Home Fires Read online

  HOME FIRES

  PATTY SLACK

  Text copyright © 2016 Patricia Slack

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, incidents, and events are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely fictitious.

  Cover design by Novak Illustration

  Edited by Carolyn Rose Editing

  For the invisible people

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  To Get Help

  To Offer Help

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  New suit, new hairstyle, new career—if Cyndi was ever going to make a fresh start, this was the day to do it.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?” Mike asked, handing her a woolen scarf.

  His scarf, not hers.

  “I’ll be fine.” A simple meeting with a property manager seemed as good a place as any to launch her career as a real estate investor. Not that she had any experience with real estate or business, but how hard could it be?

  Cyndi looked at the offered scarf of dull, scratchy wool. “This isn’t mine.”

  “I know, but this one,” Mike said, pulling her fluffy scarf out from under her coat collar, “won’t keep you warm. If you’re going out in this weather, at least dress for it.”

  She snatched the purple strip of fabric back with a laugh. “Don’t be silly. I’m not going on a trek in the woods. The light rail stops right in front of the property manager’s building. Don’t worry.” She wound the scarf back around her neck and tossed the ends over her shoulder. She pulled on a pair of lined gloves and reached into the closet for a hat, passing over the practical stocking cap for the more stylish crocheted beret she’d made last winter. She pulled it on, adjusted her hair, and checked her reflection in the hallway mirror. It would have to do.

  From the corner of her eye, she caught Mike smirking at her. “What? Is my hair out of place?”

  “No. I just thought we’d be past our primping stage by now. What are you now? Fifty?”

  “Forty-seven!” He was teasing, of course, but she couldn’t laugh just yet.

  Mike moved in for a good-bye peck and slid a hand behind her.

  When she pulled away, she brushed his hand aside and, in doing so, felt that he had stuffed something into her coat pocket. She pulled out his ugly hat and scarf. “I’m not wearing them,” she insisted, pushing them against his chest. “I want to look like a professional even if I don’t feel like one.”

  He caught the unwanted items and held them out again.

  “Take them. You don’t have to wear them, but just in case. It’s really cold out.”

  “Okay, okay.” She stuffed them in her purse.

  Mike moved in close once again. “You can do this. She would have wanted you to live.”

  She knew it was true, so why did living feel like a betrayal?

  Mike opened the front door and held it open until Cyndi walked through.

  “Good luck!” he called just before the wind blew the door shut.

  God help her, she needed more than luck.

  The light rail car was standing room only. Cyndi clenched a hand strap. She was wedged between a stout woman and a man screaming into his cell phone. A pair of pierced teenagers didn’t seem to notice that older people could use a seat. Not that she was old, mind you.

  How old were they? Fifteen? Sixteen? Did their parents give them permission to pierce eyebrows and lips? Would Madeleine have bothered to ask?

  Cyndi shook the memory of her only child from her thoughts. Today, she told herself for the hundred millionth time, is a new beginning. Today I look to the future, not the past.

  The rail car veered left. The standing passengers leaned in unison. Someone’s bag jabbed Cyndi in the leg. The light rail was always crowded, but this was ridiculous.

  Two more stops.

  One.

  Cyndi positioned herself to dash for the exit. When the doors opened, she jostled to get through them, but the press of people getting on overpowered her. The doors whooshed shut and the train started moving.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Cyndi said.

  One of the teens smirked at her, twisting the stud in her eyebrow.

  Cyndi looked past her to the green street signs outside. Fifth and Broadway. The sun glinted off them and then they were gone. The next stop was several blocks down the hill. Cyndi was glad she’d chosen to wear sensible shoes.

  She pushed her way to the door. At the next stop, she was the first one out, squeezed onto the sidewalk like a marble shot from between pinched fingers. The cold wind bit at her cheeks and reached through her holey hat. She fished Mike’s sensible hat from her purse and put it on, wrapped his itchy scarf around her face, and bundled her coat around her. Still, the wind’s icy fingers reached down her collar and up her pant legs.

  She turned uphill and leaned into the wind. Brisk weather called for a brisk walk. The scarf barely warmed the air as she breathed. Her lungs burned with cold; her cheeks felt the jabs of a thousand needles. She pressed on, head down.

  When at last the automatic doors of the Cathmore Building swished open for her, Cyndi glanced at her watch. Any extra time she had planned for arranging her hair and makeup had been swallowed up by her unplanned hike. She darted onto an elevator before its doors could shut and pressed the button to go to Simms Property Management on the fifth floor.

  Cyndi examined her reflection in the elevator’s chrome wall. A distorting seam ran down the middle of her face. Mike was right about it being too late for preening. For all the time she’d spent getting ready this morning, she looked more like a bag lady than a businesswoman. She pulled the woolen hat off and immediately regretted it. Static-charged hair danced toward the ceiling, matching her frazzled spirit.

