“Why are they in your pocket?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do.”
Kyle’s mother stood. “I think we’re done here.”
Sam and Reese stood, too.
“I don’t think we are,” Sam said.
It took everything Reese had not to haul the other boy out of his seat and demand answers. If he’d done something to Elliott...or sent that boy off to do something for him...
He took a deep breath. Got himself under control.
For Faye’s sake.
She needed him to bring her son back to her.
* * *
FAYE WAS SITTING with Sara and Lila about an hour after her breakdown when Lila’s phone rang. It was Suzie.
“I’ve got Elliott!”
Faye heard the woman’s words from three feet away, she’d spoken so loudly. She didn’t hear the rest of the conversation but she heard what Lila told Sam when she called him seconds later.
“He was hiding on the steps inside the cellar door in the back of her house,” Lila was saying into the phone, looking right at Faye. “She’d noticed it slightly ajar. Apparently it was darker in there than he thought it would be and he’d propped it open to get some light.”
Why he’d run away remained to be seen. They’d deal with that later.
Faye was out the door, heading toward the parking lot where Reese had left his car without remembering to thank anyone who’d helped her.
She would. But right then, she had to get to Elliott.
Reese meeting her at the car could have been coincidence. Luck. Yet she’d known he’d be there. And that he’d have his lights flashing all the way back to her place.
They didn’t speak.
There was too much to say and no time to say it.
No ability to think it, even. She had to see her son. To hold him in her arms. To tell him how much she loved him. And needed him.
And then ground him for life for running away.
* * *
REESE STOOD BACK in her driveway as Faye ran toward Elliott.
He watched as Faye swung her fifty-pound son off the ground and into her arms. Saw Elliott’s tear-stained face over her shoulder. And swallowed.
Suzie was there. Sam Larson would be coming. Reese had a report to write. And everyone needed an explanation.
It was possible that Elliott was involved in something more than running away. Something he had yet to tell Faye.
Elliott and Kyle. Two boys with known anger issues, two boys with matches. One who’d set a fire in a bathroom trash, the other present at the scene of a gasoline fire. Kyle even wore the same brand of tennis shoe that had shown up at another gasoline crime scene.
Did he wear a different size because they’d been donated? Maybe the first pair had been too big for the boy.
They didn’t know yet. But they would.
Faye had put Elliott down and was questioning him. What was wrong? Why had he run away? Why hadn’t he called her?
Elliott’s answers were the same. He didn’t know. The more Faye questioned, the harder he shook his head, and the more vehemently he said didn’t know anything.
Reese’s heart sank.
For Elliott. For Faye. For all of them.
His son might be in trouble. It was going to kill Faye.
But it wouldn’t be the end of the world, one way or the other. He’d see to that.
Elliott was young, and at risk. He’d been misled by a kid he looked up to in a place he’d been sent to get help. He now had a new father looking out for him. A fire chief, who knew how to teach him why arson didn’t solve anything.
Elliott was already in treatment. The judge would see that he hadn’t been there long enough for it to work.
No life had been lost.
Reese would pay for the chickens. And the barn.
“You talk to them yet?” Sam had come up behind him.
He shook his head. He’d followed protocol and waited for the detective in charge. He wasn’t going to let this one get messed up.
And he couldn’t bear to be the one who told Faye that her son was possibly involved with an arsonist.
“Elliott was the only one who had regular access outside of The Lemonade Stand,” Larson said as they watched mother and child for a moment more. Elliott was standing, Faye was holding him while he cried—his face pressed to her stomach.
She hadn’t looked over at Reese.
Not once.
She knew something.
Or suspected, anyway.
“Elliott?” Reese said. “Detective Larson needs to speak with you.”
“Do I gotta go to jail?”
“No,” Reese said. It wouldn’t be jail. If he had any power at all, it wouldn’t be juvenile detention, either. Not even for one night.
“We can talk right here,” Sam said, looking at the boy with a firm expression but talking with far more compassion than he’d shown Kyle.
Reese knew Faye wouldn’t want their dirty laundry aired in the front yard. Leading his son and his...he didn’t know what she was to him anymore...upstairs, he asked everyone to take a seat in the living room. Made certain he was standing right behind Faye and Elliott, holding each of them by a shoulder.
After murmuring something to Faye, Suzie had gone back to her part of the house.
Sam cleared his throat, and Reese held up a hand. Then he looked down at his boy with a raised brow.
He wanted to question Elliott himself after all.
When the detective nodded, he moved around the front of the couch, knelt and looked his son right in the eye.
“I need you tell me the truth, Elliott,” he said. “We’re in a serious situation here and it’s up to you to do the hard thing.”
Maybe he was putting too much on a troubled kid. All he knew was he had to save his family—and his family included Elliott.
