Read Online A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner - Free Book Online Page B

with me. “Did that happen to you once?”
    I met her gaze, expecting to see laughing eyes, but I saw only compassion there. Had her face been wrapped in curious mirth I might have been able to stay angry. But her sympathetic expression melted my indignation, and tears that I had been holding for months started to spill out of me.
    Dolly was at my side in an instant, wrapping her arms around me. The little book pressed against my chest, poking me in the ribs as I shook with the force of emotion unhinged. The tears ran down my face in rivulets but I refused to give voice to my sobs. I felt something deep and raging in my throat, scrabbling for release, but I locked my lips shut. A groan rumbled there but I did not let it out.
    And all the while, Dolly rubbed my back and whispered, “There, there. There, there.”
    After a few moments, the tears ebbed and I found myself able to gather my wits. I had not cried since the day of the fire. I hadn’t wanted to cry on the island at all. I’d been too afraid my tears would christen it with my sorrows. I wanted nothing about the fire to exist in my sacred in- between place. I wiped my cheeks with the sleeve of my nightgown and Dolly reached for a handkerchief from her bedside table. I declined it. There would be no spreading of my woes onto other surfaces.
    “Did you lose someone you cared for in the fire?” Dolly asked gently, but the words felt prickled by barbs nonetheless.
    I nodded without looking at her, embarrassed that I had been unable to keep this hidden from her any longer.
    “Had you only just met him, then? Is that what this is about?”
    Again I nodded.
    “His name was Edward, wasn’t it?”
    I wrenched up my head to look at her. “How do you know that?”
    Dolly fingered a sticky strand of hair away from my eyes. “You call out his name sometimes when you have . . . when you dream.”
    My face reddened. I felt the heat. “Do I?”
    “Yes.”
    There was apparently little I could hide from the island after all. It had already heard Edward’s name and my anguished cries—multiple times, apparently—as I lay asleep, re-creating the day of the fire over and over again in my nightmares.
    “Who was he?” Dolly asked, gently inviting me to tell her.
    I wiped the last bit of wetness from my eyes. “Only the kindest man I’ve ever known. I met him in the elevator. He was an accountant for Triangle and he worked on the tenth floor. I worked on the sixth. I saw him every day in the elevator. He always tipped his hat, always greeted me, always followed me with his eyes when I got off the elevator before him. I think he waited to get onto the elevator each day until he saw me. Must’ve been nerve-racking timing it just right.” I laughed lightly and so did Dolly.
    “He had invited me to come up to see the factory floor the day of the fire.” I recalled Edward asking me, remembering the slight hesitancy in his voice lest I found him too forward. But I’d smiled and told him I would like very much to see the sewing machines at work. And he had smiled broadly back at me. I looked up at Dolly. “He was going to ask me to dinner afterward. I’m sure of it. I could see it in his eyes. And I would have said yes.”
    “And he . . . he died in the fire.”
    The memory widened to include the rest of the day. Edward, far above me, standing at the edge of his mortal life. “He stepped out a window. I saw him on the ledge. His clothes were on fire. Flames were wrapped around his neck like a scarf.”
    “Oh, Clara.”
    “There was a young seamstress on the ledge with him. Her clothes were on fire, too. It was obvious she was afraid to step out alone, so he gave her his hand so that she wouldn’t have to. He held on to her all the way down.”
    “Oh, dear sweet Jesus,” Dolly murmured.
    “He was such a kind man,” I whispered, and my cheeks were wet again.
    “And he . . . There was no saving him?”
    I shook my head. “Only one person survived the jump.