Free Blue Diary by Alice Hoffman Page A

as she drove home from the jail, wanting to get it all out before she picked up Collie. Then she’d gone and broken down in the doorway of the Williamses’ house like a common fool, some poor woman who was at the mercy of whatever the fates might bring. She’d made herself stop, then had brought Collie home where she sat him down in the kitchen and told him that his father had been taken over to the county offices on King George’s Road. It was nothing for them to worry about, a few questions about a crime committed years ago, a thousand miles away, by someone else entirely. Life wasn’t fair sometimes, and this was one of those times. Sooner or later it would be sorted out, but until then they’d just have to get through it; they’d have to hold tight and wait for Ethan to be cleared of any charges. They’d have to stand by him till then.
    It had been a horrible day for Jorie, most of it spent in a hallway at the county offices. She had tried to talk to Dave Meyers and to Will Derrick over at the county prosecutor’s office; she’d tried to make some sense of what was happening, but she’d gotten absolutely nowhere. When at last she demanded to see Ethan, who’d been brought down to a cell in the basement, she’d found she could not breathe. It was panic she was feeling, this drowning sensation that overwhelmed her. It was fear caught in her lungs where there should have been air, plain and simple as that.
    Go home, Ethan said to Jorie when she came to stand outside his cell.
    He wouldn’t look at her, not even when she reached in through the bars.
    Don’t you hear what I’m saying? I don’t want you to see me here. Don’t you understand that?
    She’d started crying then, stunned by his resolve and by the stark reality of the situation. Ethan had relented at last : he’d rested his head against the metal bars, and Jorie had done the same, and when she closed her eyes she could imagine they were far from this horrible place where they stood.
    We’ll figure it out tomorrow, Ethan had promised Jorie before she left, and she had believed him, but now, sitting here with Charlotte, there seems too much to ever figure out. Jorie gazes at Collie’s sleeping face, at the pale skin, the fine features, the way he breathes so deeply as he dreams. She had been so sure of her everyday life- you wake up, you make coffee, you send those you love off to school and to work, there is rain or it’s sunny, you’re late or you’re on time, but no matter what. those who love you will love you forever, without questions or boundaries or the constraints of time. Daily life is real, unchanging as a well-built house. But houses burn; they catch fire in the middle of the night, like that house over on Sherwood Street where the son was smoking in bed and everything disappeared in an instant. No furniture, no family photos, only ashes. Well, it’s ashes Jorie tastes now, ashes in her mouth, on her hands, beneath her feet. The fire had come and gone, and she hadn’t even know it. She’d just stood there while it swept through the door.
    When Jorie goes to the bathroom to wash her face and comb her hair, Charlotte follows. The night is like any other night of disaster, with every fact filtered through a veil of disbelief The rational world has spun so completely out of its orbit, there is no way to chart or expect what might happen next. Charlotte is reminded of the time in high school when their friends Lindsay Maddox and Jeannie Atkins were in a fatal car crash over on the highway. Everyone had difficulty getting over the shock of the accident, especially Jorie. who stopped eating and missed several weeks of school. It seemed so unfair that Lindsay and Jeannie would never get to finish senior year; they’d never graduate or kiss another boy or fulfill the promise of their lives. There is still a marker at the spot where the accident