Jar of Dreams

by Liz Flaherty

  “I’m fine.” She turned her leg to check its mobility and had to stifle a gasp of pain. “It’s a little swollen and a lot bruised. I kept trying to wash the dark off because I thought it was soot. But it doesn’t hurt much.” A little white lie never hurt anything. “You and Crockett okay?”

  “We’re good. At least, he was when he went to his room.”

  “How about Jack? He’s never very talky, but he was even less so tonight…last night…whatever this is.”

  “Kid’s got a lot on his plate.” He hesitated. “Lucy?”

  She sipped the tea, feeling the warmth wash through her. It made her feel boneless and seemed to turn the stressed exhaustion into a tiredness that was calm, nearly pleasant. “Hmh?” she asked drowsily.

  “I know you didn’t have anything to do with the fire at Aunt Gert’s. We all do. You’re not having any weird thoughts in that direction, are you?”

  “Born to Run” played in her mind again, Springsteen’s voice softened and mellowed by the influence of the tea—what had Kelly given her anyway? Lucy had to force her voice to work. “I don’t know.” She sipped again, her exhausted body enjoying the languor that was stealing its way into her limbs. Even the throb in her ankle dulled. “I don’t know,” she repeated. “We need to get some sleep, Boone.” Her voice had the same clear enunciation Gladys Vojtasek’s used to get when she stayed after work and shared a bottle of wine with Johnny.

  Great heavenly days, was she drunk?

  “I know.” God, she loved his voice. “Sleep tight, Lucy Goosy.”

  “You too,” she whispered. I love you.

  When she’d disconnected, she frowned over at Kelly. “What on earth is in this tea?”

  “It’s some stuff Bridget—my secretary who knows everything—gave me to help me sleep. It’s all natural.” Kelly grinned at her. “I asked Maria if it would hurt you on top of the pain meds she gave you. She said it wouldn’t, but that you might feel just the slightest bit inebriated. Appears as though she was right.”

  “No, she was wrong. I think I’m three sheets to the wind. I could probably get arrested.” Lucy finished the tea, which was most likely a mistake but it tasted really good. “Of course, maybe I should be arrested. I don’t know how I could be responsible for the fires, Kelly, but I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Tears—she didn’t know where they’d come from—dripped from her cheeks, dampening the front of her tank top.

  Kelly sat beside her on the leather sofa, her arm coming around Lucy’s slumped back. “It’s not you, Lucy. I don’t know who it is or why it is, but it’s not you.”

  As far as eloquence went, the succinct statement didn’t have much to recommend it, but the guilt that sharpened the edges of Lucy’s mind waned for the first time in what seemed like days. When she climbed into the queen-size bed in Kelly’s elegant guest room, she fell asleep so instantly she didn’t even say the prayers that had been a habit since she’d knelt beside Siobhan Dolan every night.

  She was grateful when she woke that “the slightest bit inebriated” hadn’t left her with even that much of a hangover. Kelly handed her a mug of steaming coffee. “What’s in it?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Just coffee,” Kelly promised. “I called the hospital while you were in the shower. Aunt Gert had a pretty good night, but I don’t think Sims did. Either way, Maria said she’s keeping her another night. Boone and Crockett will meet us at the house.”

  The two men were already working when they arrived, tearing scorched siding off the back of the house and arguing loudly about the proper manner for doing so. Jack loaded the debris into a wheelbarrow and transferred it to the Dumpster already in place at the edge of the property.

  “You can go inside,” Boone called from a point halfway up an extension ladder. “Power’s been turned back on—no wiring damage. Adjuster’s already been here. Tom was with him. He’ll be back soon.”

  “We’ll work inside.” Kelly exchanged nods with Lucy. “Jack, make sure those two don’t fall off those ladders, okay? Aunt Gert will blame Lucy and me if they do.”

  “And rightfully so,” Boone said.

  “You’ll have to do the telling so Aunt Gert doesn’t realize Boone was just being his usual clumsy self,” Crockett advised Jack. “I would tell her, but I took vows about lying.”

