House on Fire (ARC)

by Bonnie Kistler

  “She might need help logging on, though,” Dylan said.

  “Right,” Pete said. Because Chrissy wouldn’t be there to do it. “Thanks, guys. I’m sure that means a lot to her.”

  The first stop was Dulles for Zack’s flight to Austin. Shep barked indignantly at his departure at the terminal while Pete went through the curbside litany of reminders: call on arrival, be good, be careful, and please don’t break any bones because he was counting on his help this summer. “Yeah, yeah,” Zack said with a big bear hug while Pete pressed a couple hundred dollars into the boy’s hand.

  It was what he always did, slip them some traveling money, but his bank balance was scrolling rapidly through his mind as he drove on to Union Station for Dylan’s train to New York. He was going to have to make some steep austerity cuts. Ten thousand dollars was the 10 percent premium for the bail bond, and it was gone forever, no matter what happened. If Kip was cleared, even if the charges were dropped tomorrow, the bondsman still got to keep his 10 percent. Then there were the expert witness fees, not to mention Shelby’s. We’ll talk about that later, she’d said, but he didn’t hold out much hope for a discount. She had a law firm to answer to, the same as Leigh.

  They reached the drop-off circle at the train station, but Dylan didn’t get out. “Hey, Pete?” He hesitated, his hand on the door handle. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  Pete braced himself. Failing grades or he got some girl pregnant. Those were the worries he and Leigh most often had about these two.

  “It’s about Kip. Zack and me—we kind of roughed him up.”

  “What?”

  Pete’s tone held nothing but surprise, but Dylan winced like he’d been chewed out. “I know, I’m sorry. It was only heat of the moment, you know? But I feel bad about it now. I mean, I know it was an accident. It could’ve been me or Zack behind the wheel as easy as Kip.”

  “How rough?”

  “A couple punches to the gut. One to the face.”

  “Jeez, Dylan.”

  “I know. I feel terrible now. But we were just hanging out in our room thinking about Chrissy, then Kip walked in, and we took one look at each other and jumped him.”

  Their secret twin communication. It wasn’t the first time they brought out the worst in each other.

  “Would you tell him I’m sorry?”

  “Ought to come from you, don’t you think?”

  Dylan sighed. “Yeah, I hear you.”

  Pete got out and hoisted his bag from the trunk and peeled off another couple hundred dollars at the curb. “Thanks for telling me,” he said when Dylan hugged him good-bye.

  “We’re gonna get through this, right, Pete?”

  “If we can keep the punches to a minimum? You bet.”

  He wondered. All the way home he wondered. What if his son was actually convicted of killing Leigh’s daughter? How well would they be blended then? Their son, their daughter, Leigh always said, but what now?

  Shep jumped into the backseat and gave one last plaintive bark out the rear window as they left the District. He still seemed agitated at how he’d lost track of Chrissy. For four days he’d been nosing into every corner and cranny in the house, trying to pick up her scent. He leaped back into the front seat, and Pete hooked an arm around him and ruffled the fur on his chest. “I know, buddy,” he said. “I know.”

  Chapter Nine

  Leigh woke and rode out another tidal wave: Chrissy was dead, she was still dead and she’d always be dead. This was the world she was going to wake to every day for the rest of her life. World without Chrissy. Amen.

  The world without. There was a world beyond this bed, this room, and as the fog of sleep began to lift, her awareness of that world began slowly to sharpen. She forced her eyes open. It was nearly as dark in the bedroom as it had been inside her head. She rolled over to squint at the alarm clock on Peter’s nightstand. It was almost seven. By now her parents would be back on the ground in Florida. Zack would be in the air and Dylan on the train or maybe already off it, and she’d never said good-bye to any of them. She’d slept the day away.

  Soon it would be the week. For four days, almost five, all she’d done was sleep. Her family needed her and she wallowed in sleep when she should have been with them. It was her duty to be strong for them. She’d never shirked it before and she mustn’t now. They had to find some way to get through this, all of them, but she knew it had to start with her.

  She staggered into the bathroom. The shower was too cold then too hot but she forced herself to stand in it and held her face toward the full jet-force of the spray. Strands of memory began to rise, loose tangled threads of everything that had happened in the past five days, and slowly they began to knit themselves together. Events came back to her. The surgery, the funeral, the luncheon. People—a slide show of the faces of friends and strangers. The words they spoke that she must have heard even when she couldn’t respond. It was all coming back to her, and a list started to form in her mind of all the things she must do. Phone calls to make, thank-you notes to write.

  But there was something else— Something else was struggling to climb up into her consciousness. It slid and scrabbled against the slippery slope of her memory, but finally an axe struck and held and the memory vaulted to the summit.

  Kip.

  He’d been arrested. He spent the night in jail and the morning in court, and he must be more terrified than he’d ever been in his life.

  She shut off the shower and yanked on a robe and hurried down the hall. His door was open, and his computer screen glowed a blue light from the desk to the bed where he lay with his eyes closed and a pair of headphones on. Not asleep, though; one foot was moving in rhythm to whatever music was being piped into his ears. Her eyes misted as she stared at him, and the blue light bled into the shadows of his body. Slowly his dark hair blurred into copper curls, and suddenly it was Chrissy lying there, it was Chrissy’s foot tapping, and Leigh gasped out loud.

