House on Fire (ARC)

by Bonnie Kistler

  The HVAC crew was on-site today. He found them on the second story with the prints for the ductwork rolled out on the floor, and they all got down on their haunches to go over them. They were going to have to deviate from the plan in the master bedroom, since the Millers had ordered a last-minute change to the ceiling—vaulted instead of coffered—which was going to cut into the space available for the ducts. They needed to come up with some kind of work-around, but the HVAC crew was out of ideas, and for the moment, so was Pete. “I’ll work on this tonight,” he told the team.

  He was hauling himself to his feet when a clamor erupted outside, a crash followed by a stream of obscenities. He ran to the window in time to see Midas hurl the drone control console to the ground. “Fourteen fucking hundred dollars,” he screamed, while the swanling clapped a hand over her mouth to hold in her giggles.

  Pete stopped for some Chinese takeout on the way home. Leigh hadn’t had much of an appetite for anything he brought home all week, but she was a big fan of sweet-and-sour—just like me, she liked to tease—and he hoped the shrimp would tempt her.

  He came in the kitchen and stopped short. The air was full of the aroma of roasting chicken, and Leigh was at the island, tied up in an apron and chopping a green pepper. “Oh, no,” she said at the sight of the takeout bag in his hand. “I should have called.”

  “No problem.” He sniffed the air appreciatively. “This’ll keep.” He opened the refrigerator and stowed the Chinese inside, then, hands free, came around the island and gave her a backward hug.

  She leaned back into his arms. “How was your day?”

  “Good. Great. No problems. Yours?”

  She smiled over her shoulder. “Fine.” The lively look wasn’t quite back in her eyes, but the smile was enough to make up for it. More than enough. She had a beautiful smile. She could light up a room, and this one seemed brighter than it had for days.

  He went upstairs to shower and change. On his way back down he popped his head in Kip’s room. He was at his desk on the computer, the same as any other day, except today a clergyman beamed from the screen. Kip had been clicking through minister mug shots for days.

  “Any luck?”

  He shook his head.

  “How about the car?”

  “No.”

  “Well, don’t worry. We’ll find him.” It had been a week already and still no response to the newspaper ads or any of the internet postings. Pete clapped both hands on Kip’s shoulders. The boy’s muscles felt like sailor’s knots, and he gave them a brisk rubdown. “School okay today?”

  “Fine.” Kip clicked through to another photo, this one of a cherubic-looking man with a bristle of curly white sideburns.

  Pete hesitated. “Coming down for dinner?”

  “I’ll grab something later.”

  It was a week since he’d joined them at the dinner table. Once Pete wouldn’t have tolerated that. It was one of the rules of their household that the whole family sit down for dinner together. But the tension between Leigh and Kip was building more and more every day, and Pete was afraid it might blow if he tried to force him to the table tonight. Besides, it would be nice to have an evening alone with Leigh while her happy mood lasted. “Yeah, okay,” he said finally. “There’s sweet-and-sour shrimp in the fridge, and there’ll be some leftover chicken, too.”

  Kip shrugged. “Hey, Dad?” He pushed back from his computer. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

  That sounded ominous. Pete took a seat on the foot of the bed. The walls of the room were covered with posters, but not the usual sports heroes or bikini babes like the ones plastered over the twins’ room. Kip’s posters were world maps at various points in time. Geopolitical history was his big interest. Because I’m plotting world domination, he used to say, rubbing his hands with an evil mwah-ha-ha laugh. “What’s up?”

  “I was wondering if I could go to Mom’s.”

  “Sure. When? This weekend?”

  “For good. Till I leave for Richmond for the summer.”

  Pete stared at him. “What are you talking about? You have two more months of school.”

  “I was thinking Mom could drive me?”

  “Ninety miles each way? Come on. What’s this about?”

  Kip looked past him to one of the wall maps, the one with all the ’stans in Central Asia that Pete had never learned. Kip could recite them all. “I just think things would be better if I lived somewhere else.”