  “It seems to me, you change those vows you took to whatever is convenient at the moment,” Boone complained. “When we were working at the station while Sims was laid up, you said you took a vow not to mop bathroom floors.”

  “Believe me, sometimes there’s nothing convenient about vows.” Crockett sounded grim.

  Lucy thought she heard his sigh from twenty feet away. She smiled at the priest and stepped onto the back porch to follow Kelly inside.

  “If the coffeemaker’s intact and there’s coffee inside a sealed container, we could probably drink some,” Boone called.

  “I was going to make it,” Crockett added, “but I took a vow—ouch!” He ended on a yelp when Boone threw a handful of leaves at him. “Hey, those might have hurt,” he protested when everyone laughed. “There was no telling what he’d loaded them with. And I really did take a vow not to make coffee, way back in seminary days. Mine was so bad, they made me promise.”

  The damage, in the light of day, wasn’t as severe as they’d feared, although the mess was horrendous. Lucy started the dishwasher and the coffeemaker while Kelly swept broken glass from the pantry. She took trash bags in to clear the shelves.

  Lucy stood in the middle of the kitchen, not sure what to do next. It was as though her mind was numb. She washed the cups in the sink—although she had to scrub the sink first—preparing a tray to take outside. A scratching sound made her turn toward the sunroom, expecting Kinsey to be sitting there, asking politely to be allowed inside.

  Even before her mind registered the empty spot where the kitten always awaited entry, she remembered. And her legs nearly collapsed under her. She knew Kinsey might have survived the smoke, but it wasn’t likely. The more probable scenario was that the cat went off by herself and died.

  You’ve lost your parents, the place you grew up, everything that ever mattered to you. Shouldn’t that have been a clue? But, no, you make people who don’t belong to you into some kind of pseudo-family. And you fall in love with a silly little cat without any thought of how it would feel to lose her. You’re an idiot, Lucy Dolan.

  “I can’t do this now,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just can’t.” Moving almost blindly, she poured coffee into a thermal server.

  “It’s okay. We don’t have to. The cleaning service will take care of it.” Kelly’s voice was soothing beside her. “Let me help take this out. And we’ll stay out until you’re ready.”

  I’ll never be ready. But Lucy didn’t say the words, just nodded and picked up the tray. “Will you get the door?”

  Tom was there when they went outside, helping Jack with the mess Crockett and Boone made. His blunt features were grim. “Eli said everybody missed you at church this morning,” he said. “He told them to stay away until at least Tuesday to give Gert time to settle in.”

  Lucy set the tray on the wrought iron table. Leaves stirred, and a flock of ducks flew overhead. They sounded querulous in their traveling conversation. Apprehension, unexpected and unwelcome, prickled on the back of her neck and she shivered in response. What now?

  Crockett crossed the yard and poured himself a cup of coffee. “I don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head. “Gert’s never hurt anyone in her life. Why would someone want to damage her home, maybe even cost her her life?”

  “Maybe this time,” Tom said quietly, “we’ll get a viable answer to those questions.” He pushed the wheelbarrow to the back of the house and turned to face them, his hands hanging loose at his sides. “What do you think, Jack? Got any answers?”

  It took a moment for the meaning of the sheriff’s question to sink in, and when it did, the strength left Lucy’s legs. “I need to sit down.”

/>   It appeared they all did, and they moved to the chairs around the table. Except for Tom and Jack, who were engaged in a stare-down.

  The boy looked away first and, for a moment, Lucy thought he was going to run. But he didn’t. His shoulders, broad for a boy his age, seemed slim when they drooped inside his ragged denim jacket. She remembered that vulnerability she’d felt in him when she’d hugged him. Oh, Jack.

  “How’d you know it was me?” He maintained eye contact with the sheriff. It was probably easier than facing Gert’s family—the people who had shown him only kindness. Even as anger flickered to life within her, Lucy ached for him.

  “You’re sixteen years old and you showed up here in the middle of the night and started working without being asked. There was a first report to the fire department—before Lucy called—made by someone with a young, panicky voice.” Tom held something up. “We know where that call came from, and then we found this in the alley behind Gert’s house earlier today.” He tossed the wallet to the boy. “I reckon you wanted to get caught, didn’t you, son?”

