Disclaimer: I own nothing, nothing at all!
Summary: When a house fire threatens to tear apart the family that thirty-eight-year-old Jesse Aarons has worked so hard to build, a return to Lark Creek could be the one chance to remind him what's important, to right old wrongs and to rebuild bridges
Prologue: Burning
Leslie Aarons jolted awake, her breath catching in her throat as her mind made the sudden leap from dream-world into reality – gasp! It was the same dream as usual. Running blindly, fear driven. But she'd woken up way, way before she usually did. Something was wrong – not in her dream world, but in the real world.
Pushing tendrils of dark hair out of her eyes, she slipped out of bed and padded across the bedroom floor. Light. She needed light. But it was too dark – she couldn't find the switch!
Oh. Wait. There was a light on, on the landing. But it was the wrong colour altogether. It was too deep a shade of orange, and it was flickering.
Fire.
The handle of the door was warm, but not hot. Don't open the door if the handle's hot, Leslie remembered from school safety talks. But it's not that hot, so what do I do? Her twelve-year-old mind pondered this for a few moments but, before she could convince herself otherwise, she had tugged open the door, dropped to her knees and edged out onto the landing.
The wall of heat hit her like a sack full of rocks. Coughing, Leslie ducked her head and crawled forward along the narrow hallway, feeling for the stairs that she knew must be somewhere nearby. Her hand touched something searing hot, and suddenly she was crying. Crying and rushing forward in a wild frenzy of fear. And then her hands hit nothingness because the first stair was there. And there was the second third fourth fifth sixth seventh… too fast. Too fast because she was falling.
In the quiet, cool stillness of the street, Jesse clutched at his eldest daughter in a panic. His thoughts tunnelled inwards, a litany of please-wake-please-wake-please-wake pounding through his mind. Maggie hovered anxiously behind him, quiet tears coursing down her pale, ashy face.
Leslie's eyes slitted open.
"Dad?" her voice was a bare whisper, smoke-thickened, "Where are we? Is everyone okay?"
Maggie, Jesse's wife was plucking urgently at the fabric of his charred shirt, trying to get his attention, but he was focused entirely on Leslie.
"Jesse," Maggie pulled at his arm, "Jesse. Where's Em?"
That made him look up. Em. She'd been with them on the landing. With them until Jesse, finding his older daughter at the bottom of the stairs, had scooped her up in his arms. But he'd lost sight of her then. Wasn't she out there with them?
"Oh, God," Jesse breathed, "oh no. Oh, please, no." Leslie stared up at him confusedly. Maggie's sobbing racked up a notch – and now Jesse knew why.
Emerson Aarons, nine-year-old sister to Leslie, daughter of Jesse and Maggie, was still inside the burning house.