The older boy was trying to wrestle the garden hose away from the younger one, who'd wrapped it around his torso like a python. They collapsed into a heap, shrieking. The dog joined in, barking until both boys dissolved in laughter.
My chest went tight. I felt it in my hands and my throat. The sound of children's laughter did that to me, sometimes. It was like a foreign language I'd never been taught.
Kimmy reached over again, this time just resting her palm on my wrist. Her fingers were warm and nice and made me feel safer.
"If I don't do it today, I won't have the courage to do it later," I admitted.
"Do you want me to come with you?"
I pictured Kimmy standing next to me on the porch, introducing herself as my emotional support human. The thought made me want to laugh and puke at the same time.
"Yes," I said.
A silence fell between us. It was easy as sleep. I sat back and watched the house some more. The paint wasn't new, but the trim was clean. The window boxes were overflowing with something yellow, maybe marigolds. In the driveway, a red minivan with a cracked windshield sat under a sagging basketball hoop. Two bikes leaned against the side of the garage.
This place wasn't anything like the place I'd grown up in.
This place was perfect.
My brain picked this exact moment to serve up the memory that has been slowly coming back to me in full over the course of the past few months.
I was six years old, sitting on the floor of my room, hands curled around an angel figurine. It was cheap ceramic, but I treasured it more than my own life. Priscilla had given it to me for my birthday. She said it would keep me safe at night, when the screaming started.
Only that night, the screaming was worse than usual. The house shook with it because my father threw my mother against the wall. I clamped my hands over my ears and squeezed the angel until its halo cut a crescent into my palm.
There was a crash. A door slammed open. Angry footsteps. The sound of glass breaking. I remember the smell of smoke. Remember my father yelling terrifying things about sending us all to hell because he didn't want to go all by himself.
The fire spread through the house too fast.
But she came for me first.
She looked impossibly tall in my memory. The windows in the entire house were nailed shut because our father didn't want us to wander. She broke the glass, cutting herself in the process. Then she scooped me up and shoved me through the gap. Her hands bled on the glass. I remembered it so clearly now—the curtains going up in flames and my sister diving after me through the frame of blaze. Her hair was on fire, so was her dress.
We ran, barefoot, into the street.
The house burned behind us, red and orange and black against the midnight sky. You could see the fire from the end of the block, from a mile away. You could see it in the eyes of every neighbor who watched us run.
Priscilla didn't cry. Not even when the ambulance came, or the police, or the next day when we sat in a waiting room with nothing but paper cups and a single pack of crackers.
She only cried when they told her we wouldn't be placed in the same group home.
She was too old.
I snapped back to the present when the front door opened.
A woman came out onto the porch and called to the boys.
"Dinnertime, rascals! Go wash up!"
I knew it was her. She wasn't as tall as I remembered. I'd grown up too. Her hair was dark, and she wore it in a braid down her back. She moved like a woman who'd never been afraid of anything in her life. I recognized the set of her shoulders, the line of her jaw. My jaw, too, though I'd never noticed it until just then.
She clapped her hands. "Come on, you two!"
The boys groaned, then dragged themselves and the dog inside.
She lingered on the step, scanning the street. Her eyes landed on our car, then slid away, then came back again.
I wondered if she saw me.
