan’s been burned!” screamed a neighbor. “Someone, do something! Get some water!”
“No!” shouted Jake. “Stay back!” Instead of explaining his actions, he hovered over Megan, not touching her and preventing anyone else from touching her, as well.
“Ignore them,” he soothed in that calming voice again. “Just stay with me, Megan. Let me know if you’re feeling cold.” He took the blanket a neighbor was holding out to them and draped it over her legs and stomach, and the unburned parts of her body.
“Jake?” whispered Emma, not wanting to distract him, not after hearing a neighbor say that Jake was doing everything exactly right.
Two ambulances screeched to a halt on the grass right beside them before he could answer her. The paramedics crowded around Megan seconds later.
When the paramedics tried to check her out, as well, Emma pushed them away.
Her scattered thoughts were starting to blend together, and her entire body felt as if it was slowly shutting down. But . . . there was something. Something she needed to ask Jake before it was too late.
She watched Jake crumble to the ground as soon as Megan got lifted into the ambulance. A pain-filled expression unlike any she’d ever seen descended on his face as he hunched over, arms covering his head in anguish.
That’s when she knew.
“You left Peyton up there,” Emma whispered brokenly. She watched Jake’s eyes slam shut in grief. “Why, Jake?”
“You’ve heard all the details, Emma. I know you have. And you saw the roof, the stairs. I needed to clear a path through that tunnel of fire in the hallway at the top of the landing and find a way to get you guys over the top half of the staircase since the steps had become engulfed in flames. So after you went to get Megan, I ran to your room to grab your mattress. I’d only just barely bought us a few-second window when you returned with Megan. I couldn’t save Peyton. There was just no time.”
Emma processed the words as facts, but still she couldn’t meet his gaze. “That’s what the articles about the fire said, too. I read them all, you know. Each and every one. The ones that called you a hero, and talked about your first-aid certification as a junior lifeguard having been a help to Megan’s burns. The ones that had firework-banning agendas painted you the worst, of course, but even they called your actions heroic.”
He’d done so much quick thinking that night. Pulled in the lawn hose from outside as much as he could, partway up the stairs. He’d yanked the tall drapes from the front windows down so they could use them as cover. And he’d doused the curtains with water before running up to get to her.
“Why didn’t you save him . . . after promising me you would?” she asked again. Needing to know.
“Sweetheart, you know all this. If I’d gone after Peyton like I’d promised, we would’ve been trapped, and we all would’ve died up there. There is no way the fire trucks could’ve gotten to us in time.”
The articles had all reported the same thing.
By the time the first responders had gotten to their home in the far outskirts of Riverside, the house had practically imploded with fire.
Peyton’s room on the second floor had collapsed completely, right before their eyes.
“But you promised, Jake.” The barely audible statement sounded as if it were coming from the teen version of herself. Their parents and lawyers hadn’t allowed any communication between their families, so in a way, sixteen-year-old Emma was still back there wanting to know why sixteen-year-old Jake hadn’t kept his promise.
“I had to break my promise, sweetheart.” Jake’s voice was raw with fresh pain. “And I will hate myself for that for the rest of my life. But I also know that I’d do it the same way all over again. To save you and Megan.”
“But you promised,” she repeated. Only this time, the twenty-nine-year-old Emma was the one asking the underlying question.
The real question she’d been asking all along.
“Do you need me to say it, Emma? If you do, I will. I’ll say it.”
Did she? Could she bear it?
Even though a part of her knew the answer to the latter was no, she also knew the answer to the former was yes. “You save one, and I’ll save the other . . . why, Jake? Why did you tell me that when you knew you weren’t going to save the other?”
He paused for a long few moments, silently giving her a chance to call the question back. When she didn’t, his eyes ran over her face then, as if he were remembering every detail about her. One last time.
“I said that because they were your siblings, Emma. I couldn’t make that choice.” He exhaled raggedly. “I said it because I needed you to choose which of your siblings we were going to save that night.”
Emma dropped to her knees, defeated now that the words were out there, unable to be kept hidden like they’d been all these years. Unable to be avoided. “You wanted me to choose . . . and I chose Megan.”
“Yes, Emma. You chose Megan, and because of that we saved Megan. Had you not made a choice that night, you would have lost them both.”
“So that’s why you lied to me. You knew we couldn’t save them both, so you lied so I would make a choice.”
“Yes,” he rasped, sounding tortured over the reminder. “I knew you wouldn’t choose if you thought we could only save one . . . so I lied to you.”
“Of course I wouldn’t choose,” she cried out, lashing out at him even though she knew it was wholly unwarranted. Unfair. “I didn’t choose to save him that night, Jake. My own little brother.”
Jake gripped her shoulders and reached down to tip her chin up to hold her gaze, not allowing the shame to keep that connection severed any longer. “We couldn’t save both of them. You know that. I know you know that.”
“I do.” She shrugged helplessly. But it didn’t matter. “I know it’s not logical, but I’ve never been able to get past the fact that by asking me to choose, you basically asked me to sign a death sentence for one of them.”
Anguished tears welled in her eyes. “And I did. I signed Peyton’s life away. I chose Megan over him. Chose her life over his.”
She shook her head at Jake sadly. “Do you still hear him in your nightmares? Peyton? I do. I hear him in mine all the time. Crying, screaming . . . dying all over again.”
“Emma . . .”
She pulled away from him, and his shoulders fell.
“I am so sorry I made you choose, sweetheart. More sorry than I could ever put into words.”
She didn’t want him to apologize for that. Not for the choice he’d forced her to make then, or the one he’d forced her to make now.
Because there was another big choice here he was asking her to make.
And just like then, she had to decide.
For both of their sakes.
“Jake . . . the guilt, the anger, the sadness. The pain. I know it’s not fair to you that you’re tangled up in all of this for me. Even more so now that I know you weren’t even the one who set the fire to begin with. Still. I just don’t think I’ll ever be able to detangle you from all of that.” The tears she’d been holding for what felt like the past fourteen years finally broke free.
Jake dropped his forehead against hers and just held her in his arms.
When he finally spoke, his voice was as wrecked as it was resolute. “I can’t take away the pain from that night, Emma, but I can stop it from hurting you again now. I couldn’t make that choice for you that night, but I can make one for you now.”
Her brain was screaming at her heart to stop this. Stop it before she lost him forever.
But she couldn’t.
She shut her eyes and raged against the universe for being so unbelievably cruel.
For putting them in that situation fourteen years ago.
For putting them in this situation now.
When she finally found the strength to open her eyes, both her brain and her heart mourned what she saw before her.
Jake was gone.