  Kip’s head jerked at the sound, and the image dissolved in a puff of smoke.

  Drugs. It was only the drugs. She took a steadying breath. “Want some company?”

  His foot went still. He shifted over a few inches, and she came in and perched on the edge of the mattress. Across the room his suit coat was draped over the desk chair. He was wearing sweatpants now and a rumpled T-shirt, and she could see the tension in the clench of his fingers.

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  He tugged off the headphones but didn’t answer, and the only sound was the music trickling tinny and faint through the speakers. It wasn’t his usual percussive rap music. It was something more melodic, sad and eerie, like an Appalachian ballad. One night in jail and he was a country music fan.

  He fumbled for the mute button. “Leigh, I—I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want. I know it must have been awful.”

  “No, I—I mean about—Chrissy.”

  “Oh.” Now she didn’t know what to say. It was an accident. It was nobody’s fault. It was a terrible loss for all of them, Kip as much as anyone. More than anyone, perhaps, except for Leigh herself. He never meant to hurt her. He never would. “It was an accident,” she said finally, out loud.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Shh.” She reached out and brushed his hair off his forehead. For a moment he didn’t move, then his breath trembled out of him and he rolled up against her and hid his face against the folds of her robe.

  “Kip, I’m here. You can tell me.”

  When he finally spoke, his words came out in a muffled choke. “It was a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “What?”

  “The bail. We can’t afford that.”

  “You let us worry about that.” She wondered how Peter had managed it.

  “We can’t afford Shelby ei
ther, and all these expert witnesses she’s talking about.”

  “You don’t need to worry about that either. You don’t need to worry about anything, okay? We’re all here for you, you know that, right? Your dad and mom and me. Even Gary.”

  “The Gang of Four,” he mumbled. That was the name he coined for his aggregated parents and stepparents. Imagine, she thought, a thirteen-year-old plucking a term out of Chinese history to describe his newly reconstituted family. He was always something special, this boy.

  “That’s right.” She put her arms around him. “The whole Gang of Four.”

  By the time Peter got home, she was dressed and waiting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. Shepherd burst inside first, and she gave him a quick pat as she rose and went to Peter. He pulled her close and nuzzled her hair, and when she turned her face up, he kissed her, gently.

  She searched his face as they parted. He looked exhausted, and for the first time she realized: all those hours and days she was sleeping, he probably wasn’t. The toll showed in the sags under his eyes, but his mouth was smiling as he held her back in the circle of his arms. “It’s good to see you up,” he said.

  “Peter, the bail—”

  “Taken care of.”

  “But the collateral—”

  “Rose Lane.”

  “Oh, no.” That was supposed to be his next big payday; he’d been counting on it for months.

  “It’s fine,” he said and kissed her again.

  She knew to let it go. “Are you hungry? I could fix something.”

  “Let’s just forage. We must have enough leftovers to feed an army.”

  She opened the refrigerator while he got out the plates. “Boys make their connections okay?”

  “Yep. They promised to call when they get in.”

  “They won’t, though. They’ll text. I never hear their voices when they’re gone. It’s like their vocal cords don’t stretch beyond the house.”

  He laughed.

  Half of a spiral-sliced ham sat in the refrigerator alongside some kind of green bean salad. “Sandwiches okay?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer, but a second later he was behind her with his arms around her. “I love you,” he murmured into her ear.

  “Me, too.” She tried out a smile. “Always and everywhere.”

  He hollered for Kip while she spread the salad and sandwich fixings out on the kitchen table. She poured a glass of milk for Kip and opened a beer for Peter. No alcohol for her, though, not with the narcotics still paddling dopily through her bloodstream.

  Kip came into the kitchen. “You okay?” Peter caught him by the arm, and he nodded and ducked into his chair.

  The kitchen table was square with two chairs pulled up on either side. They dragged in extras on Mia’s weekends or when the twins were home, and when all the children were home, they ate in the dining room. But for everyday meals they ate here, two on one side of the table and two on the other. Peter pulled out her chair and gave her knee a reassuring squeeze as he sat down beside her.

  It wasn’t until she looked across the table at Kip that she saw the livid burst of blood under the skin along his right cheekbone. “Oh, no!” She jumped up. “Did the cops do this to you?”

  “No.” Kip flinched as she grabbed his face and turned it to the light.

  “One of the prisoners?”

  He shook his head free. “I just tripped.”

  “Oh. Well.” She stood back with her hands on her hips. “That’s going to bruise. Hold on.” She grabbed a clean dish towel and filled it with ice cubes from the refrigerator dispenser and tied it in a knot. How many times had she done this over the years? She didn’t know why she never bothered to invest ten dollars in a real ice bag. No, she did know. Because it would be too much of an admission that her children were going to get hurt. That they were breakable. She handed the homemade ice pack to Kip. “Here. Hold this on it.”