  “Better with Leigh, you mean.”

  “She hates me, Dad.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “She can’t even look at me.”

  “She just needs time.”

  “It’s been over a week already. What she needs is space. From me.”

  “That’s not true. But regardless, your mom can’t spend three or four hours every day running you back and forth to school. And I doubt you want to live with Gary that long either.”

  Kip’s shoulders rose and fell. “Maybe I could rent a place somewhere around here—”

  “We can’t afford that. Not right now.”

  “Someplace cheap.”

  “There are no cheap apartments in Hampshire County.” Pete got to his feet. “Look, I know things are a little tense, but it’ll blow over soon.” He tapped Kip’s computer screen. “Real soon if we find this priest. You concentrate on that.”

  After dinner they took their coffees to the family room and settled side by side on the sofa with their legs stretched out together on the ottoman. This was their nightly routine and always the best part of the day for Pete. But it was the first night they’d done it since Chrissy died, and it felt new to him and a little fragile. He reached for the remote and looked uncertainly at the TV. He didn’t know the drill for grieving. Was it better to sit in silence and remember Chrissy, or to plunge back into their normal routine and try to forget her? They’d built such a good life together, he and Leigh, and all he wanted was to get back to it. But that life included Chrissy—depended on Chrissy—and he knew they’d never get back to it. Not without their sparkling girl. The only hope was to try to build a new life out of the ashes of the old one. He didn’t know how. But he was a builder. It was his job to figure it out.

  After a moment he clicked on CNN, and when Leigh did as she always did and picked up a book, he relaxed a little and settled in to watch the news.

  The broadcast cycled through the business report, the sports update, the latest news from the Middle East. Leigh never glanced at the screen. She seldom did, that much was normal, but tonight she never turned a page either. She was only staring at her book. He knew he’d made a mistake, it was too soon to be normal, and he was about to switch off the TV and find something else to do when a report came on that made her put the book down and sit up straight.

  It was an update on the school shooting in Missouri last week. One of the victims had been in intensive care since the incident, and today she died. That brought the total fatalities to twelve, four boys and six girls. The segment concluded with a slide show of their school portraits, ten middle schoolers with fresh-scrubbed faces and broad smiles against a blue studio background.

  Pete glanced over at Leigh as the shining faces flipped across the screen. Her own face was frozen. She stared at the TV like she could see through it and a thousand yards beyond.

  He hurried to turn it off. “Let’s see what’s on the DVR,” he said, and scrolled through the list of their recordings until he landed on a sitcom they usually enjoyed.

  Leigh sat stiffly. But about halfway in, an unexpected punch line, delivered deadpan, tore a startled laugh out of her. A week ago he thought he’d never hear that laugh again, and the light tinkling ring sounded so good to his ears that he hooked an arm around her and pulled her in closer. She tucked her legs up and put her head in his lap, and he stroked her hair while they watched that show and two more
stacked up behind it on the DVR. He could feel her muscles relax and her body go limp against his. He wondered if they should sleep where they were tonight. He’d have a stiff neck in the morning, but that was better than waking her to go to bed. She always woke with such a bleak horrible look on her face.

  But she wasn’t asleep. “The horses!” She bolted upright. “I forgot to bring them in!”

  “Shit.” That was Chrissy’s evening chore, and they still hadn’t developed a new routine to work around it. “I’ll go.” He pushed to his feet. “You go on up to bed.”

  It was unseasonably warm outside, the kind of hot spring night that all but guaranteed a violent thunderstorm tomorrow. His mind scrolled through the work plan for Hollow Road as he headed out into the pasture and snagged the horses by their halters. The masons were due tomorrow to start on the fieldstone facade, but he could bring them inside if he had to and have them finish pointing up the fireplace in the library.

