Page 8 of Melting for the Firefighter

Heat pours from the connecting door before I touch the handle.

I jerk my hand back.

“Leave it closed,” Tessa says. “Go to the bedroom window.”

I crawl toward it.

The narrow window is painted shut.

Grandma planned to replace it before chemo.

After she died, funeral bills, property taxes, a leaking roof, and Mom’s endless emergencies kept pushing it to next month.

Next month arrives with smoke.

I wrap my arm in the sheet, grab the lamp, and swing.

The glass shatters.

Fresh air rushes through the broken pane.

I knock the remaining shards from the frame. One slices into my palm, but the pain barely registers beneath the alarms screaming through the building.

I drag a chair toward the window.

Something crashes inside the shop.

The shared wall shudders.

Grandma’s journal slides from the bed.

An ember slips beneath the connecting door and lands on the worn cover.

“No.”

“Cora, stay at the window,” Tessa orders.

Thirty years of Grandma’s handwriting are inside that journal.

Her flower meanings.

Her recipes.

Her notes about me.

I lunge for it and slap out the ember.

A second crash shakes the room.

The connecting door slams open as part of the frame tears loose.

Heat punches through the apartment.

I scream and throw up an arm.

A narrow shelving unit beside the door tips before I can move. Wood slams across my hip, driving me to the floor and trapping the skirt of my nightgown beneath it.

Smoke rolls over me in a thick black wave.