Page 47 of The Night
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The evening went off-plan from the minute I opened my front door and a cloud of smoke drifted out. Every smoke detector in the place was blaring shrilly, from the back of the house I heard yelling, and despite a career dealing with shit a lot worse than this, my heart kicked up.
“Hazel!” I called. “Liam? Samantha?”
“In here, Gideon!” Sam yelled. “Everything’s fine!”
In the kitchen, the windows were open wide, and Sam was waving a kitchen towel at the smoke detector. On top of the stove sat a baking sheet covered with the smoking, charred remains of… something. And curled up in the corner, coughing and crying in equal measure, sat Hazel Grace.
“What’s going on?” I demanded, hurrying over to Hazel’s side and crouching down to put a hand on her shoulder.
Hazel buried her face in her knees and cried harder.
Sam rolled her eyes and gave me a half-smile. “We were making dinner.”
“Oh?” I eyed the baking sheet.
“Hazel had a great idea,” Sam said brightly. “Except it wasn’t supposed to go in the oven until later. When you were home. Hazel just got a tiny bit excited when I was in the bathroom and put it in the oven, and didn’t set a timer—”
“It was going to be a tea party,” Hazel wailed, her voice muffled.
I squeezed her shoulder gently, then turned on the exhaust fan over the stove and opened the slider door from the family room to the back deck. Within a minute, the smoke had cleared and the blaring of the alarm stopped.
“Alright,” I said, as I crouched by Hazel again. “What’s going on, Bug?”
She shook her head and said nothing.
“Come on,” I said. “You can tell me. What happened?” I patted her back in what I hoped was a soothing way. “Everything’s gonna be fine, honey.”
In one movement, she unbent from her position and launched herself at me, burying her face in my shoulder and knocking me back onto my ass. My arms went around her instinctively.
“It’snotgoing to be fine! I made afirein your house, Gideon! And there are all these decorations that are fire hazards. And I almost burnt your house down, and now you’re so mad at me, and you’re going to make us leave before the Light Parade, and I told Frannie and Sivan I was going to be at the Parade, and we are all going to wear sparkle dresses, and now I can’t, and it’s all my fault because I wasn’t payingattention!”
I blinked. “Wow. Kiddo. That’s a lot. Let’s take it piece by piece, huh?”
Her breath shuddered against my neck and I patted her crisp curls as I hugged her against me.
“First things first,” I said gently. “What were you making?”
“P-princess Christmas Tea Party Toast!” She sniffed loudly. “It was going to be for dinner.”
I spared a thought to wonder what Liam would say about that, since “Christmas Princess Toast” didn’t sound like it contained many vegetables, and the guy was gearing up to be a Scrooge about sugar since Hazel had been eating so much of it. But that was neither here nor there.
“Christmas Princess Toast sounds good,” I said. I braced my back against the wall and held her firmly. “What’s in it?”
She pulled back long enough to give me an implacable look, which was ruined just a tiny bit by the tear-tracks on her face. “Princess Christmas Tea Party Toast,” she corrected.
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
“Is not!” Her brown eyes narrowed.
“What? Ittotallyis. I would never get something as serious as Tea Princess Christmas Toast Party wrong!”
“Gid-eee-unnnn!” Her tiny hand pushed at my shoulder, and I grinned.
“Hay-zelll-Graaace.” She grinned back for half a second, then her face crumpled, and she buried her head in my neck again.
“Hey, hey, hey! Bug, it’s okay. It’s fine. I’m not mad! See?” I pulled her away from me again and smiled hugely. “Of course I’m not. Accidents happen.”