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wonderful that Maggie had dreamed of being a part of it. She
had
been a part of it: when the Davises came to the island, anyway. Anne, with a rich, handsome husband and the greatest kid in the world, had thrown it all away.
    Maggie beat on her poor pillow for a little while longer. She wiped off her old mascara and eyeliner and applied some fresh. Then she picked up the telephone to call Kurt. After they had talked for a while, they would conference-call over to Vanessa's, and maybe they'd get a party going for later.
             
    O N February 12, five days after the fire at the old Fitzgibbon house, the following note appeared on the bulletin board in the fire station's lounge area:

    10 Salt Whistle Road
New Shoreham, CT
    Captain Richard Wade
Island Volunteer Fire Co.
New Shoreham, CT

    Dear Captain Wade,

    I would like to thank all the firefighters and emergency personnel who came to my house the night of February 7. Everyone was very brave, and they worked very fast. My brother-in-law says the fire could have been much, much worse, considering how bad the wiring was.
    I would especially like to thank Thomas Devlin. He came into the burning house to rescue me, and I'll never forget it. I'm sorry my actions put him in such danger.
    You all did a great job.
    Sincerely yours,
Anne Fitzgibbon Davis

    One by one the firefighters, who were assembling for drills, read the note. Most read in silence, but some of them snickered.
    “Sorry her actions put you in danger, Dev,” Marty Cole said. “But at least she can sleep nights, knowing her jewelry ain't ashes.”
    “It wasn't jewelry,” Thomas Devlin said.
    All week the guys had been ribbing him about rescuing Anne and her silver and gold. It would have been much simpler to tell them what he'd seen in the bag, but somehow he felt that doing so would be a violation of her privacy.
    “Yeah, whatever,” Marty said, heading toward the coffeepot.
    Thomas Devlin stood in a corner, waiting for the drill to start. His size always made it impossible to hide out, but he did his best. Ever since the fire, a dark mood had overtaken him. He felt stirred up, and the east wind had only made things worse. At night he'd lie awake, rigid as steel; when sleep finally did come, it brought dreams of the past, of a woman's body warm and silky suddenly transformed—mangled—by fire.
    Exhaling, he turned back to the bulletin board and reread her note. She had looping, dramatic handwriting, messy in places, that didn't seem to fit his image of her. She had used a blue fine-line felt pen on a folded-over notecard. He removed the thumbtack to see the picture on the other side of the card.
    He found himself looking at the damnedest, most exquisite thing he'd ever seen: a miniature collage, hardly bigger than a postage stamp, depicting Anne Davis's house on Salt Whistle Road. Surrounded by snow. In flames. With a dark hulking figure too abstract to make out as human but in which Thomas Devlin somehow recognized himself.
    The collage was composed of tiny scraps of paper. Shards no larger than wood splinters, wisps of featherdown, watch gears. Purple shadows textured the snowfield, the house windows glistened black, and the flames were the brilliant orange of sunset. Bits of paper glued together to form something so perfect it brought back, exactly, Thomas's feelings of that night. The work was signed with a single letter, no bigger than the smallest dot of paper: “a.”
    Holding the note, he made his way to the station telephone. The guys talking made a cheerful buzz, and no one noticed him. He didn't know why, but the number came to him right away. When a woman's voice answered, he hesitated. She said hello three times. Thomas hung up without saying anything, pretty sure the voice had belonged to Anne.
    Dick Wade clomped into the station, kicking snow off his boots.
    “It's a mother out there,” he said. “Six inches on the ground and still coming. We should see a few fender benders