by Kelli Kimble
“This garage . . . it is on your property, correct?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
He lifted the garage door and peered inside. “Looks like the damage to this structure is isolated to the exterior. Tessa says the insurance company stated the case as a total loss?”
“That sounds right, sir,” I said.
He poked at some things in the corner with his pen. “Someone do some painting lately?”
My cheeks warmed. “Yes.”
“Where?”
“The side of the house.”
“Just one side? That’s peculiar.”
“Someone had . . . defaced it. My father painted over the words.”
Mr. McKinney clucked his tongue and made a few notes.
“I don’t see anything else out of the ordinary here.” He closed the door and resumed inspecting the foundation. He removed several loose bricks and set them aside, then cut some branches from a tree in the backyard that had been scorched black. He asked Kal to put them in the trunk of his car.
“Your parents were home when this happened. Where were you?”
“I was at work,” I said. “I do odd jobs on a farm outside town.”
“Did you have a means of transportation with you?”
“No, sir. My boss picked me up to go to work and he was going to bring me home. My parents came to his house to find me after it happened.”
“Was there any news coverage of the fire? On television or in the paper?”
“The local paper ran an article the day after the fire. It hinted that they thought one of my parents set the fire.”
“Really. That’s interesting,” he said. He was on his hands and knees, using his ink pen to poke at a pane of glass from one of the cellar windows that had somehow managed not to break.
“Hey! What on God’s green earth do you think you’re doing!” Sheriff Stone yelled from inside his car on the street. He threw the car into park and jumped out, stalking towards us with his hand on his holstered gun. “This is a crime scene. You can’t be here.”
“Actually, I can,” Mr. McKinney said, straightening. “The governor provides me with carte blanche access to all fire crime scenes in the state. This was a fire, correct?” He pulled a card from his pocket and handed it to the sheriff. “You can call the governor’s office to confirm if you like. We’ll wait.”
The sheriff took the card, but he didn’t look at it. He tore it in half and threw it into the depths of the foundation. The pieces fluttered out of sight. “Like hell, you will. I don’t care who you are, or why you’re here. You’ll vacate these premises right this minute, or I’ll arrest you for trespassing.”
Tessa came over. “We don’t want to upset the sheriff, Mr. McKinney. Let’s go.”
“Of course,” Mr. McKinney said.
The sheriff followed us as we went out to the sidewalk and to our respective cars. As Mr. McKinney walked by Tessa to cross the street, he leaned close to her.
“I’ll call you with my findings.”
I was just getting into the car when a hand wrapped around my upper arm and jerked me away. “I want to talk to you, missy.” It was the sheriff, bending low and hissing into my ear. The spit in his mouth clicked as his tongue moved. It made me shudder.
He dragged me away from the car and back towards the foundation.
“I know you think you got away with what you did to Gary. But you’re not going to get away from this.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “I wasn’t even here when the fire started.”
“Oh, I know. You were off working for your little foreigner friend. You outsiders stick together, right? But your father will pay. And by extension, you.”
“My father didn’t do anything, either.”
The sheriff snickered. “Didn’t he, now.”
“You can’t put him in jail for doing nothing.”
“I’ve already made sure that he’ll go to jail for a long, long time.” His hold on my arm tightened as he said it. I winced and he made a face of mock sympathy. “Oh, am I hurting the spot where you were bruised? You haven’t healed yet?”
“It was you,” I said. The truth seemed to beam into my brain from above. Sheriff Stone had planted whatever evidence had been found at Daddy’s office.
I had a brief view of the sheriff’s eyeballs from within the folds surrounding his eyes, and then his mouth pulled to the side in a slow grin. The kind of grin you make when you think you’ve won. “See if you can ever prove it,” he said. He let go of my arm. I felt like a rabbit being hunted. I backed away and turned to run back to the car. I jerked the door open and climbed in.
“Take me home, please,” I said, panting.
All eyes turned to me. “Are you all right?” Tessa asked.
“Just drive.” I swallowed back the lump of fear and anger and disbelief. “Please.”
Tessa started the car, and we drove away. The sheriff stood on what used to be my lawn, arms crossed, watching us go.
Chapter 17
Everyone kept their distance from me when we returned. Jacob and I were sitting in the living room, working on the theme that Tessa assigned us in the car on the way back. Mother and Tessa were in the kitchen, making lunch.
“Did something happen at the house?” Mother asked her quietly. The kitchen door was open, and I saw her looking at me from the corner of my eye. I kept my gaze intently on my paper.
“Sheriff Stone came and chased us off. He had words with Iris. I don’t know what he said. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it.”
“That man is the devil himself,” Mother said. “I wish we’d never come to Salvation.”
“Everything will work out,” Tessa said. “You have to believe that.”
“Why would I believe that? Nobody’s looking out for us.”
“Mr. Anu is.”
“I appreciate everything he’s done for us — still doing for us. But we can’t count on him forever.”
“I think you’d be surprised.”
I looked up. Jacob was staring at me. “She doesn’t know about Mr. Anu,” I whispered.
