She lay on her back and stared up at the stars, as yet faint in the periwinkle sky but still pulsing. She’d known that her mother had died in the horrible fire that destroyed the small house they’d rented on Sullivan’s Island. She’d accepted the fact that her mother died in a fire the same as if she’d died of cancer or a car accident. The salient point to a child was that her mother was gone, not how she left. Tonight, however, she was haunted less by Dora’s words and more by Mamaw’s. They floated in her mind, creating macabre images. I pray to God she died quickly.
Carson closed her eyes and brought her arm up over them, shuddering. Death by fire had to be one of the worst possible ways to die. She felt physically sick as she thought about the unspeakable terror of being burned alive. Carson shivered in the night, feeling a fine sweat break out on her skin. She closed her eyes and somewhere in that blackness a memory hovered close. She could almost grasp it, like a hand in the thick smoke. She was groping for it like a frightened child. It was so close. If she could only reach it.
“Dad!” she cried aloud.
The smells were bad. And there was a hissing sound and loud noises that woke her. Carson was only four years old. She didn’t know what the noises came from, but even with her head under the sheet, the bad smells made her cough. They made her afraid. She pushed off the sheet from her face.
“Mama!” she cried. “Daddy!”
When no one answered her, Carson climbed from her bed to go to their room. Everything felt hot, the floors, the air, the door handle. It burned her hand when she touched it. A mean gray smoke was sneaking in from under the door and it frightened her. It was not supposed to be there. She ran back to her bed and pulled her blanket over her head. She heard glass breaking, like her mama might have been in a bad mood and breaking something.
“Carson!” It was her father’s voice.
“Daddy!” she cried, and her heart leaped with joy in her chest. “Daddy!” She pulled off the blanket again and hurried to the door. This time she opened it, burning her hand as she turned the knob. But she had to get to her daddy.
Smoke poured into the room. It was thick and black and it burned when she breathed and made her eyes burn. She coughed and rubbed her eyes but that only made them worse. Crying now, she knew she had to get to her parents’ room, where it was safe. She groped her way down the hall, her palms flat against the wall. Even the walls felt hot to the touch.
Then she saw him, standing in front of his bedroom. He wasn’t moving. She wanted to cry that she was so glad to see him, knowing soon she’d be safe in his arms.
“Daddy!” she cried, her voice cracking in the dry heat. She stumbled toward him. He turned but she could barely see him through the smoke. She reached out to him.
Instead of grabbing her hand, he turned in the opposite direction and fled. Carson’s last vision of him was his back disappearing in the smoke as he ran down the stairs.
She dropped to her knees, crying and coughing. She couldn’t call his name; her throat was too raw. All she could think to do was to follow him. She crawled to the stairs. Sparks were flying everywhere. It hurt so bad when they burned her skin, like sharp teeth biting her. She crawled as fast as she could to the stairs. At last she saw that the front door was open. A man in a big hat was standing there.
“Daddy,” she cried, but it came out more as a cough. But the man in the big hat heard her and ran up the stairs and scooped her up in his arms. She buried her face against his rubbery coat as he carried her outdoors.
Suddenly the air was cooler and didn’t burn her skin, though it still hurt to breathe. She coughed again and blinked open her eyes. A lady took her from the big man’s arms and was carrying her to a red truck. She smiled at her, but Carson was afraid and cried for her father.
“He’s all right,” the nice lady told her. “He’s right over there. See him?”
Carson looked to where the woman pointed. She saw him kneeling on the grass. He was all dirty and his body was bent, with his face in his hands like he was praying. Only he wasn’t praying. He was crying.
She reached for him. Here I am, Daddy, she wanted to tell him. Don’t worry about me, I’m here. But her throat hurt too badly to talk and the nurse was carrying her farther away from him into the little red truck. The nice lady laid her on a cot with clean white paper on it and she was saying things like how everything was going to be all right.
“I want my mommy,” Carson croaked.
The nurse’s face stilled and she had that uh-oh look in her eyes that told Carson something bad had happened. Then she put a plastic cup over Carson’s mouth and told her it would help her to breathe.
“You just rest, sweetheart,” the woman told her. “I’m going to take good care of you. Don’t you worry. Everything’s going to be all right.”
But Carson didn’t feel like everything was going to be all right. She felt a terror engulfing her, squeezing her heart, that was worse than the evil smoke in the house. And she was afraid.
Carson coughed and gasped for air, opening her eyes and staring wildly into the night while her heart beat hard in her chest. For a frightening moment she didn’t know where she was. Then, as her heart rate settled, she heard the lapping of the water and felt the rocking of the dock and remembered she was outdoors, at Sea Breeze, on the floating dock.
She struggled to sit up, her head reeling, and wiped her face with her palms. She felt hot and afraid, like she was still trapped in the blinding smoke. She’d remembered that terrible night of the fire—remembered it like it was yesterday. It was so vivid, she could almost feel the burning of the heat and sparks on her skin. Had she tucked it far into some dark corner so she’d never have to face it again? Why had she blocked out that memory?
Then, with a sudden chill, she knew why. She closed her eyes and saw again her father’s back running down the stairs. He’d left her there, in the fire. He abandoned his child to die, just so he could make it out of the house faster, saving himself. What kind of father did that? What kind of a man? Carson felt a fierce stab of betrayal. Throughout her childhood she’d stuck by his side. Every day, he’d told her that he loved her.
It was all just lies. How could he have loved her if he’d abandoned her to burn to death? Then, with a bitter twist of the knife, she realized that abandonment was what he’d practiced all his life.