WHAT’S SHE DOING here?” Lucia said, parking her mother’s truck behind a Subaru station wagon, the same one she’d watched Vista reverse out of Ben’s garage an hour ago. “Are they friends?” Lucia removed the keys from the ignition and stared out at her sister and Vista talking—or yelling even—with wild gesticulations like they were practicing to be air traffic controllers.
“Isn’t that Ben’s girlfriend? I can’t see.”
“That’s her,” Lucia said.
“She runs Mya’s store,” Willow said, “but ‘friends,’ I can’t be sure about that.”
Without using her crutches, Mya pushed past Vista and limped to the station wagon like the car belonged to her. Lucia tried not to look at Vista directly but found herself drawn to the girl’s hippie, casual, artsy beauty: long hair in two braids, chunky wooden bangles, hemp ankle bracelets. Lucia couldn’t pull off that earthy look, though she’d tried it out when she first dated Jonah. Vista had no raccoon circles or sad lines around her eyes—she had to be younger than Lucia by a few years. All of this made Lucia want a sip of moonshine. Just a tiny sip. Or another trail run.
Willow said, “What’s going on here?” but Mya barely registered the question. “Vista?” Willow said.
Her carefree face finally showed a glimpse of human angst when she squinted her eyes and said, “The store’s ablaze.”
“Is anyone hurt?”
“Get in,” Mya barked at Vista. “Everything’s fine,” she told Willow.
“Are you headed there now?” Lucia said.
“No, Lucia. I made a spa appointment for a mud facial,” Mya said with searing sarcasm. Each day Lucia stayed here, her sister became meaner.
“What about your leg?”
“I don’t care if it hurts,” Mya said, and she slammed the driver’s-side door.
Lucia said, “May I come?”
Vista shrugged and said, “Sure.”
She danced around Lucia as they tried to figure out who should be in the front seat. Lucia wanted to be in the back and away from her sister’s bad mood, so she said, “It’s your car, I’ll take the back.” Vista appeared dismayed, and Lucia thought the girl would rather be in the back with Lucia. And what did Vista know about Lucia? Had Ben told her anything at all? Did Vista sense right now that the only reason Lucia asked to join was the off chance that Ben would show up at the store to check on her? And he would, of course he would. Ben was one of the good guys.
Mya waved her hands at them and shouted something that sounded like “Hurry up,” but Lucia couldn’t hear her, sealed as she was inside the vehicle.
Willow said, “I should stay here, just in case someone calls.”
Lucia inserted herself into the backseat of Vista’s car, and the smell of patchouli and sandalwood incense overwhelmed her immediately. This was the smell Ben inhaled when they had sex. Lucia cracked the window to draw in some much-needed air.
Mya sped down Route 161. Lucia said, “Be careful,” and Mya said, “Shut up.” Vista glanced back at Lucia but didn’t say anything.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Mya said, and she glanced over at Vista, who didn’t seem to have any plan to respond. “Vista?”
“What?”
“Answer me.”
“You didn’t ask me anything,” Vista said with an attitude Lucia hadn’t thought her capable of before. This unfortunately made Lucia admire the girl even more. Ben liked spunk.
Lucia watched her sister’s head shake back and forth. “How did it happen?” Mya finally asked.
Vista propped two Roman-sandaled feet on the dashboard, her red painted toenails glistening in the sun. She finally said, “The glycerin tinctures. They were going three days and those Crock-Pots were old, I told you that.”
“And the extra product, that was still on hand?”
Vista nodded and separated her homemade feather earrings from her hair. “I had them set to ship out to a buyer this afternoon.”
Mya turned down the bluegrass music on the local NPR station and said, “Everything of mine, everything I deal with, everything that matters to me, is disappearing.” Her eyes flashed in the rearview mirror and connected with Lucia’s for a moment. Without words they exchanged the same disturbing thought about the black cloud.
For all the hurt Mya had caused Lucia in the past, Lucia had never once wished her sister to die. She loved her, despite everything, even her attempt to steal Ben away and keep him for the business. Mya had always been a protector. She had the will to protect Lucia, Willow, the business, herself. All of her actions, good and bad, stemmed from this one impulse. When Willow had left town on business trips, Mya took control as mother figure, believing the hired babysitters might mess up. In some ways, Lucia continued to see Mya in that role. No matter what, Lucia didn’t want Mya harmed.
As if she too had been thinking about Mya’s comment, Vista said, “What’s that mean? Everything is disappearing?”
“Nothing,” Mya and Lucia said at the same time, but Mya looked at Lucia once more in the mirror as if to say, “You know it’s possible.”
ALL OF QUARTZ HOLLOW HAD gathered for this fire. Mya parked the car three blocks away from the store. Lucia could see exactly where the store was located, because smoke hovered above that stretch of brick buildings. Lucia scanned the parked cars for Ben’s truck, and then she looked at Vista, who was doing the same.
“Watch out,” Vista said, and pointed down.
Lucia hopped over a pile of dog excrement on the sidewalk. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“So, how long have you and Ben been dating?”
“Not too long, about a month. We’re taking our time. There’s no need to rush,” she answered. “His mom’s ill, so, you know, the universe asks us to prioritize.”
Lucia had no response for this kind of logic, so she said, “I’m sorry about the store.”
“Me too,” Vista said. “Negative energy attracts that sort of thing.”
The brick walls of the store were already black, and the firemen drained water on the top of the building. The blaze persisted, the flames desperate to reach the sky and consume it also. There must’ve been a lot of dried tea inside that shop to feed a fire this potent.
“I think I’ll need another job,” Vista said.
