Mayfly Melodies

Forty-Seven

Bailey

Country music is great music because it really comes from real life experiences. It is such a great haven for reality—Bryan White

Fear was a strange emotion.  It was so much different than any other sensation Bailey had ever experienced before.  She'd been scared plenty of times but this was the first that she'd felt bone-deep horror.  It was the kind of terror that made her want to freeze, to wait out the storm until it had passed so that she could resume her life as if she'd only hit some sort of pause button.

Fear. 

That's what Bailey was feeling as Gertie screeched to a stop in the front yard of the Hartley ranch.  The house was completely ablaze with thick tendrils of dark smoke billowing out into the sky.  She jumped out of the car, eyes widening with panic as she caught the sight of flames through the front window, wrapping their way through the interior of the house.  She gasped in a shocked breath and coughed as the acrid smoke filled her lungs and burned at her eyes.

Bailey could feel the heat from the raging fire.  She could feel it seeping into her bones but it didn't warm her.  She felt chilled and terrified.  All she could do was stare at the inferno that was ravaging the Hartley's ranch and her mind was transported away to an event that she hadn't even been present for but it was one that she could imagine.  She'd seen the horror and the despair on Noah's face when he'd told her about the fire that had destroyed his childhood home and she knew that she was staring into another event of a similar magnitude. 

This fire would destroy them both again.  They would lose their home but hopefully not each other.  Bailey only hoped that the firefighters she'd called on her way down the driveway got here soon so that they could put the flames out and save what was left of the house.  And above all she hoped that they could pull Noah and Caroline out before they were injured or, and she hated to even think about it, killed.

Suddenly, the thought of Noah or Caroline dying was just too much to bear and Bailey stumbled forward towards the house, nearly tripping in a pothole in the process.  She was determined to get to them.  To pull them out of the wreckage herself if that's what it would take to save their lives.

"Noah!" she screeched.  She felt her stomach drop and for a moment she worried that she was going to be sick.  "Noah!"

"Bailey?!"

She spun towards the side of the house as she heard her name called.  Her heart soared for a moment...and then she realized that it wasn't Noah who had replied to her desperate plea.  It was, of all people, Stephen Mackey. 

"Stephen!  Oh, my god what are you doing here?" Bailey rushed towards him.

"Me?  What about you?  You're supposed to be in Nashville!"

His face was covered in dirt and there were some leaves and grass in his hair.  But more startling than his physical appearance was the fact that he was helping a limping Caroline beside him.  She, like Stephen, looked as if she'd taken a recent tumble in the dirt and there was ash on her face but she seemed otherwise okay.

"What happened?" Bailey asked them.  She had to yell to be heard over the fire.

"I don't know!  I saw the fire and came to check things out," Stephen shouted back.  His voice was hoarse and he coughed, the sound dry and painful.  "Good thing I did too.  I helped Caroline off of the roof!"

Bailey turned to Caroline.  The other girl, surprisingly, did not seem dazed in the slightest as Bailey might have predicted.  She assumed that Caroline would be shell-shocked, locked into a kind of PTSD-nightmare, but Caroline's face was a coherent and strong as she'd ever seen it.