“Got it.”
He went into the kitchen. “Hey, Tessa. About this essay. Does it have to be about criminology?”
“Excuse me, I’ll let you two talk,” Mother said. She came out of the kitchen and put a hand on my shoulder. “Tessa says you saw Sheriff Stone at the house, and that he chased you off. Are you all right?”
I met her eyes. Mother loved me. I knew that. But would she draw the same conclusions from what Sheriff Stone had said? Would she hear the admission in his words? I couldn’t be sure. I nodded.
“I’m okay. He just wanted to rattle me, is all.”
“That man. He shouldn’t be able to treat people the way he does.”
The telephone rang, and Mother went to Mr. Anu’s den to answer. Jacob drifted back from the kitchen. “She won’t tell,” he said.
He sat on the sofa beside me. His leg touched mine. The sensation of something liquid inside me returned.
“The sheriff,” I said.
“Yes?” He leaned even closer.
“You want to go for a walk?”
He glanced towards the kitchen. Tessa was still in there, banging dishes around as she set the table.
“She’s busy. She won’t notice we’re gone,” I said.
“Okay.” We snuck out the front door and around the other side of the house. We set off on a path worn by farm equipment towards one of Mr. Anu’s farther fields.
Jacob waited for me to restart the conversation. When I was sure we were clear of any Anubian ears at the house, I continued. “Sheriff Stone planted the evidence against my father,” I said.
“Wow.”
“I know. I can’t believe it. I knew he had it in for me, but this is just . . . it’s evil.”
Jacob stuffed his hands in his pockets. “What makes you think he did it?”
I repeated what the sheriff had said. Jacob grabbed my hand and st
opped walking. It was like I’d touched a bare electrical wire. My heart started beating in my throat. But he didn’t seem to notice.
“Are you sure? You’re sure that he admitted it?”
I closed my eyes and nodded. When I opened them, he was staring at my mouth.
“Iris —”
“Yes?” He hadn’t let go of my hand. My palm was starting to sweat. Please, don’t let him notice. The world was tipping, causing me to feel like I was moving closer to him. Was he going to kiss me? I bit my lip. But no, neither of us had moved. Maybe I had something in my teeth? I brushed at my mouth with my free hand, and it broke his gaze. He dropped my hand and turned away.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
Kiss you, dummy.
“About what?”
“Sheriff Stone.”
I sighed. The moment was probably imagined and definitely gone. “I don’t know. It’s not like I can prove what he said. I’m the only witness.”
“Are you? What if someone saw him planting stuff at your dad’s office?”
“But everyone in town sides with him.”
“Do they? I don’t.”
“That’s sweet, but you aren’t even a resident. You’re from Shelby.”
It felt hopeless, and I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I changed the subject.
“What are you thinking about Mr. Anu?” I asked.
“What about him?”
“Earlier, when I told you my parents don't know. You went and stopped Tessa from talking about it. Seems a little bit like you’re trying to protect him. Is that a sign of belief?”
He laughed, but then trailed off. “He showed me a book.”
“From the box? With the jackal on the top?”
“Yeah.”
“He wouldn’t let me touch it,” I said. “I wanted to see what else it said.”
“Why? Can you read hieroglyphs?” he asked, laughing.
“No. But he showed me a picture in the book. He said it was me.”
He scratched the back of his neck and took a few steps away.
“He showed me that, too,” he said.
“It’s a pretty generic drawing. It could be Tessa, for all the detail in it.”
“I know the cartouche spelled your name.” He turned around. “Tessa taught me the alphabet. I can read some of what it says. He showed me another page, too. A page with two people on it. Me . . .” He pointed at himself. “And you.” He pointed at me.
I gave a half-hearted laugh. “Sure.”
“No. I saw it, Iris.”
“But Mr. Anu said that he thought that it referred to Kal. How could he confuse you?”
“Because it didn’t say my name. It had something else. Something that I know makes it me.”
I took a step closer to him. “Is it something bad?”
“It’s a scar. He lifted his shirtsleeve, revealing a jagged raised white line down his bicep. “When I was small, I was climbing a tree and fell. I broke my arm and the bone . . . it came out of my skin. I needed 23 stitches. The page showed me standing beside you, with my shirt off. The scar was there, and the number 23 was beside it.”
I wanted to touch the scar. But then I realized I was staring at his arm. I forced myself to look him in the eye.
“Um, and what did you think of that?”
“Iris. It was you and me. In a book that’s older than George Washington and Abe Lincoln combined.”
“I know,” I said.
“How is that even possible?”
“Have you considered that it’s possible because it’s the truth?”
“I thought you didn’t believe in the soulmate thing.”
“Do I have to believe in soulmates to believe that Anu’s book predicted we would know each other?”
“Mr. Anu’s book says that we’ll marry and have kids. It says that we’re going to help him with some kind of revolution. Didn’t he show you those things?”
My mouth went dry. “He told you about the future?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Whenever I ask him what’s going to happen, he refuses to tell me anything.”
