Page 28 of Bobby

“Who knows? Maybe they’re working on the roads.” There are at least three dozen options for a marked-off road in Brooklyn. Construction is the most likely.

When we round the corner, though, any hope of my good day continuing dies instantly when I see the firetrucks. Followed by the smoke coming out of our building.

“Oh my God. That’s our building.”

“Mommy, you aren’t supposed to say that,” Lily chastises me, and I glance down at her before looking back at our home.

None of the sirens are going, and there’s just smoke—white, not black, showing the fire isn’t blazing anymore—coming out of broken windows. Almost all the windows, except for a few on the top floor. The fire might be out, but the damage is immense. I see a few people I recognize from the building congregating around a police blockade, talking to the officers, and we make our way over there.

I can’t see our window from here. We’re on the back side. But I can see what the others look like on our floor. I squeeze my daughters’ hands tight enough that they try to pull away, but I can’t let go, so I ease the pressure, just a little.

If we were home….

I can’t let myself finish that sentence. Too many variables come into play to make me fall down a rabbit hole and never come back up. I need to focus on both girls standing beside me right now.

“Willow. Willow!” someone shouts across the street, but I don’t know where it’s coming from. I look around, trying to recognize someone I might know, as do the girls, but most of our neighbors are strangers. They keep to themselves, like most people do in this neighborhood.

“It’s Mr. Jimmy.” Ivy points as Lily waves at the man who’s jogging over to us.

“Thank God you’re all right,” he huffs out as he bends over to catch his breath.

“Yes, we’re fine. But what happened? We just got back from the park and—” My voice catches as I look at the only home I could call my own since moving here. The other one belonged to Trevor, and the second I found out about him cheating, I took the girls and left. We stayed in a hotel for a while until he cut off my access to our joint checking account. By then, I already had a part-time job cleaning houses that paid enough to get this place. I would have stayed there for years on end if the owner hadn’t sold the business to a new owner who cut half the staff. I was just lucky enough to find my current part-time job when I did.

He shakes his head as he stands upright. “No clue. One second it was fine, the next it was on fire. Took two trucks to put it out. One just pulled away before I saw you.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Couple on the fifth floor had to be carried out by firemen, but I think everyone made it out okay. A few were taken away for smoke inhalation and a few burns. Nothing serious.”

“Thank goodness for small miracles.” This could have been terrible. Our place is cheap for a reason. Fire escapes are attached, but I would never trust one enough to use it. I won’t be able to tell Lily thank you enough for insisting that we needed a picnic basket or Ivy for saying that we had to use it immediately.

“Willow!” The shout pulls my head in the other direction, along with most of the people around us.

“Mr. Bobby! My giant!” Lily pulls her hand from mine, and I let her go since the street is sealed off and there’s not a car in sight to hit her as she runs down the road to give them a hug.

Bobby leans down and catches her in his arms with ease. When he picks her up and holds her against him, I momentarily forget that I have no home and just focus on how good he looks holding my child.

I walk over to them, noting Jimmy is walking with us.

“What are you doing here?” I ask when I get close enough to speak to them without yelling.

Bobby glances at Jimmy a second before looking back at me. “An associate called and told me what was going on. I needed to make sure you and the girls are all right.”

“We’re fine. We weren’t even here.” I’m so baffled by my home being gone that I don’t care that he’s here.

“We were at the park,” Lily says with a healthy nod to herself before wiggling around until Bobby sets her down. She grabs his hand and starts pulling him toward the building. “Come see my new pillowcase, Mr. Bobby. I also got new coloring books. And we all got princess dresses for Halloween. Come see.”

Tears gather in my eyes as it finally dawns on me that my baby girl has no clue what happened. And it hits that almost everything in our place is likely destroyed. Baby pictures—everything I had for me and the girls. Birth certificates. Small moments from my childhood. Gone.

“He can’t, Lily. Our house blew up.” Ivy, my too-intelligent little girl, shuts down her emotions as she says it. Something she did when her father was around. A way to protect herself from the hurt. Trevor was never cruel, but he wasn’t nice. He spoke to both me and the girls in condescending ways that never encouraged but always belittled us.

“Blew up?” Lily looks at me and then the apartment building with her head tilted and face scrunched.

I shake my head and wipe a tear that slides down my cheek as I kneel and grab her hand to turn her to look at me. “It didn’t blow up. It caught fire.”

“What does that mean?” Lily asks.

I let out a sad sigh as I feel my shoulders hunch. “It means that until the police say we can go inside and see what was damaged, we can’t show Mr. Bobby anything that we bought. And it might not be there anymore either.”