Hannah
The fire didn’t put an end to book club. No, it just added some fuel to it. Secrecy, gossip, and something to watch from the large patio connecting the main house and so-called shed while everyone drank their champagne and sauvignon blanc. That seemed to be the prevailing attitude—that it was there for their entertainment and speculation.
“Probably torched it for the insurance money,” a woman named Anne said. Her hair was blond and thick, her sunglasses pushed into it, holding it back, like a hasty headband. She wore no makeup, had a normal number of wrinkles but was still very pretty, with large brown eyes and expansive white teeth. Naturally white, not that electric white that looked as if it might glow in the dark. If she hadn’t just accused her neighbors of being criminals, Hannah might have thought at first glance they could be friends.
“Is that a mob joke? Just because they’re Italian,” Hillary said. “Cut them a break.”
“Half Italian,” someone added. “He’s Italian, not her.”
“She’s Venezuelan.”
“Oh, she looks Italian.”
“Who cares what they are? They’re my neighbors. They’re my friends. God, you guys,” a woman named Monica said. “I hope it’s wet enough from all the rain that the fire doesn’t spread. So many leaves and branches this time of year.” Monica picked up her phone and called her caretaker, who was still at her house and assured her that all was safe.
Hannah couldn’t remember her name, the allegedly Venezuelan neighbor, which didn’t seem important at the time. She couldn’t be expected to learn who everyone was right away.
Susan was the woman hosting, a small woman with a head slightly too big for her body, like someone who’d shrunk everywhere she could. She had on a chunky sweater with suede boots and large mesh earrings, everything textured and designed to be noticed or touched. She reminded Hannah of a girl in college who told her sorority sisters she always wore cashmere or angora because it made her boyfriend want to cuddle, like a blanket. Susan made up for her size by making big sweeping gestures with her hands and face, proudly showing off her new shed, which was almost as large as Hannah’s house and had nicer appliances and several arrangements of fresh flowers that matched the cover of the book they’d read—peach and green.
Hillary had told Hannah there was no need to bring anything, and she quickly found out why—Susan had the event catered, with tuna sushi sandwiches and radishes and pea pods wrapped in spring lettuce and the smallest desserts Hannah had ever seen, truly bite-sized. Beautiful, delicious, fancier than the word shed would lead you to believe. And small. The real estate was large, but everything else, including most of the women, was small.
Only a few women wanted to talk about the book, an Auschwitz love story Hannah had skimmed the night before so she wouldn’t feel left out. As they stood watching the smoke above the hill, listening to the sirens, Anne sighed and told Hannah she was “done with the Holocaust.” Strike two, Hannah thought. Still, there was something useful about a woman who said out loud what merely skittered through others’ thoughts. Anne was probably an old-fashioned bigot, but at least she was honest.
Another woman, so short she was child-sized, Tara, with pin-straight red hair, offered a vape pen, and Hannah shook her head.
“I know vaping’s controversial now, but if you ever need edibles, let me know.”
Hannah smiled and said she wasn’t into that, especially with a middle schooler at home. The woman looked at her oddly, head cocked, as if she didn’t quite see her point. Some moms secretly smoked pot in Hannah’s old neighborhood, giggling around the fire pits when the kids weren’t home, but she hadn’t expected it here, out in the open, where people were more proper and had more money.
Hillary hadn’t mentioned pot when she’d described the ladies in book club. She’d mentioned kids’ ages, hair color, hobbies, husbands’ jobs. Hannah had asked if any of the women worked, and Hillary had sighed and said they all did volunteer work, which was really, truly a lot of work. Hannah had nodded; she’d heard that familiar refrain but didn’t know firsthand. She’d never had the luxury of being that kind of busy. But they hadn’t gone over their addictions. Pot? Adderall? Alcohol? Vicodin?
Oh well, she supposed. Plenty of time for that.
The emergency response to the fire a few properties away had been robust. No one at book club seemed particularly worried about it; there was no talk of walking down to see if their neighbors were okay. Gone were the days of bringing blankets and buckets of water, but still. Maybe they didn’t know their half-Italian neighbors. Maybe they knew they were away. Maybe they were just leaving things to the professionals. Of course, you couldn’t go down there with a vape pen, could you?
Hannah spoke to Hillary, not the group.
“Shouldn’t we maybe go see if anyone needs help?”
“Help?”
“I don’t know, if they have to go to the hospital for smoke inhalation, if they might need their kids picked up somewhere or their dog fed or—”
“Wow, you really are a writer.”
“Fire is no joke.”
“No, of course, but it’s just a playhouse, Han.”
“That’s even worse. There’s kids, there’s toys—”
“They don’t have any kids. The previous owners built it. They were gonna tear it down. Plus there’s professionals swarming it. I’m sure it’s fine.”
So it wasn’t the fire exactly that brought the evening to a close but a call from Hannah’s mother. Hannah took the call and hurried to the edge of the deck, away from the chittering women, so she could hear. Still, hearing didn’t matter much; she could make out her mother’s words but didn’t quite understand what she was saying. She knew her mother’s tone of voice. Better safe than sorry. She’d always suspected her mother was a little wary of boys and their style of play and speech. She’d raised girls after all.
Hannah told Hillary that Miles was acting out and she had to go home.
“Acting out?” Hillary said.
“Yes.”
“That’s what she said?”
“Yes,” Hannah replied with emphasis and annoyance, grabbing her sweater off the chair, heading for the driveway. It was an old-fashioned phrase, vague enough to mean a million different things. Maybe he had snuck a cookie when she had told him no. Maybe he was teaching Morgan the lyrics to a song that had swear words in it. Who knew?
