dirty and they didn’t smell clean and fresh anymore, not like they had when Mommy had put them on her. . . .
How long ago? Minutes? Hours? Willow knew only it was still night. Up high, the moon and the stars looked cool and peaceful, just like they had when she’d climbed out her window. If she stared only at them, she could pretend nothing bad had happened. But if she looked at the ugly place where her and Mommy’s house had been . . .
Willow cringed and shut her eyes tight. Still, behind her eyelids danced the red and yellow flames, the pieces of burning wood shooting in all directions, poor Mommy flying off the bottom step of the porch and landing in the swimming pool. . . .
The pool that could not keep her safe from the fire that swept over her limp body, chewed at her hair, and danced on her face. Mommy’s beautiful, laughing face—a face that Willow somehow knew would never laugh again.
Pain jabbed at Willow’s chest—a pain that had nothing to do with her operation. Her heart must have broken, she decided, holding her breath as the pain stabbed again. She wondered how long it took a broken heart to stop hurting. Probably forever and ever.
Earlier, when the fire had captured Mommy, Willow had taken a couple of steps back into the woods. Shortly afterward, sirens wailed and swirling red and blue lights slashed the night. Then Willow had heard men yelling before huge arcs of water fell on the blazing house. The fire, the lights, the miniature waterfalls should all have been dazzling andexciting in the quiet of the night—like fireworks on the Fourth of July—but Willow had found none of it either dazzling or exciting. This wasn’t the Fourth of July, and she knew all the color and the noise meant disaster.
Finally the flames got smaller and smaller until they were gone, leaving behind smoke and sharp smells. She’d seen people bending over her mother lying in the pool. They shook their heads. Then carefully, oh so carefully, they had lifted her, put her on a narrow bed on wheels, and taken her away.
Later, people with big flashlights walked around the backyard. They headed for the woods shouting, “Willow! Willow! Come out now, honey!
Willow
!” That’s when Willow began retreating deeper into the shelter of the trees because she knew the people wanted to take her away. They wanted to make her walk past the little rubber pool where the fire had claimed Mommy, past her home, where she’d felt safer than in any other place in the world—the place that was now just a scary, smoky shell that didn’t look anything like her and Mommy’s dear little house. Willow knew what they wanted, and she couldn’t bear to go. She
wouldn’t
go, and they couldn’t make her if they couldn’t find her!
Deeper into the woods she moved. Mommy had said there might be bad things in the woods—snakes, maybe even a wolf. She did have the feeling that she wasn’t alone—a twig snapped close by, and Willow thought that she heard movement in the tangle of weeds and creeping vines beneath the trees. Maybe it
was
a wolf or a poison snake. She didn’t care about wolves and snakes after what she’d just seen, though. Willow almost hoped a poison snake would bite her or a wolf would eat her.
It didn’t matter because now only Diana and Uncle Simon would miss her, and they’d probably soon forget her because she wasn’t their real family. Besides, she didn’t want to live if Mommy wasn’t with her. Being a little girl wouldn’t be any fun without Mommy—Mommy who sometimes raised her voice if Willow did somethingwrong, but who mostly laughed, played Candyland whenever she had time, and sometimes at night let Willow wear lipstick and dress up like she was a grown-up girl. But what Willow loved most was when Mommy put on music and danced like an angel, her feet barely touching the floor and her eyes looking as if she saw some beautiful, magic, faraway land.
Tears stung Willow’s eyes, inflamed and hurting from