LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE
CELESTE NG
Little fires everywhere intro :
veryone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how
Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone
around the bend and burned the house down. All spring the gossip
had been about little Mirabelle McCullough—or, depending which side you
were on, May Ling Chow—and now, at last, there was something new and
sensational to discuss.
A little after noon on that Saturday in May, the
shoppers pushing their grocery carts in Heinen’s heard the fire engines wail
to life and careen away, toward the duck pond. By a quarter after twelve
there were four of them parked in a haphazard red line along Parkland
Drive, where all six bedrooms of the Richardson house were ablaze, and
everyone within a half mile could see the smoke rising over the trees like a
dense black thundercloud. Later people would say that the signs had been
there all along: that Izzy was a little lunatic, that there had always been
something off about the Richardson family, that as soon as they heard the
sirens that morning they knew something terrible had happened.
By then, of
course, Izzy would be long gone, leaving no one to defend her, and people
could—and did—say whatever they liked. At the moment the fire trucks
arrived, though, and for quite a while afterward, no one knew what was
happening. Neighbors clustered as close to the makeshift barrier—a police
cruiser, parked crosswise a few hundred yards away—as they could and
watched the firefighters unreel their hoses with the grim faces of men who
recognized a hopeless cause.
Across the street, the geese at the pond ducked
their heads underwater for weeds, wholly unruffled by the commotion.
Mrs. Richardson stood on the tree lawn, clutching the neck of her pale
blue robe closed. Although it was already afternoon, she had still been
asleep when the smoke detectors had sounded. She had gone to bed late,
and had slept in on purpose, telling herself she deserved it after a rather
difficult day. The night before, she had watched from an upstairs window as
a car had finally pulled up in front of the house................................................
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