The House Is on Fire

by Rachel Beanland

Robert engraved her ring, not with her initials or his but with the line My friend, my goddess, and my guide, which he’d borrowed from the Lady Montagu poem “A Hymn to the Moon.” She tries to remember whether she ever told anyone that, but she can’t be sure, all these years later, that she did.

For many, the Richmond Theater fire spelled the end of everything that mattered, but I like to think that, for one brave woman, maybe it didn’t.