“Um, shouldn’t we take him to a hospital?” Kael asks, glancing back at the truck, then at me.
“Can,” Sharon says, fumbling with the lock beneath the glass awning. “But it hasn’t helped. Closest town outside the evacuation zone’s prob’ly an hour away. He’ll snap out of it ‘fore we get there.”
Kael hesitates at the threshold. “And shouldn’t we… evacuate?”
“We were. Until your friend called.”
That snaps me out of my daze. I force my legs to move and join Kael at the door. “You talked to Jenny?”
Sharon nods rapidly, leaning toward her open door. “Said you was calling every number she could find when she couldn’t reach you. Come on, need your help—” She pauses, finally reading the way we’re both hovering. “It’s not like the last one. Whole town evacuated yesterday. Roads are clear. We’ll leave as soon as I grab a few things.”
“We’re so, so grateful,” I say, stepping inside. “How can we help?”
The interior is an unfinished storefront with bare wood floors and plain white drywall. Light pours in from the front windows and through a plastic-wrapped, glass-paned garage door at the back.
“You two just move in?” I ask.
She lets out a short, high-pitched laugh. “We’ve lived in Paradise for decades. Walt and I are high school sweethearts. Glued ever since.”
I nod at the walls. “I meant the construction.”
“Hon, nothing in Paradise’s older than us now.” A small staircase is tucked behind a wall where a counter might eventually stand. “Up here.”
“These places are incredible,” Kael says as he follows, eyes devouring every detail.
“So they say,” Sharon says. “Can’t take the credit. Recovery Plan’s changing everything ‘round here.” She stops on the landing and glances back at us. “Can’t change the dirt, though.”
Their second-story apartment is charming and clearly lived in. Open bags lie scattered, and stacks of books and albums lean against the wall by the door. They’d been in the middle of evacuating before turning back for us.
“Who’s the artist?” Kael rushes to an easel in the back corner.
Paintings cover every inch of the living room walls. The front has one big window, but the back wall is almost entirely glass, looking down over a small fenced yard from above the still-wrapped garage door below.
“That would be me,” Sharon says. “Light’s the best thing about this place.”
One wall burns with reds, yellows, and oranges, almost flickering while standing at the back. The movement she’s captured on canvas is breathtaking, accurate, and terrifying.
“Are all these yours?” I ask. “They’re… incredible.”
“They give me the willies.” She shivers. “An artist’s job is to go to the canvas, but I sure wish the muse would send me a leaf or a dove for once.”
“Kael’s an artist too,” I say.
“Oh? What do you work with?”
Kael studies a burning tree line, answering, “Oil paints mostly, photorealistic stuff, but I love your modern impressionism.” He glances at the backyard, eyes aglow in a way the fire couldn’t dim. Watching him talk shop with Sharon is like watching someone come back to life from the inside out. “I see what you mean about the light. You, uh, ever get creative block?”
“Hogwash,” she says.
“I get what you mean about artists going to the canvas,” Kael says. “But what if nothing comes out?”
“Then paint it white,” she says. “I’d love a white canvas right now. You’d think surviving one inferno like that would be enough.”
Her words finally help me understand. Everything is new. Paradise had already burned once, while I’d been safely in San Francisco, watching smoke columns on the news.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “That must have been devastating.”
Sharon touches the swirling orange sky of one painting with a trembling hand.