Maybe they weren’t traditional and wouldn’t ever be. Maybe they lived in separate houses. But they were related, by blood and by heart. Faye and Elliott needed him. And he needed them, too.
Wide-eyed, Elliott just stared at him.
“Why did you run away today?”
“I was scared.”
The words fell into the room with a crack. Faye stared at her son. Reese almost wished he’d let the detective do the questioning. Except that something told him Elliott would talk to him.
Maybe two weeks of nightly confessionals had helped.
“Of what?” he asked.
The boy shrugged, and Reese shook his head. He noticed that Faye wasn’t intervening. She was trusting him to handle this.
“A shrug’s not going to do it, buddy.”
Elliott started to cry again. Leaned against Faye. She looked over at him and he shook his head.
“Elliott, I need you to tell me what’s going on.”
“I can’t,” he said. “It’s the code.”
“Code?”
“We talk about junk...it’s secret...and no one tells.”
“Are you talking about the group counseling rules?” Faye asked.
“Yeah.”
“So you know something from counseling?”
“Sorta.”
“Does it have to do with Kyle?” Reese asked, starting to get worked up himself. Could that be all this was? And Elliott wasn’t in trouble at all?
Elliott’s silence gave Reese a fair confirmation that Kyle was involved.
“Is Kyle setting fires, Elliott?” Sam asked.
“No.”
“But you know who is, don’t you?” the detective coaxed.
“I don’t know.” The boy looked at Reese, who moved over to sit next to him.
“You have to man up, son.”
“If I do, I’ll get in trouble. And if I don’t, I’ll get in trouble. And everyone’s going to be mad at me no matter what and...”
“That’s why you ran away,” Reese said, understanding completely. He felt Faye’s muscles relax even from one seat over. He met her gaze. Wanted to touch her face. Give her a soft, reassuring kiss.
“Kyle knows what’s in my paper that I burned,” Elliott said. “If I tell his, he’s gonna tell mine.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Uh-huh.” The boy sniffled. Wiped his nose with his arm. Reaching for a tissue from the table beside her, Faye handed it to her son.
Elliott blew his nose, wadded up the tissue and handed it back to her.
Sam settled back into an armchair across from them.
“Want me to tell you a trick I learned?” Reese asked, trying his damnedest to remember being eight.
At Elliott’s nod, he continued, “I learned that if you have a secret that you know is going to be told, it’s best just to tell it yourself. That way it gets told the way it really happened. The way you know it. Not like someone else thinks it.”
“Do I gotta say it right now?” Elliott’s gaze was for him alone.
Reese guessed that whatever the boy had written had been about his mother. Knowing what Elliott could possibly have witnessed, he said, “No, you don’t. It can be in private, just me and you, when we’re done here.” He was winging it.
He was a fire chief, not a dad. But no one was arguing with him.
“Now, you need to tell us Kyle’s secret that made you run away.”
“Maybe he should tell you.”
“He wouldn’t,” Sam said. “We already asked him after you went missing. We talked to both him and his mother.”
The disappointed pout on Elliott’s lips angered Reese on Elliott’s behalf but gave him hope, too.
“She’s the one that tells Kyle it’s his job to take notes and remember stuff from Sara to help his brother. She says it’s because Kyle is lucky that he’s at the Stand and with her and his brother’s too old.”
Kyle had a brother. Reese looked at Sam. Sam nodded and stood. “I’m on it.” The man left the room, his phone already out of its holster.
“Kyle’s brother is setting fires, isn’t he?” Reese asked.
And Elliott nodded.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
FAYE TURNED FROM Elliott’s doorway later that night, having been allowed to actually tuck her son into bed, to find Reese right there, watching her.
She’d left him in the living room. He’d said good-night to Elliott, told him he’d done the right thing that day. That Reese was proud of him.
She’d half expected him to have let himself out before she got back.
“You have to get to the station,” she said. She understood his job. “You’ve got your arsonist.”
Kyle’s older brother, Matt, had been arrested before dinner that evening, at his aunt’s house where he’d been staying. Both Kyle and his mother had been protecting him.
“If they’d asked for help rather than trying to help him themselves, he’d have had a better chance,” Faye said. And got the connection, too.
“Probably.”
“I feel bad for him. He was just as much a victim as they were, but he couldn’t live at the Stand because he’s too old.”
“From what I hear, they’re trying to get a separate, smaller facility for men,” Reese said. “Sam mentioned it when he called to say that Kyle and his mother and brother were all in custody.”
Matt had been charged with several counts of arson and destruction of property. Kyle and his mom were charged with obstructing justice. They might also be accountable for endangering a minor for the part they forced Elliott to play.
Elliott had come upon Kyle sneaking out to meet his older brother at the computer shop one day. That was when the older boy had started blackmailing him with things Elliott had said in counseling—saying he’d tell everyone what had happened to Faye.
