“You said to wake you before too long,” says Effie, Robert back on her hip.
Sally would swear she still smells smoke, but slowly, she remembers the bath, the fresh dress, the feeling of Effie’s hands on her head as she wove her wet hair into a thick braid.
She stands too quickly, and when she is on her feet, she wobbles. Effie grabs hold of her elbow and steadies her. “You all right?”
“Just tired.”
“All of this is going to catch up with you.”
“I know,” says Sally, allowing her eyes to blink shut for slightly longer than necessary. “Everything’s ready?”
“I gathered up all the scraps of fabric I could find. There’s an extra bottle of laudanum, and I went next door to ask Mrs. Millhiser for some vinegar. Mrs. Ross, too. All she had was turpentine, but I took it anyway.”
“That’s perfect. Can Joe help me get it over there?”
Sally borrows an extra coat of Margaret’s and uses the latrine. Back in the house, she splashes water on her face and eats the beef pallets set in front of her. They taste better than anything she’s ever eaten, and she asks Effie, “Will you pack up whatever’s left of this, too?”
Before they leave, Sally pats herself down and realizes she’s left Mr. Scott’sfausse montrein the kitchen house, beside the tub. “I’ll be right back,” she says to Effie and Joe as she hurries to retrieve it.
The trinket is where Sally left it on the windowsill, and on the walk back to the main house, she opens the case front and studies the woman’s face staring back at her. The mysterious FS looks every bit as amused as she did a few hours ago, and Sally wonders how easy it will be to track her down.
When Sally can think of nothing else that needs to be done or packedor put away, she kisses Margaret’s children one more time and signals to Joe that it is time to go. Effie has gathered enough supplies that she’s filled two wooden crates; Joe carries them both, one balanced atop the other, in his arms. In her own arms, Sally carries the boots she borrowed from Mrs. Cowley and a small bag containing two of Margaret’s shifts and a shirt of Archie’s, which she intends to give to Mr. Scott. She has also packed a change of clothes for herself, since it seems unlikely she’ll be able to return home for several days.
Joe walks slowly, on account of the fact that the crates make it hard to see where he’s going, but Sally doesn’t mind the plodding pace. If anything, she’s grateful to have a reason to put off what she knows is waiting for her.
“You see Gilbert Hunt last night?” Joe asks her while she waits for him to cross Eleventh Street.
“Who is he?”
“Negro blacksmith. Works at Cameron Kemp’s shop. About my age, but a lot bigger.”
“It was pandemonium last night,” says Sally apologetically. “I’d hardly have recognized my own mother.”
“You’d remember him if you saw him,” says Joe. “I was down at The Bell this morning, and it’s all Angus Graham was talking about. Word is, Gilbert Hunt caught more than a dozen white ladies. Right out of the sky. Was a risky business, but not one of them had so much as a scratch on her.”
Sally thinks of the women she encountered in the third-floor hallway and how difficult it was to coax them out the window. “They just jumped? Straight into his arms?”
“I heard Dr. McCaw was up in one of the windows, tossing them to him, one at a time.”
They had to have been on the second floor, Sally decides. She has stood in a third-floor window, contemplating the distance between herself and the ground, and even if there were a willing volunteer waiting for her, she wouldn’t have had a prayer of being caught.
She likes the idea of this McCaw fellow shepherding the women out the window to whatever uncertain futures awaited them. “By the time Margaret and I jumped,” she tells Joe, “all the men on the third floor had disappeared.”
“Except that one fellow you was telling me about?”
He’s talking about Mr. Scott. “Yes, except him.”
As they approach the wreckage of the theater, their pace slows. Sally dreads seeing the building, but she is also drawn to it.
“That’s Samuel Myers’s place,” says Joe, nodding at the lot next to the theater, where a wood-framed house has also burned to the ground. The house sat at least a hundred feet from the theater, but the wind last night was wicked, and all it took was one spark for the whole thing to go up in flames.
Eventually, the theater, or what is left of it, comes into view. “Have you seen it yet?” Sally asks Joe.
“I was down here last night, looking for you and Missus Margaret. And again this morning.”
“Of course you were. I’m sorry. I should have assumed.”
“Nothing for you to be sorry about. I’m just glad you made it out, is all.”