“I’ll come with you,” Hillary said.
“No, don’t be silly. Stay with your friends.”
Hillary blinked. Hannah knew her sister well enough to know what she was considering in the moment. If there was something left out, a detail in the margins being overlooked. What had their mother actually said? What was going on with their kids, at her house? Subtext—she was scanning for it in the air. Mother’s intuition? No. Hillary had a particularly fine-tuned bullshit detector and knew her sister like the back of her hand. Hannah hadn’t lied to her, but Hillary knew, intuitively, something was off. And every molecule of her being was wondering why. Why, why, why?
“They’re not my friends,” Hillary stage-whispered with a smile, and she linked arms with her sister.
“Wait,” Susan called as she saw them leaving. “Where are you going?”
“Babysitter called,” Hillary said. “Sorry!”
“But you didn’t sign up for the fall festival yet,” she said, brandishing a list on a bright red clipboard. “We still need a few people to help with pumpkin carving and the cocktail station. Ice, napkins, etc. The food and music are all taken care of.”
Hillary had mentioned the fall festival and summer block party to Hannah when she’d seen the house. Cited it as an example of neighborhood togetherness, and she’d liked the sound of it. And she certainly appreciated the value of any drinking activity that took cars out of the equation. People were so stupid around alcohol in the suburbs.
“We’ll do cocktails,” Hillary said. “And napkins. Put us both down for that.”
Hannah bristled. Why did the nondrinker always have to bring drinks? Why, whenever Hillary told her what to bring to dinner, did she always ask Hannah to bring wine?
“Okay, will do. But…we have to vote on the next book! It’s the last meeting before January, remember?” Susan called out as they walked down the driveway.
“Whatever book you want is fine with us,” Hillary replied.
“Well, Anne’s turning everyone against my new Holocaust pick,” Susan said. She pouted at them broadly, animating her face again in a way that was almost hideous in contrast to the rest of her but wasn’t. Jolie laide, Hannah thought suddenly. A French word from her old word list. Pretty but ugly.
“Susan,” Hillary said, “don’t listen to her. Vote your heart.”
They walked back together, not discussing the smoke in the air, the police and fire trucks, the lack of intellectual rigor of the book club, or their mother’s babysitting deficiencies. They didn’t discuss the weather, the week ahead, or any number of things they might have on another evening. Hannah was worried, and her sister knew it, so she kept her mouth shut.
“Wait, did you actually tell her to vote her heart?” Hannah said suddenly, laughing, as they got to the bottom of Susan’s long driveway. “Do you maybe have a brain tumor?”
“I just needed to shut her up and let us leave. I mean really. I thought I was at a political rally for a second there. Sign up for this, vote on that.”
As they started to walk down the hill, a blue sedan with Lyft and Uber signs in its window pulled up to the curb. A woman exited. She was tall with dark hair. Not a hint of a smile as she nodded hello to Hillary.
“Evening,” Hillary said. She didn’t introduce her sister, and the woman started walking up the long driveway. “Uber drivers hate long driveways, have you noticed that?” Hillary said as they walked. “It’s really absurd. I mean, what’s the point of paying if you have to walk?”
Something about the tall woman’s gait, slow and methodical, like an adolescent boy’s, made Hannah turn and watch her.
“Who’s that?”
“Someone late for book club who’s going to get yelled at for not reading the book.”
Hillary’s studied breeziness and lack of introduction hung in the air. Along with the way the woman walked. So familiar, it made Hannah shiver.
“Wait, is that…is that her sist—Is that Marisa Gothie? From high school?”
She stopped and watched her walking, and Hillary pulled her arm.
“I thought the Gothies moved,” Hannah whispered.
“Well, people move back. As you should know.”
“Jesus, Hillary, does Marisa live here, in the neighborhood? Does she come to the book club?”
“No! She lives somewhere, I don’t know. West of here. And yes. Sometimes. Once in a while. She’s friends with Monica. But not her sister.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it’s been twenty years, and it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” Hannah said. “Great, well, I guess I can’t be in the book club.”
“Stop it, Han,” Hillary said. “Let it go once and for all.”
Another fire truck and an ambulance approached them and passed from the Gotham Road side. Without flashing lights and sirens, they were just lumbering beasts, moving slowly, too large for their narrow, winding street.
“Weird that they’re leaving but the police aren’t leaving, too,” Hannah said.
“I guess.”
Hannah stopped and turned back, as if she wanted to snapshot the moment, capture it to understand it better.
“I think there’s lights from three police cars down there.”
“It’s probably just the ornamental lights of their landscaping on the trees or something.”
“Red lights?”
“Okay, I don’t know. But you’re on edge now, so just stop worrying. And please don’t buy into that whole bullshit arson situation. Anne is a fucking racist.”
“I’m not buying into anything,” she replied. “But three police cars?”
“I would normally say they’re bored and looking for excitement. But they have a kid to find now, so there goes that theory.”
“Maybe these two things are related. The fire and the missing girl.”
The idea was suspended between them now, and Hillary shuddered. “Jesus, I hope not.” She crossed herself quickly, as she’d done since childhood, looked at her sister, and stared, until she did the same.
Hannah thought of her father, who used to take them to church so their mother could sleep in. Her father had taught them how to cross themselves, how to throw salt over their shoulder, how to blow on dice and wish for snake eyes. He’d also taught them how to put out a grease fire, with baking soda and a rug. A grease fire he started once or twice a month by falling asleep drunk while cooking. There were a lot of ways, she knew, to start a fire.
But only a few to extinguish one.