Free The Three Miss Margarets by Louise Shaffer Page A

top of it in a crazy dance. They managed to put out the fire, and she didn’t even realize the ruffle at the hem of her nightgown had caught until Lottie started screaming.
    Both sets of parents heard the commotion and came running. They found the girls outside the barn. Lottie had bundled a coat around the burning nightgown and was helping Maggie roll on the ground. Maggie was screaming now in agony as together they smothered the flames against her bare legs. When it was over, Lottie’s hands were burned and the doctor said Maggie’s left leg would be scarred.
    Later, after the doctor had wrapped her leg in gauze and ointment and given her something to help her sleep, Mama demanded to know what happened. Maybe the drug loosened her tongue. Or the pain. Or maybe she thought her mother would help Lottie if she understood. Whatever the reason, Maggie told her mother about teaching Lottie. She explained about the colored school being so terrible, and Lottie needing help because she was going to college to be a doctor. She stopped short of telling her mother that she planned to pick her own college to be with Lottie. She wasn’t that far gone.
             
    She never knew exactly what Mama told Charlie Mae, but Lottie never went to live with the family in Ashtabula. Her schooling ended that night. Miss Monross called at the cabin to protest to Charlie Mae and Ralph and was politely told to stop filling Lottie’s head with foolishness. As soon as Lottie’s hands were healed she went to work at the new Garrison Lodge, cleaning bedrooms.
    If Maggie had hoped to keep Lottie home, she had won. But in another, much more painful way, she’d lost. Because Lottie was staying away from her. And Maggie knew it wasn’t just because Charlie Mae had ordered it, or because Lottie was angry that Maggie had spilled their secrets to her mother. It was because of what Maggie had started to say in the barn. In the dark days that followed the fire, Maggie got the answer to the question she had never been able to ask. Lottie understood what Maggie felt and it disgusted her.
             
    The months that followed were bleak. In all her charmed life, Maggie had never been seriously unhappy. Now she felt swamped by waves of despair. Everything that had happened was her fault. She hated herself. And worst of all there was no one to confide in. Lottie was as far away as if she had left Charles Valley. Maggie was alone. The doctor told Mama her low spirits were to be expected, after the shock she’d had, and to give her time to get over it. Maggie was afraid she never would.
             
    But then, because she was young and resilient, she began to fight her way back. She learned to live with Lottie’s rejection because she had to. And she learned not to think about the guilt she felt for the disaster she’d set in motion. Above all, she knew she had to get away from home. With nothing else to distract her, she focused on her books and finished high school a year ahead of schedule. She was accepted at Emory in Atlanta and started making her plans to leave in the fall.
             
    James got himself a job as a waiter at the resort. He stood behind the buffet tables wearing a uniform and white gloves while he served the guests boiled shrimp and baked chicken. He walked Lottie home from work every day; Maggie watched from the window in her bedroom, where she now did her studying.
    The night before Maggie left for Atlanta, she walked down to the old barn. She hadn’t been there since the night of the fire. As she passed the cabin where Lottie’s family lived she thought she saw someone at the window watching her. Then she heard what might have been the back door of the cabin opening. She didn’t look back to check, but as she walked she prayed.
    A faint smell of burnt wood still hung around the barn, and one wall was charred. She stood in the middle of the floor, in the place where she and Lottie used to spread the old