Moments later, firefighters had a ladder off the truck. Evie tried to open the window, but it was stuck. She swung Mrs. Yetner’s cane, using the handle like the business end of a bat, and broke the glass. Immediately she felt heat build behind her from the updraft she’d created. The smoke in the room thickened.

With a thud, the ladder hit the side of the house. Ratcheted up to the window.

Evie was about to climb out when she looked across the street. There, in the second-floor window of Mr. Cutler’s house, stood a pale figure. At first Evie thought it was a child, standing there staring out, her hands up against the glass, pale hair haloed around her face.

Then she realized. It was no child. It was Mrs. Yetner.

Chapter Fifty-eight

Twice in a row Mina had fooled Dora, using a trick she’d learned from Annabelle, and transferred that horse pill from one hand to the other and then only pretended to put it in her mouth. Sure enough, her head had started to clear. Otherwise she’d have slept right through the sirens.

She’d gotten out of bed and felt her way past the familiar pieces of furniture. When she pushed aside the window shade, she’d seen a beacon of rotating red light and more lights flashing blue and white in the street below.

Now she stood at the window in Annabelle’s nightgown, her feet bare, her hands pressed to the glass. Fire was blazing across the street. It looked like someone had set a bonfire in Frank Cutler’s driveway. Dark figures—probably firefighters—were swarming the street.

Mina heard more shouting, but this time it sounded as if it was coming from right downstairs. The windowsill shook as what sounded like the front door slammed.

“Stop!” Dora’s voice. “You can’t go up there.”

“Get out of my house this instant!” It was a man. Not Brian.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Mina shrank into a corner of the room as the door slammed opened. A figure stepped into the room.

“Mrs. Yetner?” Mina recognized Evie’s tentative voice. “Mrs. Yetner! You’re here! Thank God, you’re all right. I thought . . . I thought . . .” The girl wrapped her arms around Mina, sobbing.

Mina hugged her back. The poor thing was trembling, and she smelled of smoke.

“What on earth are you doing here?” Evie asked.

“Where else would I be?”

“In your own house. That’s where I was afraid you were.”

“Isn’t that where I am?” But even as Mina said the words, she knew she was not. Ever since she’d run into the wall, trying to get back to bed from the top of the stairs, she’d felt as if she’d fallen down the rabbit hole and landed somewhere else—a place that was almost the same as her upstairs bedroom but not quite, a parallel universe the mirror image of her own.

“You’re across the street in Mr. Cutler’s house,” Evie said.

“But isn’t that my bed? And all my things? ”

After a pause, Evie said slowly, “It is. It looks like they moved everything—the furniture, the rugs, the bedding, plus everything you had in the closet. They even moved the woodwork. Except for the new bath of course, this is a perfect replica of your upstairs. And then they must have moved you.”

Mina shuddered at the thought that she’d been picked up, carried out of her own house and across the street, and installed there without being any the wiser.

“As long as you stayed in this room,” Evie went on, “as long as you didn’t have your glasses, you’d think you never left home. They left only one thing behind.”

Mina took the cane that Evie handed her. “I guess they didn’t think I’d need it any longer.”

“You almost didn’t.”

“Then—” Mina turned and pointed out the window where emergency lights flared and flames shot toward the sky. She felt as if she were about to collapse. But she pushed Evie away and steadied herself with her cane. “The fire. That’s not Mr. Cutler’s house burning. That must be my house.”

“I’m sorry,” Evie said. “I’m so sorry. By the time I got there, the paper and lumber alongside your house had caught fire.”

“What lumber?”

“From the construction. I thought they were building you a bathroom. But that lumber is probably the old woodwork from this room.”

Mina remembered the sound of band saws and drills she’d heard coming from Mr. Cutler’s second floor. He hadn’t been putting in a roof deck or a Jacuzzi. He’d been preparing the room for her. Those workmen hadn’t been putting a bathroom upstairs in her house. They’d been removing all the woodwork so they could install it across the street.

“Smoke and mirrors,” Mina said, the taste of the words bitter in her mouth. “Tell me, how many days ago did we talk about the Empire State Building fire?”

“Day before yesterday.”

The news went through Mina like a shot of adrenaline. She hadn’t lost an entire week, after all.

“Come on,” Mina said, exhaling and standing up straight. “Let’s get out of here.”

Chapter Fifty-nine

Mrs. Yetner refused Evie’s help as she held on to the banister railing and used her cane to feel her way down the steps, resting on each tread before taking the next. Evie couldn’t tell if she was even aware of Frank Cutler and Mrs. Yetner’s nurse, who were watching from the kitchen. Ivory was meowing at the foot of the stairs. Evie picked up the cat and followed Mrs. Yetner out.

On the sidewalk Mrs. Yetner held her head high and leaned on her cane, staring into the middle distance. Water hissed and steam billowed as firefighters turned hoses on the smoldering embers. There was no way to tell if Mrs. Yetner’s house was salvageable, and it broke Evie’s heart to think of that perfectly lovely interior in ruins.

The wind blew a particularly sharp scent of fire over them, and Evie gagged.

Mrs. Yetner held her hand over her own nose and mouth. “Brings it all back, doesn’t it?”

It certainly did. Evie remembered standing in just this spot, watching her parents’ house burn. That house now stood unscathed on the other side of Mrs. Yetner’s.

“It was such a hot day, remember?” Mrs. Yetner said. “Windy, too.”

“Like today,” Evie said, burying her face in Ivory’s soft fur. She’d been wearing a sleeveless top and shorts and her feet were bare. The crowd then, just like the crowd now, had been mostly strangers who’d looked on with disappointment as firefighters doused the last vestiges of fire. “Ginger was there, and so was my mother. And all I could think was that Blackie and her puppies were inside and there was nothing I could do.”

“We all felt helpless.”

Evie turned to face Mrs. Yetner. “The weirdest thing happened. When I was in your bedroom, I opened the bedroom closet door and I had the sensation that I’d been there before, only I was inside the closet looking out.”

Mrs. Yetner pursed her lips and nodded. “You and Ginger had gone into your parents’ closet with the dogs to hide.”

“We did?”

“I was the one who found you there and got you out.”

“You? But I thought my mother—”

“I was sitting out on my back porch when I smelled smoke. I banged on the door but no one answered. I ran down the street to pull the alarm, and when I got back, your mother’s car was there. She was frantic. The house was burning, and she couldn’t find you or your sister anywhere. The fire trucks hadn’t gotten there yet. Someone had to go inside, so I went.” Mrs. Yetner’s eyes went wide as she remembered. “I found you and Ginger in the closet in the downstairs bedroom. You’d been playing dress-up and trying to smoke your mother’s cigarettes. You were still wearing her high heels.”

“Trying to smoke? Me and Ginger?” It took a moment for the realization to hit Evie. “You mean my mother didn’t start the fire?”

“That’s what she let everyone think. She didn’t want you girls labeled as fire starters. I think she especially didn’t want your father to know, him being a firefighter and all. But really, you were just children, and much too young to have been left alone. It’s a lucky thing I was there.” Mrs. Yetner touched the scar on her face.