The fire burned through everything Eloise ever owned. She stood on the curb for two days while the bay breeze slowly mollified the flames. When she grew weak, she laid across the sidewalk, watching the embers weep into the fog.
Hers was the first house on the block to go up. There’d been layoffs. Everyone was nervous. The neighbors who still had work stepped over her body in the morning. The rest stayed in their homes and prayed, or trickled hoses out windows to wet the siding, since the fire department never showed up until the exit interview.
When the last flickering coals metamorphosed into flimsy illusions of stone, Eloise peeled herself from the cement and searched the rubble for her safe. She found it easily—shiny black against dull ash—and entered the combination. Inside it, her resume needed updating.
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