~ Knapsack Secrets ~

by

Billie A. Williams

Being accused of selling out the company she had worked for most of her adult life had taken a toll on Audrey’s self-esteem. How could Don Pendergast have believed she would have stooped so low? How could he believe she would have done something so horrific as that? Even the letter she sent him telling him to ask Clarinda Wade questions Clarinda couldn’t answer hadn’t made any difference. Is it Pendergast could never admit a mistake or had Clarinda made sure she was in tighter with him than Audrey had ever hoped to be. Audrey wasn’t sure he had even bothered to ask her. Clarinda was so quick to take Audrey‘s office as is, bowing and scraping, smiling, when it could be useful to her. Audrey had read about Clarinda’s kind and seen them in the soaps but she never expected to have to deal with one in real life.

For her bosses, who she thought were also friends, to turn on her was one thing, but to have her husband turn on her, too. Audrey felt alone, abused and confused. The whole town was ready to accept that she was evil incarnate. The irony of the situation, the head line in the newspaper said “Woman of the Year pulls a Martha Stewart”. You would think it was another Water Gate. There was no understanding it. The whole sordid affair was incomprehensible and irreconcilable in her mind.

Now, she couldn’t even retain a lawyer and Jerard wants the house. Her beautiful fortress against the rumors and hatred what would she do? Where would she go? She dialed the phone to break the news to Joycelyn, that she wouldn’t be able to retain her after all.

Lightening cracked dimming the lights momentarily. “Don’t use the phone during an electrical storm,” her mother’s admonitions rung in her ears. When Anthony Allwurst brought the papers by earlier she was tempted too sign them just to get it over with, but it struck her as highly irregular, he should be dealing through her lawyer. Or did he already know she would never be able to retain one with no funds. How would he know she had no funds, she couldn’t get the loan, did his tentacles reach that far? She shuddered. She had told him to send the papers to her lawyer. The look on his face was priceless when she told him who her lawyer was. Audrey wished there was a way to retain Joycelyn just to see this play out with Allwurst squirming to the tune of Joycelyn’s music.

No mater if she had to play secretary to Joycelyn Oberleiux or write her ad copy for life, she’d find some way to pay her. She would not let Jerard have everything without a fight.

Audrey decided the phone call could wait. The storm crashed ruthlessly around her. The lights flickered again and then went out. The wind howled like some banshee unleashed on the world. She reached in the drawer of the desk and pulled out a flash light, no point in staying up waiting to make a phone call. The storm didn’t sound like it was going to let up anytime soon. She was exhausted anyway. The tiny flash light beam dulled repeatedly when the sky lit up the house in bursts lightening bolts of blue haze. She followed the beam up the stairs and undressed for bed.

Storms never bothered her. She would think of the times she and her grandparents sat on the front porch enjoying the worst summer storms. Grandpa laughed after the particular lusty cracks of lightening followed by deafening rolls of thunder. Every crack of lightening lit up the image of his great German face sparkling with the thrill of Mother Nature’s fury, his faded denim blue eyes dancing with glee. How could she ever fear a storm with those memories etched so indelibly in her subconscious. She drifted off to sleep.

The next thing she knew something woke her. She coughed gasping for air. The room was heavy with smoke. She could barely make out the doorway. She rubbed her eyes. When she saw licks of orange-red flames dancing in the stairwell, panic set in. She needed to get out. How? The stairs were completely engulfed with the blaze. Quickly, she shut the bedroom door, hoping to buy herself some time. The window, her only chance. But what if she broke the window and the oxygen from outside only served to feed the blaze. There was no other choice. She heard sirens now, Fire Department must be coming. Would they be in time to save her? Quickly she tried to open the window. If she could get out to the roof, she could call and get their attention. Her room faced the back yard, would they hear her? The smoke dissipated as the heat from the flames pushed through. She could see the flames licking, blackening and blistering the paint on the door. Audrey grabbed the desk chair, she was becoming dizzy from all the smoke, her lungs ached. Every breath felt like sand paper scraping the inside of her lungs.

She swung the chair; the window gave a thud, no damage not even a crack. It looked so easy, so fool proof in the movies. She took the chair by the legs this time and smashed the back of it into the window with all her strength. Glass flew every where and the door behind her blew open as the flames sucked in with the oxygen coming in from the window. Her only chance was the outside. Coughing and gasping for air she carefully crawled out the gaping hole trying not to get hung up on the glass shards remaining in the frame. Once she was out on the small room over the bay window on the lower level she realized she had a very narrow margin of safety. The house was a roaring inferno.

She tried to scream but the smoke clawed at her throat and no sound came. Her only chance was to jump. The hedges she had planted too close to the house, Jerard had said. If she could land in them, they may be enough to break her fall. There didn’t seem to be any other choice. The house was being swallowed up in great gulps by the roaring flames.

Audrey prepared to jump she scurried to the edge of the roof. A voice yelled. “Wait, we’re bringing the ladder up.” She opened her eyes, not believing her ears. A fireman raced up the ladder.

“Come on turn around and step onto the ladder. I’m behind you you’ll be fine.”

She made her way over the edge of the roof, she had climbed up and down many a ladder on roofs and other places, but for some reason it seemed like something she had never done it before. This time as she cautiously edged over the roof and onto the ladder. Her legs so shaky each step was a major effort. The pain in her blistered feet made her want to give up after each step. Trying to find her way out of the dark smoke filled bedroom she had blistered the palms of her hands so that she couldn’t hold on to the ladder. She leaned into the fireman thanking him for his strength and her higher power for strength for her to make it down the ladder to safety. She collapsed as she reached the ground no longer able to stand on her painful feet.

The fireman scooped her up and hurried her to the ambulance. Between gulps of oxygen she watched her beautiful dream go up in smoke the color of the gloom she felt. She had lost everything now. The insurance lapsed, “We won’t be covering you if anything happens,” Wayne’s words burned a hole to her insides with the pain as big as the one ripping at her lungs, and burning incessantly at the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands. The EMT coaxed her to lie back so they could cover her. They needed to get her to the hospital to help ease the damage to her lungs and tend to her other injuries. The glass shards that clung to the window opening lacerated her arms and legs. They were bleeding profusely even though the attendant tried to minimize their flow she could feel herself drifting off into unconsciousness from the smoke she had inhaled. A fog claimed her. She was conscious of movement, of sirens and flashing lights and the rumble of thunder as the storm moved away and so did she.