The smell of gasoline is not something you ever truly get used to, even after forty years as an ER nurse. It is sharp, chemical, and invasive; it clings to the mucous membranes of your throat and settles in your lungs like a toxic fog. But in the sterile halls of St. Jude’s Hospital, that smell usually meant a car accident victim had just been wheeled in. It meant trauma. It meant work.
Here, in the living room where I had once bounced my grandson on my knee, it meant the end of my life.
I am Martha, sixty-five years old, my knees arthritic and my back aching, kneeling on the Persian rug my late husband, Henry, and I bought in Istanbul three decades ago. The rug was soaked. The dark, intricate patterns were now bleeding together under a sheen of fuel.
My scalp burned with a white-hot intensity. Travis, my son-in-law, had his fingers twisted deep into my gray hair, wrenching my head back so hard my neck cracked. Above me, the ceiling fan spun lazily, indifferent to the horror unfolding beneath it.
