Free The Burning Girl by Lisa Unger

hear that vibration of love and confidence. But now, when I called her, I only got the clipped and professional tone she’d used for her voice mail. I’m not available at the moment. Please leave a message. She wasn’t answering my calls. I left long rambling messages; I wasn’t even sure she listened to them. Her last words to me:
    We don’t have anything left to discuss, Ian. Don’t call me until something changes.
    I don’t know what that means , I pleaded.
    But there was an expression she wore when she looked at me now—sad, disappointed, and angry. And that look was the only answer she gave me before she left me on our bench in Central Park by the Alice in Wonderland statue. It was the first place we’d kissed, and the last place I’d seen her. I watched her walk away, huddled into herself against the cold. She moved quickly past a little girl who was chasing a boy around the circle. The boy was crying but the girl was laughing, oblivious or indifferent to the fact that the game was frightening him.
    I think I called Megan’s name, because the children stopped and looked at me, both of them staring with mouths formed in perfect O’s of surprise. Their nanny hurried over and shuttled them away from me, casting a disapproving look in my direction. But maybe I didn’t say her name. Maybe I said something else. Whatever it was I said, or yelled, Megan hadn’t stopped. She moved faster as if she was afraid, as if she couldn’t wait to be away from me. Why was she afraid of me? How could she be? I had watched until she was absorbed into the throbbing crowd of New Yorkers shuttling through the park on their various ways to various important things.
    Now the thud of the hatch closing reverberated like a gunshot in the silence. I had one large black duffel bag, my leather art portfolio, my supply box. I slung the bag over my shoulder and left the portfolio and art supplies for later. The air was frigid, my bare hands raw and painful from just a few moments of exposure.
    Then I turned to face the house. For the first time I noticed that lights were burning inside—one upstairs in my old bedroom and one downstairs in the small living room. Outside, darkness had fallen completely and suddenly like a shroud. There was movement inside and I wasn’t in the least surprised. I wasn’t angry or afraid, though I should have been both.
    This was it. Rock bottom. The way I saw it, I could lie down, a pile of shattered bones, until I slowly bled out, fading into a blissful, delicious nothingness. Or I could pull myself up, one broken limb at a time, and fight my way back to Megan, to the life we were trying to build, to the child that was growing inside her. The decision wasn’t as easy as you might think. When the darkness calls, it’s a siren song—magical, hypnotic, and nearly impossible to resist. You want to go. It’s so easy to do the wrong thing, the bad thing. All you have to do is give in.
    On the front step, I could smell her, that mingling of perfume and cigarette smoke and something else. A helix of fury and desire twisted in my belly as I pushed through the door. And she stood there, as wild and beautiful as she had always been—her hair a riot of white and gold and copper, her linen skin, her eyes the moonstone blue of terrible secrets. Priss . She took the stance of victory, legs apart, arms akimbo, a slight smile turning up the corners of her mouth. I almost laughed. I let the door slam behind me.
    “Hello, Priss.” My voice didn’t sound right. It sounded weak, had the tenor of defeat. She heard it. Of course she did. And her smile deepened.
    “Welcome home, asshole.”

PART ONE: there was a little girl

1
    It was the garbage truck that woke me. Rumbling, beeping down Lispenard Street. It crashed over the metal plate in the road, creating a mind-shatteringly loud concussive boom. And with my sudden, unwanted wakefulness came the waves of nausea, the blinding pain behind the eyes. I emerged jaggedly