Which was also why Elliott’s anger with Faye had escalated. He’d been forced to keep her secret because she’d done what Frank told her to do.
She and Reese walked to her front door. So hard to believe it had been only that afternoon that Reese had shown up with a bag of burritos.
He turned at the end of the hall and headed toward the kitchen instead of going straight to the door. Started cleaning away the empty pizza box that had been left after the three of them had had dinner together.
Mom and Dad giving their son the love and support he needed from them. Letting him talk. Letting him tell them over and over again what Kyle had said. How Kyle had encouraged him to burn the paper he’d written his worst feelings on, so it would feel like he was burning away the feelings themselves.
“When Kyle gave Elliott those matches to burn his own paper in the bathroom trash can, he’d solidified Elliott’s feeling that Kyle cared about him and was trying to help him,” Faye said aloud.
Reese continued helping her clean up the kitchen. Wiping the table while she put the glasses in the dishwasher.
“You can go, Reese. I don’t want to keep you from...”
She was doing it again. Pushing him away.
With water still running in the sink, she grabbed his arm. Turned him toward her. “I don’t want you to leave. I want you to spend the night.”
No strings attached if that was how he’d prefer it. She just didn’t want to be alone that night. Or any other night, now that she was admitting the truth.
He reached around her to turn off the water.
“I always thought my father leaving was my fault,” he said. Her hand was still on his arm but he didn’t touch her. “From what I understood, he was happy with my mother until I came along. My mom tells this story that on the day my father left, there was a fire across the street from us. The two weren’t related but she says I was fascinated by the fire. I’ve wondered if maybe I took the stress from the one to the other. I was just a baby. Maybe two. But apparently I’ve been fascinated by fire ever since.”
She’d known him all those years. Thought she’d known everything about him. How could she have not known this?
“Talking to Elliott, I think I get some of what he’s going through. I’ve always had this fear that I’d fail my loved ones like my father failed me.”
Why was he telling her this?
Did he mean...was there hope...?
Didn’t matter. He mattered. She wanted everything he’d give her.
“Today, when you said you needed me...” He stopped. Looked her in the eye. Rubbed her shoulder with his hand. “It all came home to me, Faye. My issue with my father got in the way of how I related to you.”
She shook her head. “I think we were crossed from the beginning, Reese. With my mother dying, I always thought I had it all under control. But I realized today that my whole life, I’ve never let myself need anyone, not fully. I’ve never let myself believe in true love, or lasting love, because I was afraid it would leave. And then, after what I did when I lost you... I never wanted to love like that again. Where the pain of loss was so strong you completely lose your mind...”
“We were two single-parent kids who thought we understood each other because of that,” he said, “but instead we both had issues we never talked about.”
She nodded. Sighed. Finally. They’d reached their place of understanding. The place he’d said they’d need to find to be able to co-parent Elliott successfully.
It took their son to show them themselves.
“I’m guessing it was no mistake that today’s experience showed us both a new view of ourselves,” she said, half smiling. “Fate has a funny way of knocking you over the head when you’re missing the boat.”
He didn’t return her smile. With his hand still rubbing her arm, he said, “I’m so sorry, Faye. Everything you went through because...”
She touched a finger to his lips. Liked the feel of them. Really, really liked it. Remembered it.
“A very smart woman said something to me this afternoon that made a lot of sense.” Bloom Larson, while her husband had been out helping Reese find their son. “She commented on how I didn’t blame you anymore. How I understood what drove you to do what you did. She said it sounded as though I’d completely forgiven you...and when I did a self-check, I found that she was right. I had. Then she asked me if I thought you’d forgiven me, too. She said it sure seemed that way, seeing us together...”
“As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing to forgive you for, Faye. Yeah, once in your life you got drunk. But so do millions of other college kids. You were with people you trusted and had reason to trust. There’s no way you could have foreseen what was coming...”
Tears flooded her eyes. She’d told herself, when Elliott was found, that she was done crying. “Bloom asked me why I could forgive you but couldn’t give the same gift to myself. She said the regrets don’t have to eat me alive if I could just forgive myself like I forgave you.”
It was going to take some work. But she was up to it.
“And I think maybe the same is true for you. Not just about me, but about Tabitha.”
His hand on her arm rubbed a little quicker. Not harder, just faster.
In direct rhythm with her heartbeat.
“Will you spend the night with me, Reese? I need you here. I don’t want to be alone.” She repeated the words. She’d get used to them. And constantly check herself, too. She wasn’t going to become selfish and make it all about her needs, but she would ask him for what she needed.
This was so her. Always with a plan.
“Of course I will,” he said without hesitation. And then, “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
She’d been about to say she’d take the couch in Elliott’s room. But stopped herself.
“Dr. Larson tells me that there are things we can do, things she can help us with that might take away my aversion to being...touched.”
All movement stopped. He stared at her. “Are you saying that you want to try?”
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