  He placed it gingerly against his face, and they all busied themselves with passing dishes and assembling their sandwiches. It felt almost peaceful for a few minutes, breaking bread together in silence. But Leigh knew she had to ask about the charges and discuss what came next. They had to start planning how to deal with this. It was what families did when an outside threat loomed. They closed ranks and worked together to shield themselves from it. If anyone else had been in the truck with Kip that night, if anyone else had died, Leigh would be leading the strategy sessions by now. She’d be heading up the Kip Conley Defense Committee. If it was anyone else but Chrissy.

  “Leigh,” Peter said softly.

  She looked up with a start.

  “You need to eat something.”

  “Oh.” She made herself smile as she picked up her fork. “I am. See?”

  Kip was picking at his meal, too, half-slumped over his plate with his elbow on the table and the ice pack holding up his head.

  “You call your mom?” Peter said.

  “Not yet.”

  “Come on. That’s the deal. You have to keep her in the loop.”

  “I know! I will. I just—” He put down the ice pack and sat up straight. “I need to tell you something first.” His eyes shifted to Leigh. “Both of you. About what really happened.”

  Leigh felt suddenly weak.

  Peter squinted at him. “What d’you mean, really?”

  “Chrissy rode over to Ryan’s to get me, and she put her bike in the back—”

  “Yeah, we know. You already—”

  “Then she got in the truck. Behind the wheel.”

  Peter’s chair squealed against the floor as he pushed back hard from the table. “What?”

  “She insisted on driving. She said zero tolerance and all that. She was afraid the cops would stop me and I’d get slammed. I said no, but I couldn’t get her to shove over, and it was late and I finally said okay you can drive if you go the long way on Hollow Road.” The words tripped and stumbled out of Kip’s mouth. “She did fine until that dog ran out in front of us. She jerked the wheel too hard, and the road was wet and she lost control. We went in the ditch and she couldn’t get out of the mud, so I got out and made her slide over. But before I could get us out of there, the cop pulled up. I didn’t want Chrissy to get in trouble for driving without a license, not when she was only trying to keep me out of trouble. So I said to her, I was driving, okay? So that was the story we went with. But it was just a story. Chrissy was driving. Not me. I’m—sorry.”

  His voice trailed off at the end, and Leigh put her head in her hands and sighed. Here he was, at it again. Christopher Con Man, working another scam. And after she had such hopes that they could have a peaceful evening and try to work through this together. Now Peter was going to take his head off for pulling this kind of stunt, lying about something like this with Chrissy dead in the ground.

  Peter’s breath came out in a loud exhalation, too, but it wasn’t a sigh—it sounded more like a rush of relief. “Kip!” Suddenly he was lit up. “This is—this is huge. Why didn’t you say something? You should have told me.”

  “I was afraid it would look like I was making it up to save my own skin.”

  Leigh got to her feet. That was exactly what it looked like. She understood that he was scared and desperate, but blaming Chrissy? Peter needed to nip this in the bud. Send Kip to his room with an I’ll deal with you later. But suddenly hope was blooming across Peter’s face. He was so desperate to find a way out that he couldn’t see that it was obviously a lie. Chrissy didn’t drive. It was only a game when Peter let her take the wheel out in the fields. She was only fourteen. It was ridiculous to think she’d muscled her way past Kip into the driver’s seat.

  “Come on. We need to call Shelby,” Peter said, and he pulled Kip up out of his chair and after him down the hall.

  Leigh sighed again. Now they were going to drag Shelby into this trave
sty. She trailed after them through the length of the house to the den. Peter was bent over the desk, scrolling through the directory on the speakerphone in search of Shelby’s number. “Here we go,” he said and pressed the button.

  Shelby would be livid. She didn’t receive business calls on her personal line. If she picked up at all, it would only be because she saw Leigh’s name on her caller ID. She’d be furious when she discovered it was Kip spinning this lie.

  The beeps sounded through the speaker as the call connected. “Peter, wait,” Leigh said.

  “What?”

  She glanced over at Kip where he stood in the corner, clutching his elbows. “Can we talk about this first? Before we take it outside the family?”

  Peter gave her a quizzical look as Shelby’s silky voice entered the room. “Leigh?”

  “No, it’s Pete. And Kip. He has something important to tell you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Kip took a breath. “I wasn’t driving,” he said. He didn’t look at Leigh. “Chrissy was.”

  Leigh looked at the ceiling as he told it all again. His delivery was smoother this time. His rehearsal in the kitchen must have helped. Peter watched him and gave him little encouraging nods as he spoke. He didn’t look at Leigh again.

  The line was silent when Kip finished. The quiet before the storm, Leigh was sure of it. Shelby was about to explode with anger. How dare you? she’d say. How dare you defile the memory of that sweet girl? What kind of coward are you, not to take responsibility for your own actions?

  “Okay,” Shelby said. “Let’s talk about how we prove it.”

  What? Leigh blinked at the phone on the desk.

  “Did anyone see you drive away from the party?”

  Kip hesitated. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Of course not, Leigh thought. It would be his word against nobody’s.