  “That’s just crazy. Why would I want to get caught?” But it was as though Jack was going through the motions of being a tough guy. He seemed tired more than scared, resigned rather than angry. And though he still looked sixteen in his frayed jacket and soot-streaked jeans, his eyes were much older. Older and sadder, surrounded by dark circles of what could have been either stress or fatigue. Or both.

  “Jack.” It was Crockett’s voice, deep and gentle. “Maybe you should tell us what’s going on.”

  The boy spoke directly to Kelly, his voice strained. “It was you. You ruined our family. My dad’s in jail, my mom’s working all the time, and my little brothers are living with people who don’t really know them—who won’t even let them have a nightlight. And they’re still little. Too little to…” He swallowed hard, his eyes shiny with sudden moisture. “I wanted you to know how it felt.”

  Kelly, her face drained of color, shook her head in confusion. “But it wasn’t me you hurt. It was Lucy. And Gert.”

  “But it was people you cared about, and that hurts worse than if it was you. I’d be okay, but my little brothers aren’t. They’re scared and lonesome and they think they must have done something bad to make things turn out the way they have.”

  Lucy met Boone’s and Kelly’s eyes in turn, understanding that they’d all felt that way about different circumstances in their lives. Understanding that whether he wanted to admit it or not, Jack thought he’d done something bad, too. Even before he did.

  Kelly’s face was ravaged. “I still don’t get it,” she said raggedly. “Jack, I was doing my job. You know that. I did the best I could, really I did.”

  “Maybe you did.” Jack stopped to take a breath and regain control of his voice. “But my brothers are still in a foster home and my mom’s still working double shifts. You’re still living in that fancy place by the lake and we’re losing ours. Do you know how long and how hard my folks worked for that little piece-of-shit house? How hard I worked to help Mom keep it so they could start over when he gets out of jail? Do you have any freakin’ idea? And it’s all been for nothing.”

  “I couldn’t make your dad not guilty.” Kelly spoke quietly, hopelessly. Tears streaked down her cheeks. “You shouldn’t have had to grow up so fast. I’d have given so much to keep it from happening, but I couldn’t, Jack. I couldn’t.”

  His shoulders sagged even further in the jacket. “I know. In my head I know it. I always knew it. But I still wanted you to feel as bad as I did. As bad as my mom does.”

  “Lucy and I weren’t even friends,” Kelly said. “I was mad at her.”

  “I know, but Boone liked her, and Boone’s your brother. Mrs. Taylor liked her and you love Mrs. Taylor.” Jack covered his face with his hands for a painful space in time. When he took his hands away, his eyes were tearwashed and dark. And still much older than sixteen. “It was the long way around, but I found stories about Lucy on the internet after she got here. I read about the fire in Richmond and I knew if I went through her, I could get to you. She didn’t start the fire, but she was scared of it. She won’t light candles or anything. Even birthday cakes make her antsy. She had me set buckets of water in the tearoom when there were birthday parties.”

  She had. She’d decorated the buckets and set weighted champagne bottles in them, but they’d been full of water. Jack had rolled his eyes, but he’d never argued with her about setting them out.

  “It was easy to start the first trash fire behind Jenny’s,” Jack continued doggedly, once again raising his gaze to Tom’s impassive face. “I didn’t plan the one at the library, but Kelly and Lucy were both there that morning, so I lit it anyway.” The tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, but he didn’t wipe them away.

  Lucy felt her heart break, the anger slipping away as quickly and quietly as it had come. Boone scooted closer and his arm came around her. She longed to bury her face in his shoulder and wish away the story they’d just heard.

  “What about Stan Morgan’s garage?” Tom asked.

  “I didn’t—”

  “You don’t have to answer that,” Kelly interrupted, her voice so crisp everyone started at the sound of it. Her face was still pale and tear-streaked, her hand shaky when she raised it to forestall Jack’s reply. “You’re not under arrest, nor are you in the official presence of counsel.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m done. I didn’t start Mr. Morgan’s fire. I never meant—” He stopped, tears robbing him of his voice. “No one was ever supposed to get hurt. I didn’t want anything to be damaged. Even Lucy’s van—I just meant to have a bunch of smoke come out from under the hood. I read how to do that but the instructions were wrong.”