  The elevator opened directly into a professionally decorated reception area. She’d expected a property manager who sat behind an industrial desk holding a pen in his right hand and a toilet plunger in his left. A grouping of chairs, chosen more for form than function, made her wonder how much Simms charged his clients to afford such fancy offices.

  “May I help you?” The glossy receptionist matched the decor.

  “Um, I’ve got an appointment with Mr. Simms?”

  “Ms. Finch? Mr. Simms is expecting you.”

  Cyndi followed the stilettoed receptionist down a long hallway, smoothing her hair with spit as she went. At the end of the hall, she was ushered into a spectac
ular corner office. Gray wintry light flooded through floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating a gray room with black furnishings.

  A pasty businessman rose to greet her across his obscenely grand ebony desk.

  “Ms. Finch? Please, come in. Sit down.”

  She took off her overcoat, but wasn’t sure where to put it. Mr. Simms didn’t seem inclined to offer any help, so she folded it over her arm and sat, feeling as rumpled as her coat.

  Chapter 2

  “Keep moving! You can’t sleep here!”

  It was getting harder and harder to find a decent place to rest. The farmer’s market, usually open only on Saturdays, was a full-time nuisance from now until Christmas. All those venders with their cozy tents and portable space heaters hogged the prime real estate. They should set up their tents in the open and leave the protected area under the bridge for people who needed it, people who had to scrounge for shelter from the elements.

  People like Joe.

  Joe sometimes stayed at the old mission, but he’d rather just tuck into a doorway or corner out of the wind. On a frigid night like this, Winter Housing Overflow would open some schools. He might be able to find a spot on the floor of a school gym, but that would mean a bus ride. He didn’t want to spare the change. Besides, the shelters wouldn’t exactly welcome Wolf. All he needed was a free doorway.

  “Go on, now!” The irate shopkeeper swung his hand toward Joe as if shooing away a fly, then slammed his door. Three strings of jingle bells on the outside handle laughed at him.

  “Come on, boy.” Joe beckoned Wolf with a jerk of his head. “We’re not wanted here.” Joe put his hands on the ground to steady himself, making sure his footing was solid before pressing on the front of his thighs. Slow and steady, he pushed himself to a stand. His stiff legs protested. He stuffed his army surplus sleeping bag into a shopping cart and leaned into the cart handle to get the wheels turning. The right front wheel hung like a hurt paw above the sidewalk.

  “Come on. Let’s go find a place to sleep.”

  Wolf stretched one hind leg, then the other and trotted up the street behind Joe, nose in the air. The husky mutt mix really did look like a wolf when he walked like that, ears perked, senses tuned.

  Maybe he’d sniff them out a free meal.

  Chapter 3

  Cyndi pressed her cell phone to her ear and tried to catch her breath before blurting out the news. “Mike, honey, it’s done. We’re official!”

  Mike, steady as always, didn’t verbalize his enthusiasm, but she knew he felt it. He must. “How’d it go?”

  “Good. Great, I think. I was kind of intimidated, but I did okay and we’re set to go. We got the best property manager in town and the best strip mall west of the Cascades. I’m so ready to get started, I can’t stand it.”

  “Settle down, hon. We won’t clear escrow until after the new year.”

  Cyndi refused to let his infuriating practicality dampen her spirits. “Hey, Mike, I’ve got a couple of stops to make while I’m downtown. It’s brutal out there. I’d better go before things get worse.” Cyndi dropped her phone in her purse. She donned gloves, hat, and scarf, this time not even thinking about how she looked.

  Outside, the wind had picked up even more. Tiny dots of dusty snow danced in all directions. She braced herself against the icy blast. She hopped over the in-ground light rail tracks and headed for Deja Lu. How long had it been since they’d celebrated Christmas? Too long. Well, this year, she was swallowing her grief and getting something nice for Mike. He deserved it.

  Up ahead, the bookstore’s green fabric awning bowed and flexed in the wind.

  No beribboned holiday displays in the front window, just a random assortment of used and antique books. Beyond the display, the stacks reached to the ceiling, crowded out by still more books piled on the ground. She’d love to browse, but with the weather like this, she’d head straight for the locked cases of antique and rare books, make her pick, and scoot on home.

  As she reached for the shop’s door, she heard a low growl. She looked down.

  Near the hem of her overcoat, a massive gray dog bared its teeth.

  Cyndi’s heart lurched. She stepped back.

  The dog stood between her and the bookshop’s door. It glared at her with glacial blue eyes. Under its feet, a large lump of green blankets lay like a tired mountain range.

  “Whoa, boy,” Cyndi said. She reached in her pocket. “Steady. You want a treat?” She kept eye contact with the massive animal, afraid to glance away. She found an energy bar in her pocket. Her fingers closed around it. She raised the bar to her mouth and tugged on the wrapper with her teeth. The foil tore the length of the packaging. A gust of wind caught the wrapper and blew it away.