  He led the horses into their stalls and as he fed and watered them, he wondered if they should sell them. It didn’t look like Mia would ever get over her fear of horses, and Leigh never rode anymore. Nature tells you when it’s time to quit, she liked to joke. It’s when you don’t look good in breeches anymore. Pete didn’t know what she was talking about: she still looked damn good to him.

  She was already asleep by the time he climbed up the stairs to bed, and he was careful not to disturb her as he slipped in under the covers on his side. But as soon as he settled in, she rolled up tight against him, and he felt the wonderful shock of her skin against his. She wasn’t asleep, and she wasn’t wearing a nightgown either. She pressed up close, and he felt the even better shock of her hand sliding around his waist and slipping in under his shorts.

  He rolled over and found her lips in the dark. He would have settled for this, the taste of her tongue, the soft heat of her mouth. But her fingers kept on stroking him as they kissed. “You sure?” he whispered.

  She took his hand and placed it over her breast. Her skin felt so soft under his fingers, her breasts so full and supple. Five years in and he still regarded her body as a gift, something to be unwrapped and marveled at and consumed with gratitude. He wriggled out of his shorts and dropped his mouth to her other breast and gently sucked and stroked her nipples. He still wasn’t sure how ready she was for this. He needed to take it slow, slower than his usual athletic approach to sex. But this time, for the first time, Leigh was the one who grew impatient. She almost had a growl in her throat as she opened her legs and pulled him down between them.

  He’d been afraid he might lose her to her grief forever, but here she was, back again, full of life and lust. She hooked her heels behind his knees and rose up to meet him. “Oh, ye-ess,” she moaned, and it almost undid him. He had to tune out the sharp little pants in his ear and the glorious slip and slide of her skin against his. He summoned up the least arousing image he could think of, and of course, Hollow Road popped into his head. He froze it there on the screen and thought of nothing but tomorrow’s work plan, holding back until he heard the familiar gasp that would tell him he could finish.

  There. It sounded a little different in his ear, but he was already thrusting to the end before he realized: it wasn’t a gasp he heard, it was a sob. “Oh, God, babe—” But it was too late.

  “I’m sorry!” she cried as he collapsed on her. “I’m so sorry!”

  His chest heaved as he flopped on his back. “No,” he panted. “It’s me who’s sorry. It was too soon. I shouldn’t have—”

  “No, I wanted it! It’s only—” Another sob choked off her words.

  “What?” He pulled her into his arms. “Sweetheart, tell me.”

  “I want her back!” The words tore out of her like something ripped inside her body. “I want her back!”

  “I know,” he whispered. “I do, too.”

  “I want her back! I want her back!”

  “I know. I know.”

  He tried to hold her but she wrenched free and rolled over and sobbed the same words into her pillow, over and over again. Helplessly he stroked her back until her shoulders finally stopped shaking.

  He pretended to sleep after that, and so did she. He heard her get up during the night and gulp down some pills, and sometime later she drifted off. He must have slept, too, at some point, because he jerked awake when the alarm chimed at six. He rolled one way to slam it silent and Leigh rolled the other way and got out of bed. She pulled on her robe but sank down again on the edge of the mattress with her back to him.

  “Leigh?”

  “Peter, I’m so sorry about last night.”

  “It was my fault. I shouldn’t—”

  “No.” Her shoulders sagged. “It’s mine. I can’t— I’m just not coping.”

  He rolled toward her and reached to rub her back. “No one would expect you to.”

  “I hear her voice. I think she’s calling me, but when I go look, she’s not there. I thought it must be the drugs, these hallucinations, I thought it would wear off, but it won’t. I see her out of the corner of my eye, and when I spin around, she’s not there. Or I see her and she dissolves and it’s Kip who’s there, and I’m sorry—I’m so sorry!—but it’s like a fresh wound every time. It’s tearing me apart.”

  His hand stilled on her spine. “Seeing Kip, you mean.”