  “Jack—the house.” Tom pointed at the scorched siding and the ash and cinders they’d raked into piles away from the foundation. “Does that look to you like nothing was damaged?”

  “I know.” Jack flung his arm out as though to encompass the yard and the back of the house. “I didn’t aim for it to burn, just the leaves. Most of them were in bags back there by the alley, so I thought it would be like the trash fire, only somehow it spread and the door to the sunroom was on fire before I knew what was happening. I called the fire department, but the smoke came up faster than I expected. When Kelly and Lucy came out and the fire trucks were coming, I thought it was going to be all right.”

  “All right?” Tom’s voice was quiet, but anger was deep and deadly within it. “Son, Gert was in there. Lucy went in after her. They could have died.”

  “I didn’t know Mrs. Taylor was here. Honest to God. Her car was gone and I figured she was with Mr. Sims. She stays over there sometimes.” Anguish broke through and the tears came faster, making wet, heartbreaking trails on the boy’s thin face. “She’s going to be all right, isn’t she? Isn’t she? I wouldn’t hurt her for anything. Oh, God. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t.”

  Lucy exchanged glances with Kelly and saw the same emotion in the other woman’s face that she felt. They’d hugged him just thirty-some hours before and wanted to protect him from all harm. There was no denying the fact that they still did.

  Kelly pulled a tissue out of her pocket and gave it to him. She stroked a hand through his hair and he didn’t pull away.

  “She’ll be all right.” Boone held Lucy’s hand. “Lucy’s ankle will heal. She’ll probably get over losing Kinsey, too, sometime. But how do you get over it, Jack? What do you do next? Torch Kelly’s condo? Life’s a bitch, son. It’s a pain-in-the-ass-sure-as-the-world-gonna-kill-you bitch. But you can’t survive on the backs of other people. You just can’t do it.”

  “Like I said, I’m done. I promise. I promise. I’ll make it one of those vows like Father Noah has—only for real.” He sat down as though his legs wouldn’t hold him anymore, wiping his face with the already soggy tissue. “My dad said he got into something and he didn’t know how to get out. I didn’t believe him. I was—God, I was so mad at what he did to
our family. If he’d said something, you know, I would have helped. I could have quit school and worked. But now I know how it can happen, that you know what you’re doing is wrong and someone could get hurt, and you never intend to do it again.”

  He got up, pacing a short, agitated path. “But then something else comes up, like when they took my little brothers and they didn’t want to go. They were crying and promising they’d behave and begging me to come and get them. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t.” His voice broke all the way then, and he buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking with agonized sobs.

  Crockett went to him, but Jack avoided the priest’s touch, shaking his head. He accepted the new tissue Lucy offered with a nod of thanks, then stepped away long enough to blow his nose. The gaze he turned toward Kelly was dark with torment and weariness. “Last night, when you and Lucy came to the game and then stood in the parking lot afterward, it was like having a family again. It was that way today too, when we were raking out here and throwing leaves and even when you guys threw me into them…but then I went home and there wasn’t anybody. My mom was working and things are packed up because we have to move. My brothers’ foster parents won’t even let me see them. There’s a part of me that understands it’s not really your fault, Kelly, but most of me is still mad.”

  He then met their eyes in turn. “I’ll pay for the damages. It might take a while, but I can do it. I swear I can.” He turned to Tom, straightening. “I’m ready to go wherever I have to. Can you not call my mom till later this afternoon? She’s sleeping now.”

  Boone’s hand tightened on Lucy’s fingers so much she tried to pull away. He loosened his grip, but didn’t let her go.

  “Wait.” Four voices spoke at once.

  “No charges have been filed, Tom,” Lucy said, “and I don’t think any of us want to file any. Can’t you just let him go home?”

  “It’s not that easy. Arson’s a felony.”