  Cyndi held the bar out.

  The dog tracked it.

  “You want it?” All she wanted was to distract the animal long enough to get inside the shop and out of the cold wind.

  “Yeah, I want it,” a deep voice said.

  Startled, Cyndi stepped back again.

  From under the lumpy old sleeping bag, a hand reached out, palm up. An old man exposed his face and sat up, with some effort. His ears were red with cold. His beard and mustache glistened with the moisture of his breath. Or was it snot?

  Cyndi didn’t want to think about it. “I’m . . . I’m trying to get in that shop behind you, and your dog won’t let me.”

  “Who? Wolf? He wouldn’t hurt you. He’s a kitten.”

  Wolf still glared at her.

  “Can you call him off, please?”

  “Can I have the bar?”

  Cyndi stepped forward. She watched the dog to make sure it wouldn’t lunge at her as she set the food in the man’s open palm. To her surprise, the man took it in both hands, broke it in half, and offered one piece to his dog.

  Wolf snatched it and devoured it without chewing.

  The man stuck his piece somewhere under his pile of blankets. “Thank you kindly,” he said, and he scooted aside enough for Cyndi to pass.

  Inside the warm shop, she stared at the books without seeing them, waiting for her racing heart to return to normal.

  Chapter 4

  Joe crumpled an old shirt to use as a pillow. The worn flannel did little to keep the frigid concrete from sucking warmth from his head, but it at least gave him a bit of cushion. Years ago, he could stand the weather, but now his old bones ached. Every time a cold front passed through, his joints warned him it was coming.

  He scooted his back against the brick entranceway and tried to get comfortable, but an uneasy feeling that he was about to be chased away from the front of the bookshop kept him on edge. “Where to next?” he asked Wolf. “You got a plan? Maybe we should camp out in the lobby of that big old building over there.” He looked across and down the street. “Wouldn’t that be a hoot? I already got kicked out of there once. It could happen again.”

  Only this time, he would be anonymous, unlike last time, when they’d removed his nameplate from his office on the seventh floor. It was as if they’d removed it from him as well, turning him from a person to a problem the city would rather hide.

  Before he could get too deep into his self-talk about the pitfalls of city government and the narcissism of the rich, Joe heard the door latch above him click. He turned his head away so the shopkeeper wouldn’t see his face when he told him to leave.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  A woman spoke, not a man.

  Joe turned over. It was the lady who’d given him the energy bar. So now that she’d done a good deed, she felt like she had the right to tell him where to go and what to do? Fat chance.

  “Sir?” She held out a hat and scarf to him. “I just—I noticed you don’t have a hat on. I thought this might help.”

  Joe could tell they’d been worn, but in this weather, he’d take what he could get. The lady looked cold herself. Her own hat and scarf were for decoration, not warmth.

  “I wish it was more,” she said. She jiggled the scarf to get him
to take it, which he did. “It’s all I’ve got on me.” She hesitated as if waiting for a response. “Well, anyway, God bless.”

  God bless. How many times had he heard that from people who tried to fix the world’s problems with a Band-Aid? At least this lady had done something. Not near enough. It never was. But it was something.

  He watched her bustle away in the dimming light. She clenched a paper sack in one hand—a book, presumably—and tugged her coat tighter around her chest with the other. She gripped her purse like she thought he was gonna mug her, even though she was the one who’d approached him.

  She stopped at the light rail station. The four-car train pulled up and blocked her from view. When it continued down the line, she was gone.

  “Thanks, lady,” Joe muttered, his words swallowed by the wind’s howl. He folded the scarf and positioned it on the sidewalk under the flannel shirt. It was plenty thick enough to shield his ear from the frozen ground while he slept.

  Chapter 5

  Cyndi sat at the dining room table amidst stacks of important papers. The number of stacks and forms multiplied before her eyes. No wonder they called it piles of paperwork. How could she have let it get so out of hand?

  She tipped her mug back, hoping for another swallow of tea before she dug in on her project again. Empty. An excellent excuse to go make more.

  She turned the kettle on. Should she wait for it to boil or go back to work and be interrupted again when the whistle blew? She ambled back to the dining room, but balked at the sight of all the mess. Stacks of papers covered the table. More sat on chairs and on the sideboard. She used to be compulsive about organization, but now . . .

  When it’s hard to summon enough energy to get out of bed in the morning, filing doesn’t seem that important. Even today, when this was the only thing she had to work on, she couldn’t concentrate. Every few minutes, something urgent like getting more tea or dusting the mantel pulled her away.

  The hum of the garage door told her Mike was home. She glanced at her watch. The day was gone with nothing to show for it.