I was barely more than a year old when fire tore through our house in the middle of the night.
I don’t remember any of it, of course. Everything I know came from Grandpa, from neighbors, from the stories people told in lowered voices once I was old enough to understand what loss meant. There had been an electrical fault. The flames spread fast. My parents never made it out.
The neighbors stood outside in their pajamas, watching the windows burn orange against the dark, and someone screamed that the baby was still inside.
My grandfather was sixty-seven years old.
He went back in.
He came out through the smoke with me wrapped against his chest, coughing so hard he could barely stay on his feet. The paramedics told him he should stay in the hospital for two days because of the smoke he’d inhaled. He stayed one night, signed himself out the next morning, and took me home.
