Jade stared at aged paneling; she knew the place so well. The place was her childhood, or what was left of it. The hollows of her eyes were a violent purple, but not from any human touch. No one touched her. A firefighter attempted to move her away from the rubble, but she jerked violently under the gentle touch of his hand on her arm. She did not speak, but gave him a look that said he and all the others better leave her alone, or put themselves in peril of taking the brunt of ten years’ worth of bottled emotions.

She sat down in soot-blackened water and stared. There was one strip of golden oak paneling, only about a foot wide. The rest was charcoal or gone. She hugged her knees and let the freezing pitch soak into her clothes. Respectable gray wool slacks and a lilac silk button-down. She didn’t care. She wanted to hold on to the hollow ringing in her chest forever. She hated vulnerability. She hated the feelings she knew would crash in when she was pushed to the edge of frailty.

Disgust at her own weakness soured her stomach and she lay on her side, shame growing with every dry heave. The soaked cement foundation destroyed the neat chignon that held her hair in check. Its color matched the one panel that hadn’t been destroyed, but clumps of soot clung to the fine strands. She did not cry. 

The same fireman who tried to coax her out of the rubble bent and tucked a blanket around her. She shuddered beneath it, recoiled from the kindness, but she did not toss the blanket aside. She fisted a hand in its warmth and turned her face to the water. She rested her forehead in the frigid jet, but tears did not come.

The fireman spoke, but his gentle tone did not penetrate through the words pounding in her skull. How could you let this happen? This was all you had left of your parents, and you destroyed it by absence. You rented it out, left the care of it in strangers’ hands. You left. You walked away from things you should have cherished. It’s gone. Your fault. You should have been here. You should have burned with the house.

“I should have burned.” Jade squeezed eyes that matched her name shut. “I deserve to burn.”

The fireman said nothing as he lifted her from the rubble. She shattered. She sobbed until she could not breathe. She shook because she could do nothing else. He did not let go.