He shrugged. “He didn’t tell me a lot.”
“But he told you we’d have kids? How many? Are they boys or girls?”
“Look, I don’t care what his book says. Don’t you want to meet a boy and be romanced, courted, and fall in love and be proposed to and all that?”
“Well, yeah, but —”
“Because I don’t want some stupid old book to tell me who to marry.”
“We don’t have to get married,” I said. “We’re not even in love yet.”
He stood very still. Without warning, he put a hand on each of my cheeks and pulled my mouth to his.
There was no more wind in the trees. Bugs stopped buzzing. Birds weren’t calling. There was only me and Jacob. My eyes closed and my arms slid around his neck.
He pulled away and twined his fingers into my hair. “Iris.”
I opened my eyes. He leaned in and made feather-soft kisses along my cheek.
“I knew from the moment I saw you,” he said. “I didn’t need a book to tell me I belong to you. I just knew. Didn’t you?”
“I don’t understand,” I said. My knees felt like one of Mother’s gelatin salads. “You belong to me?”
“And you belong to me.” His lips were close to my ear. Puffs of air from his words tickled my ear, sending a tremble down my spine. His arms tightened possessively. “Can’t you feel that . . . thing in your gut that tells you we’re meant for each other?”
“I do feel it,” I said. “But I thought you didn’t.”
“I’ll believe that the Earth is flat, and the moon is made of green cheese if it means we’ll be together,” he said. “I’ll do whatever he asks. Whatever you ask.”
“But do you believe?”
He cupped his hands around my cheeks and stared into my eyes. They flicked back and forth between my eyes. “Do you? Honestly?”
“Yes.”
“Then I do, too.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” He kissed me again, and any words I could have thought to say flew from my head.
* * *
We agreed that it would be best for everyone if we concealed how we felt about each other for now. We entered the house through the kitchen. Mother was there, cleaning up the lunch dishes.
“Where have you two been? You missed lunch.”
“We took a break from schoolwork, is all,” I said. “We lost track of time.”
She raised an eyebrow at me. She lifted a dish covered in suds out of the dishwater and rinsed it. “Tessa went to do some research. Could you?” She tipped her head at the dishes.
“Yes, ma’am.” I began drying the dishes in the draining rack.
“I’m just going to finish up my assignment,” Jacob said. He slipped from the kitchen.
“You two have a lot in common,” Mother said. “He seems like a nice boy.”
“I suppose,” I said. I finished rinsing the dishes she’d already washed and started drying the ones in the rack.
“Iris Hond. Don’t you try to pretend like you don’t have feelings for that boy. It couldn’t be more obvious. Your eyes follow him wherever he goes.”
“Mother,” I said. I could feel my neck and cheeks heating up.
“And why not? He’s as handsome as they come. And smart, too.”
I didn’t answer.
“Sweetheart. Is something wrong?”
I sighed. I needed to change the subject. “What about Daddy?”
She shook her head. “I’m hopeful Tessa’s friend will have something to help us.”
“What if he doesn’t?” Sheriff Stone’s face floated into my mind’s eye.
“We’ll have to deal with that when it comes.”
“I’m sorry about all of this, Mother. We should leave Salvation and make a start somewhere else.”
“No.” She yanked off the rubber gloves and flung them onto the countertop. “We’ll not be chased from our home by a bunch of . . . ignorant Neanderthals. We have as much right to be here as anyone else. And none of them had the right to push themselves on you.” She took the plate I was drying and stacked it in the cupboard. It clattered into place, causing me to flinch.
“I don’t know how or why. But I’m certain the fire is connected to that boy. All of the terrible things that have happened started after his attack.” She whirled towards me. “It’s an abomination. And your father isn’t going to take the blame, even if the alternative is for me to take the blame. I swear it.”
“No,” I said. “You can’t do that.”
“I can and I will. You need your father to take care of you. I’m the expendable parent.”
The telephone rang in the den. Mother’s hand drifted to her apron string. “Do you think that could be Tessa’s friend?”
She went to the den and I followed. Tessa had reached the telephone already and was speaking. Jacob hovered off to the side.
“Yes, hello, McKinney. Thank you so much for meeting me today. I really appreciate it. Did you discover anything?”
She made vague sounds of understanding. Then she started making notes on a pad of paper by the phone.
“How did you get that?” she asked. She laughed. “Clever. Hey, do you really have a pass from the governor?” She laughed again. “You haven’t changed a bit, McKinney. We should catch up sometime. Say hello to Serena.”
She hung up the phone and held up a hand in a stopping motion, like a policeman directing traffic. “Okay, I don’t want you to be hopeful. He wasn’t able to get a lot.”
“But he got something?”
“Yes. He confirmed that an accelerant was used. That means it had to be arson. But he also found that there’s a problem with the police evidence.”
“What kind of problem?” mother asked.
“He says there were painting items in your garage. A can of paint, a drop cloth, some brushes, turpentine. But the evidence that the sheriff claims to have found was also turpentine.”