Chapter 3 - Shingles and Sirens
Outside, the wooden shingles were slick and treacherous with a thick layer of early morning frost. I carefully lowered Noah until his small winter boots found solid purchase on the slanted roof, then climbed clumsily through the jagged opening after him, sharply cutting my forearm on a piece of hidden glass I never even saw. Across the quiet suburban street, our neighbor Grant Ellis was already running barefoot across his frozen lawn, his breath pluming white in the dark air. He had his modern smartphone pressed tightly against his ear, frantically relaying our exact emergency details to the dispatcher. Even from that distance, I could hear him shouting that there was a trapped child out on the porch roof, his voice cracking with urgency. Later on, I distinctly remembered that he kept repeating our address over and over, as if saying the numbers clearly enough could somehow magically bring the fire trucks down our street faster. Noah shook so violently beside me that his small teeth clicked rhythmically together in the freezing dark. I pulled him tightly against the warm exterior siding of the house, trying to shield him from the biting wind. Below us, somewhere beyond the dense rolling clouds of gray smoke, one of our dogs barked a frantic, high-pitched distress call. When a burly firefighter finally scaled the extension ladder and reached our freezing perch, Noah was so terrified he refused to release his death grip on my shirt. The exhausted firefighter patiently waited in the soot and ember-filled air while I gently unhooked each of my son's stiff fingers one by one. “You’ll see her down there on the ground,” the firefighter promised softly, offering a reassuring smile through his soot-smudged face. I needed that desperate promise to be true just as badly as my traumatized son did. Once we were safely lowered to the ground and bundled into the back of a warm, brightly lit ambulance, I peered out the open rear doors and immediately spotted Derek standing casually beside his pristine SUV. The four dogs were tied securely to a neighborhood signpost nearby, whining softly, and the rear vehicle hatch stood wide open. Derek did not take a single step toward the ambulance to check on our well-being. A uniform police officer approached him with a notepad, and Derek immediately began gesturing widely with his hands as he talked, his posture defensive. I could not hear every single word passing between them over the roar of the fire engine engines, but I heard enough of the exchange to make my stomach churn violently. He told the officer he had tried desperately to reach us inside. He lied right to the law enforcement officer's face, claiming the intense heat and toxic smoke had forced him back down the stairs before he could save us. Grant Ellis stood near another responding officer nearby, wearing heavy thermal blankets wrapped around his badly burned hands, watching Derek with a cold, suspicious glare.
