Page 70 of Rich Little Liars

‘It’s stuck.’ His voice cracked with panic. ‘The bracket. Something’s wrong with the⁠—’

Roxanne hadn’t moved.

I noticed it through the growing chaos – the strange stillness of her while everything around us descended into hell. She lingered in the kitchen doorway, her pale face lit orange by the spreading flames, her expression utterly unreadable. Not frightened. Not panicked. Just… watching. Taking it all in like she was memorising details for later.

‘Help him!’ I shouted at her. ‘Roxanne, help!’

But she didn’t move.

Didn’t even acknowledge that I’d spoken.

The fire was spreading too fast. Across the counter now, devouring the stack of paper napkins, the recipe book I’d left open, the wooden chopping board. The smoke was thickening, rolling across the ceiling in dark waves that made my eyes stream and my lungs seize. I couldn’t see the back door any more. Couldn’t see Daniel clearly – just his silhouette struggling with the extinguisher that refused to come loose.

‘Daniel!’

‘I can’t… It won’t…’ His words dissolved into coughing. The smoke was too thick. He was too close to the flames, too deep in the part of the kitchen that was rapidly becoming unsurvivable.

I tried to move towards him. Tried to push through the wall of heat that had risen between us. But the fire had spread in a line across the floor now. The oil, I realised dimly, trailing from the counter where it had pooled and dripped. A river of flame separating me from my husband. Separating us as completely as if someone had built a wall.

The smoke was in my lungs now. Thick and acrid, stealing my breath, making my thoughts slow and strange. I stumbled backwards, away from the heat, and found myself pressed against something solid. The doorframe. Roxanne close to me. Close enough to touch.

Through the shifting curtain of fire, I could see Daniel falling. His legs giving out. His body crumpling to the floor in the corner of the kitchen, overcome by smoke, by heat, by the terrible realisation that help wasn’t coming.

That we couldn’t reach him.

That no one could.

I should scream. Should beat against the flames with my bare hands. Should do something – anything – other than stand here watching my husband die.

But I couldn’t move. The smoke had stolen my strength, my will, my ability to do anything except breathe in shallow gasps and watch the fire consume everything. And beside me, Roxanne stood perfectly still. Perfectly calm. Like she was watching a movie rather than death.

Like she’d known this was coming all along.

Her eyes found mine through the haze.

Blue-grey meeting blue-grey. There was something in her expression I couldn’t name. Something ancient and knowing and terrible. The look of someone who had waited a very long time for this moment. Who had planned for it.

Who was savouring it.

Daniel screamed one last time – a sound that would live in my nightmares forever, that would wake me early in the morning for months to come. The sound of a man realising he was alone. That the woman he loved and the woman he wanted had both chosen to stand and watch rather than save him.

Then… silence.

Just the roar of the fire and the groan of the ceiling and my own ragged breathing, harsh in my ears.

The flames rose higher. A wall of orange and red, beautiful in its destruction, dancing patterns that seemed choreographed. Through them, Roxanne’s face appeared and disappeared like a ghost or memory.

Like something that had never been quite real to begin with.

Her lips curved. Not quite a smile. Something smaller. Secret.

Something that passed between us like a promise.

The ceiling began to groan – that terrible sound of a house dying, of beams giving way, of everything solid becoming ash. I knew I should have run. Knew that staying meant dying too. But I couldn’t look away from her. Couldn’t break whatever strange spell had fallen over us both in a moment of destruction.

We stood there, the two of us, while the world burned.

Her eyes never left mine.