Lucia didn’t mean to think it, but the thought came to her anyway: maybe Vista would have to leave Quartz Hollow to find work. That or she’d move in with Ben officially. If Lucia knew Ben at all, he’d offer, just to be helpful.
Thinking good thoughts about Ben White must’ve made him manifest (if she used Vista’s kind of logic). Ben cut through the crowd and waved his hand, but of course they’d both seen him already. He charged forward and seemed to reach out his arms to both of them, like he was unsure of who to embrace first. Lucia stepped aside.
“This is nuts,” he said. Vista nodded and then burst into tears. This startled Lucia. The girl had seemed so put together in the car.
Ben pulled Vista close to him, and Lucia turned away so they could have this moment, but she couldn’t miss hearing Vista say, “I called and called and called Mya, and she wouldn’t answer, and I had to go all the way out there to get her just to tell her, and I think I waited too long to call the fire people, and look at it now.”
Lucia turned back around to tell Vista not to worry or feel guilty, that the fire would’ve happened no matter what, but Ben was stroking the top of Vista’s head and Lucia couldn’t speak. And then he caught Lucia staring, and he stared back at her. His eyes seemed somehow less invested in his embrace than they should’ve been. Maybe he was just in shock like everyone else. Lucia said, “So I think I’m going to check on Mya,” and Vista nodded, tears creating the only blemishes on her delicate face. Lucia looked back once with a genuine desire to check on Vista, poor girl, but it was Ben who was still watching Lucia walk away, and this calmed her, if only for a moment.
She waved good-bye to him and he nodded once. Did Lucia detect sadness there, or was she projecting? It wasn’t like she could ask him, and what nonsense this all was—he still had his arm around Vista. Plus, Lucia was barely divorced at this point, though she was years separated from satisfying sex and love. Still, she knew she shouldn’t bother thinking about anyone else, especially an old boyfriend. She was foolish to think she wouldn’t need more time to heal. Being in her thirties should make a girl less naïve, not more.
Her sister stood talking to the chief fireman as close to the building as they could be, the heat extending far from the flames. She turned around as Lucia approached, and Mya’s face looked older than it had even yesterday; the wrinkles in her forehead stayed long after her eyebrows stopped moving. “It’s burned to shit,” she told Lucia.
“I see that.”
“Will you call Mom and tell her to come get us?”
“Sure.” Lucia patted her pockets. “I don’t have my phone. Let me borrow yours.”
Mya pulled a phone from her back pocket. The pink case with an Audrey Hepburn sticker definitely did not belong to Mya. She offered Lucia’s phone to her but then realized her mistake and tried to take it back. Lucia snagged it before her sister could cover up what she had done and said, “Did you go through my stuff?”
Mya said, “Just call Mom.” And then she turned around and did absolutely nothing. She didn’t talk to the officers or firemen, she simply stood.
Lucia grabbed Mya’s arm and forced her to turn around.
Mya ran her fingers through her sweaty blond hair and said, “I heard it ringing and it wouldn’t quit so I answered it. That’s all. It was Jonah and I told him you’d call him back.”
Lucia dragged her thumb down the screen and saw that the call log did not back her sister’s story: “It says I called him. Today. There’s no way. Did you call him?”
“What the hell, Lucia?” Mya shouted, suddenly so defensive that Lucia wasn’t sure what to believe. One of the firemen turned around, and his eyebrows leaped on his soot-covered face. Lucia shushed Mya, but it didn’t help. Mya said, “I didn’t call your fucking ex-husband. He keeps calling you and the noise was pissing me off. Maybe you should stop avoiding him.”
Who to trust? Her sister or her phone? Jonah had called Lucia obsessively, that much was true, but he hadn’t called today, at least not that the phone reported. Lucia checked the volume. It wasn’t silenced, but the volume only had one bar. And she’d buried it in her bed. No way the noise disturbed anyone. “Why’d you take my phone?” Lucia pressed.
“This is ridiculous. I have things to deal with right now,” Mya said. “I took your phone because I thought you should stop ignoring your life. You did have one before you arrived here, remember? And be glad I did, okay? There’s an issue and Jonah needs you to talk to him.”
“I didn’t realize you cared so much about my affairs, Mya,” Lucia said coldly.
“Well, I do,” Mya said, and still Lucia couldn’t gauge whether she should trust her sister, though some issue, like a problem with the lease, did sound like a plausible reason for why Jonah had called so often.
“Forgive me if that takes me by surprise a little.”
“What’re you waiting for?”
Lucia crossed her arms and stared at her sister. When would she ever stop bossing her? Becoming the boss might be the only way to change this dynamic.
“Just call Mom,” Mya continued.
As Lucia dialed their mother’s office number, she forced herself not to look around for Vista and Ben. The compulsion to do so was irritatingly strong, but she couldn’t give this small matter away to her sister. Willow answered and said, “Need a ride?” Lucia never had appreciated her mother’s intuition as much as she should have. “We do,” she said, and Willow said, “On my way.”
AFTER A SILENT RIDE HOME, Lucia needed space away from her sister and mother, so she pretended she had a bedroom door to lock and closed the curtain in the frame as fully as she could. If there were a doorknob she’d have hung a Do Not Disturb sign. A stray dragonfly from the front porch flew around her room and then landed on the white post on her bed frame. She cracked the window and said, “Get out while you can.” With a sweep of her hand, the dragonfly took flight and escaped. Lucia fell back on her daybed and cradled her cell phone in both hands, and each time she came close to tapping Jonah’s name on the screen, she ended up dropping the phone facedown on her chest. She did this over and over until the repetition made her sleepy. Some days, like this one, had a bad habit of feeling much longer than others. Lucia drifted into a nap that accidentally extended past dinner and into a full night’s rest.