It's Never too Late

She was safe.

Adele knew things that Addy had never told anyone. Adele could talk for Addy, and then roll up her imaginary life and disappear as Addy moved back home to the life she’d built for herself in Colorado.

Mark would understand. He’d pulled his friend out of the fire. He was studying fire safety and engineering.

“Mom and Dad were high school sweethearts,” she told him. “Dad had always wanted to be a firefighter and started training while he was still in high school. He became an EMT, too. They got married and Mom stayed home to raise us kids.”

Such a happy story. A happy family i

n a happy home. That’s how she remembered it.

Mostly.

Mark’s silence, his lack of judgment or commentary, left her back in time.

“She was a great cook. It seemed like she was always in the kitchen, whipping up new things for us to taste.” She’d been five. How could her memories be so vivid?

She’d prayed for them to fade. And prayed that they never would.

“At first she just cooked for us and then, when people started asking, she cooked for parties and events around town. Eventually she entered some competitions and sent in her recipes to places and somehow was offered a cookbook deal in conjunction with a television show.” She remembered it from the perspective of a five-year-old. Her mother’s beautiful smile. The way they’d run together at the zoo that last day, Mom laughing and telling her and Ely about all the fun they were going to have.

A warm hand covered hers on the arm of the chair. She turned her hand over and he wove his fingers together with hers.

“My father couldn’t take her sudden fame. He felt threatened by it.” She’d never been told as much, but she’d figured it out. As an adult, she understood. “I remember him yelling at Mom, telling her that if she took the deal, she’d be ruining the perfect life they’d built together.” She hadn’t understood at the time, but she did now.

It wasn’t her mother who’d ruined things.

“He was jealous,” she said. That last day, picture day, she’d gone to her parents’ room, excited to have her mother see how she’d done her hair all by herself, and had overheard urgent whispering between her parents. Fearful, she’d stayed hidden outside the door so she could hear if she or Ely were in trouble. Her father had been telling her mother that if she picked fame and fortune over him, that was her choice, but he wouldn’t let her take his children, too. She hadn’t understood what that meant then.

“He wanted the stay-at-home wife he’d married. A normal, ordinary family to come home to.” Some of that she’d heard. Some she’d later surmised. That photo shoot that had been one of the highlights of her short life had been her father’s undoing.

“It’s what he knew.” Mark’s comment jarred her.

“He set the fire.” Her words shattered the night air. Like that, Addy’s secret was out.

“Oh...God...I’m sorry.”

“He knew fire,” she said. “He knew how to make it happen quickly and all at once.”

“A man who knows fire does not subject his family to that kind of hell.”

Intellectually she had it all figured out. “A rational man doesn’t subject his family to hell at all.”

She looked at Mark and wanted to curl up into him and lose herself within the strength and compassion he offered. “We were supposed to go instantaneously. All at once. It was his way to keep us together forever.”

At least that’s what she made herself believe. It was the only thing that made sense.

Nothing was forever. Not childhood. Not one’s safety. Not even life. The thoughts rolled over one another, gaining momentum until more than just her silence had been shattered. There was no great rumbling in her ears as the walls, weakened from the night before, tumbled down. No warning.

No big switch from Adele to Adrianna.

Just blistering rawness. Around her. On her. Inside her...

She was five again. Back in Shelter Valley. Shaking. Cold and hot and wet and scared. Tears running down her cheeks. Choking. Huddling in the thunder and the eerie silence. Thirsty. Waiting for someone to come get her.

Mark gave a gentle tug and she leaned into him, letting him lift her over to his lap where she settled in his arms. “I’m so sorry.” He said the words over and over as Addy finally admitted, full on, the horror of knowing that her father had killed her mother and brother.

And had tried to kill her, too.