Louise nodded as she jogged away, but she had no idea what he was talking about. Girls racing in Europe? She veered off the railroad tracks and loped along the sidewalk past modest brick houses lining the streets. Figures visible in the windows went about their evening routines. Dinner dishes clattered. Cooking smells wafted along the evening air. Fried onions. Roasted chicken. Freshly baked bread. Her stomach rumbled in response. When Louise reached her family’s dark shingled house, she cut across the lawn, took the porch steps two at a time, pushed the front door open.
“Louise, that you?” Emily’s voice called from the back of the house.
Louise glided down the hallway, past closed doors, and entered the kitchen to find her sisters—Emily, Julia, and Agnes—and brother standing around the kitchen table. Emily and Julia both held books in their hands while grass stains covered Junior’s trousers.
“I’m here, I’m here. Sorry, it went later than I expected. Let me wash up and I’ll be in to start dinner. Junior, go clean up. Girls, set the table, please.”
“Did you make the team?” Junior asked, his wide dark eyes shining in anticipation.
“Yes.” She paused in the door of the washroom. “But now don’t you go saying anything about it to Mama yet. Understand?”
“When you gonna ask ’em?” Julia asked.
“Not sure.” A sense of guilt eclipsed the triumph that had fueled her run home. How could she fit running on a track team into all of her responsibilities?
Moments later, she was back in the kitchen assembling plates of cold roasted chicken from the icebox and making a potato salad. The sound of the front door wheezing open caused all of their heads to swivel toward the hallway entrance. Mama and Papa were home.
“How are you all?” Mama asked, working her way around the table, kissing the tops of everyone’s heads. Louise breathed in her mother’s smell of laundry soap. It was Tuesday, washing day over at Mrs. Grandaway’s house, where Mama worked as a domestic. She would be extra tired from wrestling with the wringer all afternoon.
After Mama and Papa retired to their room to change out of their uniforms, homework was set aside, Julia set the table for dinner, and then they all sat and clasped hands, heads bowed.
“Thank you, Lord, for this fine meal and for granting us another day to live in your good grace.” Papa looked around the table. “Anyone want to add anything?”
“Lord, thank you for making me the best pitcher in Malden.” From under his long fringe of dark eyelashes, lashes that Mama always lamented were wasted on a boy, Junior looked at everyone with an impish smile. “I struck out a bunch of the boys at the park today.”
“Please, Lord, grant Junior humility,” Mama said with a sigh, though the wrinkles around her eyes crinkled in amusement.
“I been thinking about Baby Grace today and hope God’s found her some kind angels who take care of her and play with her so she doesn’t get bored and whiny,” Agnes said, her lisp making the seriousness of what she was saying take a moment to sink in.
Mama let out a whimper that was halfway between a gasp and a sob.
“No one gets bored and whiny in heaven,” Emily corrected. “It’s perfect there.”
“Well, I hope those angels are nice and give her some of those peppermints she loved,” Agnes said, her little sharp chin jutting out in indignation.
The kitchen stilled for a moment. Thinking about Grace caused a pain to shoot straight through Louise’s heart. How could she have been so foolish as to leave her brother and sisters alone for a couple of hours? How could she risk something like what had happened to Grace happening again? Right there, she decided she would not return to practice with the Onteora Track Club. Not the next day or any day after that. How could she have been so selfish? She had failed to look after her siblings properly once and she would never make that mistake again.
Papa cleared his throat. “I hope he’s keeping our baby close and giving her everything she wants too, sweetheart. Now let’s enjoy some of this wonderful meal that Louise put out for us.”
The tenor in the room shifted, loosened a little, and without looking at each other, everyone raised their forks to begin eating, but Louise’s appetite had vanished. A hollowed-out sense of grief and failure weighed upon her, heavy and suffocating.
AFTER DINNER, LOUISE scrubbed the dishes as Mama settled the younger children in bed. The house’s creaks quieted and the sound of crickets floated over her as Papa opened the kitchen door to have his evening smoke on the back stoop. Louise sat at the table, awaiting her allotment of evening mending work. When Mama joined her, she took a few items from her basket, angled herself toward the light, pulled out one of Junior’s shirts, and handed it to Louise, pointing to the spot where a button needed to be sewn on. Mama bowed her head, placed her needle at one end of a tear in Papa’s gardener’s uniform, and began stitching. Moments later, Papa came back into the house, rested a hand on Mama’s shoulder, and looked at Louise.
“When Dr. Conway arrived home this evening, he mentioned seeing you today. Said you were running along the train tracks like a bear was chasing you.”
Louise’s hand with the needle froze midair. The last time she had seen Dr. Conway was seven years ago, when she had raced over to the man’s house, frantic to find Papa. Dr. Conway had been working in his home office, and when Louise spluttered out the story of what had gone wrong, he insisted the three of them ride back to the Stokes home in his automobile, but their speedy return was not enough to save little Grace. The tiny girl had spent four days unconscious, burns covering her small body, before she succumbed to her injuries.
In a flash, Louise could be back in that moment when she entered the kitchen to find flames licking at little Grace’s pretty blue striped pinafore. That awful smell of burning fabric, hair, and skin could return to Louise all too easily and unexpectedly—when she brushed her hair in the morning; when she sat in English class contemplating an assignment; when she set the table for dinner. Each time, grief could still descend upon her with startling intensity that, even seven years later, left her reeling.
Every night before Louise fell asleep, she replayed the memory of when she had found her sister, matches strewn around her, flames lighting the kitchen floor like fallen stars. She couldn’t help herself. Reliving that afternoon had become part of a sickening ritual for sleep and she couldn’t stop it. If she replayed the afternoon step by step, she slept deeply and dreamlessly, but if she tried to push the memory away, it prowled around the corners of her mind, rearing up and clawing throughout the night as she tried to sleep. Each time, she fixated on the moment when she froze, watching her sister scream. She had been slow to throw the tablecloth over Grace and beat at the flames, and even slower to run for help. Her legs had felt spongy and her feet ungainly as she made her way to Dr. Conway’s house. The panic binding her chest had left her unable to breathe, and she felt sick to her stomach. Why had she been so slow? Would Grace still be alive if Louise had run faster?
Louise stared at the pale pink puckered burn scar along her left hand, the visible reminder of all that had gone wrong that horrible afternoon. In a flat voice, she said, “I was invited to try out for the Onteora Track Club. Dr. Conway must have seen me running with them earlier today.”