All Fall Down

CHAPTER TWELVE

I press my hand against my mouth and swallow the cry that is rising in my throat. I don’t want the Scarred Man to hear me. To find me.

To kill me.

I press myself against the closet wall because my head is spinning and I’m afraid I might pass out. There isn’t enough air in the closet, in my chest. There isn’t enough air in the world.

But there also isn’t time to panic. Now is the time to think and process and act. Now is the time to survive.

“Grace, no!” I hear my mother call.

My mother would want me to survive.

I don’t know how long I stay in the closet. A minute. An hour. A year? When I finally push my way outside and retrace my steps I half expect to return to a different party. But the quartet is still playing. The people are still talking and dancing, not caring at all that the man who killed my mother is here.

He’s here! I want to scream and claw and wail until someone hears me. Until someone finally cares.

But the words don’t come. I’ve said it all before, after all. I’ve described the Scarred Man to my father and to Jamie. I told the military police and the cops from town. I told the doctors all about him.

Once, I even wrote the details in a note and sent it to my grandfather. But I never got an answer to that letter. Maybe he never got it. Or maybe he just didn’t want to be one more person to tell me I was crazy.

It was an accident.

There was no Scarred Man.

You have no idea what you really saw.

But I do know. I know what, and I know who, and I know that I was right that night in the Iranian embassy.

The Scarred Man is in Adria. I’ve finally found him. But I don’t dare let him find me.

“Grace, your dress is ripped,” Noah says. He has been here for a long time, I realize. Talking to me. Trying to tease me into dancing or eating. But he’s not teasing anymore. “Grace, what happened to your dress?” Then he rethinks, asks a better question. “Grace, what happened to you?”

“I … I …”

“Grace, look at me!” Panic is seeping into Noah’s voice. I want to tell him that it’s going to be okay — that I’m going to be okay. But I can’t lie to Noah. Not even when I know it’s what he wants to hear.

“Ms. Chancellor,” Noah says, calling her over.

“Well, hello there, you two,” Ms. Chancellor says. “Don’t you look handsome, Noah? You make a very striking pair.”

There’s a twinkle in her eyes, and I know what she’s thinking. She’s playing matchmaker. She’s practically naming our children, taking credit for Noah and the most excellent influence he has been upon me.

“I was just telling the ambassador of France all about you, Grace. Her niece is visiting next month and I told her that you and I would love to —”

But then Ms. Chancellor looks at me. She must see the panic in my eyes, the way all the color has drained from my face. I’m sure I no longer share the rosy hue of my pink gown. I must be the color of paper.

“Grace, are you okay?”

I try to speak, but the words don’t come.

“Noah, take her home,” Ms. Chancellor commands, but Noah is one step ahead of her. He already has my arm and is guiding me to the door.

“I need to go home,” I mutter.

“I know,” Noah says. “Come on. I’ll take you back to the embassy.”

“No! I need to go home,” I say, but then the realization comes: My mother was my home. My mother is dead. And the man who killed her is wearing a tuxedo and an expensive watch and going to parties. The man who killed her is at this party.

“Where’s my grandpa? I need to talk to my grandpa.”

“He’s busy, Grace. Come on.”

We make it outside and Noah says something to one of the uniformed men. The car with US flags is coming toward us. Noah is leading me to the door.

“You’re going to be okay, Grace,” Noah tells me. “You probably just ate something funny or …”

I climb into the car, but before Noah can join me, I slam the door and tell the driver, “Go! Just go.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The car is not on fire.

I know this like I know my name. My age. My social security number, and that I have brown eyes. I am certain of these facts, and yet I forget them. The black leather interior fades away. The divider between the driver and me is up, and I’m alone in the strange red glow that is coming off the instruments in the backseat. I blink harder and harder, and I know that I’m not crying. My eyes are just trying to wash away the smoke that isn’t there.

I bang my head back and slam my hands over my ears, but still I hear the cries.

“Grace, honey! No!”

“No.” I toss.

“No!” I yell.

“Grace,” my mother’s voice comes again. “Honey, run!”

“No. No. No.”

The limo’s windows are black, like mirrors in the night, but I can see through them into the small shop my mother ran back in America. Rows and rows of antiques and first-edition novels. Dusty and cramped.

A tinderbox.

That was the word the fire marshal had used.

So much old, dry wood. So many flammable things.

She never stood a chance. Not after the second-story balcony collapsed. Not once the fire moved into the walls.

“Grace, run!”

“No!” I yell.

I can hear the glass cracking. I can feel my fists begin to bleed. Oxygen crashes through the broken window and the fire booms, knocking me to the ground, burning my hair and my lungs.

“Stop!” I yell, clawing through space and time at the blaze that started three years ago and, in a way, never has gone out.

“Stop!” I yell and start to scream.

“Are you okay?”

I look up at the driver. The limo isn’t moving and the divider is down.

“You did yell for me to stop, didn’t you? You’ve got to lower the divider for me to hear you. Or press the intercom.”

“Yes. Yes. I want — I need —”

I don’t bother to finish. I just climb out of the car and start down the street, holding up the skirt of my puffy pink ball gown, the train cinched within my fists. Running.

My shoes are gone, forgotten in the floorboard of the car, and I feel the damp cobblestones through the pantyhose that cover my bare feet. Feeling is starting to return to my toes. They go from numb to cold to bleeding, but I just run faster.