  “I don’t blame him. I swear I don’t. I know it wasn’t his fault. I would’ve swerved for that dog, too.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then why won’t he tell the truth about it?”

  Pete rolled to his back.

  “You believe him, I know it, and I understand why. I wish I could, too. But I can’t. And I don’t know how we go on living like this.”

  “It won’t be forever,” he said. “One way or the other, the truth’s gonna come out. We just need to get through this next little while, okay?”

  “Peter.” She took a deep breath and stood up to face him, and he was shocked at how drawn her face looked. She usually woke up looking as good as she did when she went to sleep. It made him wonder if she’d lain awake while he slept instead of the other way around as he’d thought. “Peter, I think I should go stay with Shelby for a while.”

  “What?” The word hissed in his throat.

  “I can’t be here anymore. In this house.”

  Shelby had an apartment in a luxury building on Logan Circle. Pete had never been there, but he imagined it as a glamorous art deco penthouse straight out of a 1930s movie musical. It was easy to picture Shelby on a set like that, sweeping down a dramatic helical staircase into a party of gyrating revelers. But he couldn’t picture Leigh in the scene at all. She’d be in the guest room, trying to read with her hands over her ears.

  “This is your home. You belong here.”

  “But I can’t be here. Not—”

  She put her hand to her mouth and didn’t say anything more, and in the silence, a stuttering burst of rap music came from the far end of the house. Kip’s alarm had gone off.

  Pete got to his feet. All night the idea played like a bad dream in his head, but now in almost-daylight it seemed the only solution. Kip wanted to leave, and apparently Leigh wanted the same thing. “No. You stay here,” he said as he stepped into his shorts. “We’ll crash at the job site for a while.”

  “We?”

  “Well, he can’t live by himself.”

  “He is eighteen.”

  “You think that means he’s grown up?” He went to the dresser and pulled out a clean T-shirt. “The twins are twenty. You think they’re grown up? Is that what you thought when you called Zack’s professor last month?”

  “No—”

  “I left him once before when he needed me. I won’t do it again, not while he’s going through the worst experience of his life.”

  The pipes whined in the wall as Kip turned on the
shower at the other end of the house.

  “But—oh, for heaven’s sake, Peter! You can’t live in a half-built house. It doesn’t even have plumbing.”

  “It won’t hurt us to camp out for a while.” He pulled the T-shirt over his head and opened another drawer for a button-down flannel. “Actually it’ll kill two birds. I’m at the point where I usually hire nighttime security. With me and Kip staying there, I can save that money. Win win.”

  “Win win,” she repeated dully.

  “No, I didn’t mean—”

  “I know you didn’t.” She came up to him and slipped her hands inside his shirt, and he pulled her head to his shoulder and pressed his face in her sweet-smelling hair. They stood together for a long moment, rocking slightly, like a boat on a swell.

  “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “It won’t be forever,” he said. “Just till we get through this. And I’ll stop by here every day. How’s that? You’ll hardly notice I’m gone.” She felt as limp as a ragdoll in his arms, but he knew she had a spine of steel. This was the woman who’d built an addition on her house while her marriage was crumbling and stayed cheerful and resolute through it all. “We’re gonna get through this.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The storm blew in that afternoon. Black clouds scuttled across the sky, and the wind kicked up so ferociously that the American flag in front of the high school lashed and cracked like a snapped cable. It was after five by then, and Kip was sulking on the curb like the last kid picked for the team. “Come on, hurry it up,” Pete shouted out the window. The wind was whipping at their camping gear where it lay exposed in the back of the truck, and Pete had to race the rain all the way back to Hollow Road.

  He pulled up the drive and parked next to the garage. The siding and stonework weren’t up yet, and the wind slipped in under the sheets of Tyvek wrap on the walls and swelled them out like a bullfrog’s throat. “Let’s get this inside before the rain breaks,” he shouted, and they grabbed armfuls of duffels and sleeping bags and ran to the back door.