And Ellie used to talk about the fire boy.
For a whole year after the accident, she’d wake up screaming in the night. And when I’d come into her room, she’d say, “Where’s the fire boy, Grandma? Is the fire boy okay?”
I thought it was a nightmare. I thought she was making it up. I thought it was her little four-year-old brain trying to make sense of something terrible. The grief counselor said it was normal. A coping mechanism. An imaginary helper.
She drew pictures of him. A boy with bandages on his face. Holding hands with a girl and a bunny. She drew him over and over.
I threw the pictures away. I couldn’t stand to look at them.
I thought the fire boy was a nightmare.
He wasn’t.
He was real.
He was standing on my sidewalk.
“Grandma?”
I turned around.
