Chapters (41)
- PART ONE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- PART TWO
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- PART THREE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the distance, cones crackled and split like hornet nests. Calliope threw Eunjoo into the car and sped out of the driveway onto the main road up Paseo del Norte away from Boca Negra, where all the Sisters now spurted awake. She couldn’t look in the rearview mirror. She gripped the steering wheel and pressed her foot hard on the gas pedal, ignoring stop signals, snaking through the broken-down cars on the road at full speed, jerking the wheel with no thought but away, away. The river. She had to get to the river.
The Río Grande in sight, she pressed the gas and lurched across the bridge.
Finally, on the other side, she stopped and allowed herself to look back. Lot’s wife.
“Are you okay, chica?”
Eunjoo held a single turquoise crane, blue against the black smoke chuffing and whirring behind them. A blinking eye in a storm. The girl nodded.
Calliope quickly scanned the girl for signs of burns, then checked her own skin. It was hot to the touch, feverish, but not burned.
They’d made it out unscathed. She had no idea how. They shouldn’t have been safe.
Through the charcoaled haze, the bright blaze of her neighborhood. The flames had gorged everything. Phoenix’s swing set. Their home. Swathed in ash. A Pompeii destroyed and pumice-buried. The Sisters’ skirts had spurred everything beyond the black mouth of the canyon.
Calliope opened the driver’s door. Vomited on the bridge.
Under sheets of sediment, someday other archaeologists might find bits of animal bone, pottery shards, plants. What of the letters she’d written to her husband, photos of Phoenix on his first day of school, her mother’s Bible, her bisabuela’s rebozo, paper cranes? What details of everyday life might be preserved? New Mexico honey in jars? Plaster casts of victims in situ? Her home was a burial site. With no one to bury. Where was her family?
She looked away, salt water trickling down her fevered forehead. She wiped the sweat from her eyes.
What invisible damage had the heat inflicted, she wondered. She’d once read that a woman had cooked herself in a tanning bed, charbroiling her organs. Calliope pictured hard-boiled eggs, how she’d once cracked a rubbery egg open and found blood in the yolk. Now, pressing her hands to her belly, she waited for the familiar kicking in return. Knock, knock, anybody home?
FOUR
FOUR
LIZARD’S TAIL
Trudy’s truck wasn’t in the driveway. She must’ve gone to town. Should Mara wait or go looking for her? She stared into the overcast sky, which bore an uncanny resemblance to Trinity Site. Her stomach churned a warning.