by LENA DIAZ,
Faded newsprint preserved behind plastic showed the article’s title in big, bold letters.
Sorority House Fire Kills Three.
Below the headline was a group of six young sorority sisters from the house, clinging to each other in their nightgowns, tears running down their soot-streaked faces. Except one. Molly Andrews. She wasn’t crying. She was smiling for the camera as the flames eerily reflected in her eyes and firemen struggled to bring the fire under control.
The story below the photograph was only two short paragraphs. Not much to tell in the early stages of the investigation. It simply said that the women pictured were the lucky survivors of the early morning house fire and that it was believed to have started in the kitchen. Molly Andrews of Chattanooga, Tennessee, mentioned that Sarah Engler—one of the girls who’d perished—had a habit of leaving the gas stove turned on. Molly openly wondered whether a dish towel may have been too close to the stove and caught on fire. Molly Andrews was a slightly younger version of the woman in the wedding picture in this same album. But there was no question that she was Peyton’s mom, even though her mother’s maiden name was supposed to be Tate and she was from Nashville, not Chattanooga.
Or so Brian and Peyton had been told. Yet another lie in a growing list of them.
She set the album aside and slid one of the stacks of bills toward herself. This was a stack that her father had also kept hidden in a box in the attic, and added even more details to her mother’s story that she’d never known. The therapist her mother had been seeing for years wasn’t a marriage counselor after all. He was a doctor who specialized in the treatment of addictive disorders, rage issues and impulse control problems. Exactly the kind of doctor who’d treated Brian when he’d gotten in trouble with the law and was forced to go to therapy.
But those weren’t the only doctors her mother had been seeing.
A month before the car accident, she’d been diagnosed with stage four metastatic cancer, with tumors in her liver and her brain. Based on the doctor’s notes in one of the folders that Peyton had found, her parents had decided not to take extraordinary measures. No chemotherapy. No radiation. Just pills to help control her mother’s pain.
Oh, Mom. Why didn’t you or Dad tell me? I would have been there for both of you. That’s what families do.
Except, apparently, hers.
Once again, her parents had chosen to keep secrets from their children. But even that wasn’t the final bombshell that had exploded in Peyton’s life these past few days. There was one more box in the attic. A box of old-fashioned handwritten letters, possibly because the sender had given up on getting any replies to their electronic messages. All of the letters were neatly folded in their original envelopes. And all of them had been sent during that first year after Brian’s arrest for the barn fire.
Half of them had been mailed to the Sterling home in Gatlinburg and the post office had forwarded them. The sender must have figured out their new address in Memphis after that, because the rest of them had been mailed directly here. But her father, claiming he wanted to protect the family from ugly, harassing letters people often sent about Brian as his trial loomed, had all of the family’s mail forwarded to a post office box. Peyton had never seen any of these letters before.
Letters sent to her. By Colin McKenzie.
She picked up the phone again. It was time to face the past, to shine the light of truth on her family’s secrets. She couldn’t put the shame off any longer. Because somewhere out there were three families who’d lost their beloved daughters or sisters in a sorority house fire that Peyton’s internet search had discovered was ruled accidental. Peyton didn’t believe that for a second. And those families deserved to know the truth.
Colin answered on the first ring. “Peyton? Is everything okay?”
She smiled. His first words were concern about her. Why couldn’t everyone be that decent, that wonderful? The world would be such a better place.
“Hi, Colin. No, unfortunately, everything is not okay. I need to see you. We need to talk. In person.”
“Where are you? I’ll get there as fast as I can.”
“Still in Memphis, my dad’s house. I’ll come to you. The drive will help clear my mind. But obviously it’s going to be late when I get there. Is that okay? Have you gone back to work yet? I don’t want you showing up at the office unable to keep your eyes open because of me. I could stay at my house—”
“No. Don’t. I asked Chief Landry to post someone on your property to keep an eye on things while you were gone. It would be better if you come here.”
So he could keep her safe, no doubt. From her own brother. A tear slid down her cheek. She hadn’t realized that she had any tears left. “Okay. Thanks. I’ll go directly to your place.”
“The curiosity and worry is going to eat me alive during your six-hour drive. Can you at least give me a hint what this is about? Maybe just the headlines?”
The picture of the sorority fire newspaper clipping flashed in her mind. “Headlines,” she whispered brokenly. “Funny you would say that.”
“Peyton?”
“Okay. The headlines. I know I’ve been a broken record over the years, claiming my brother didn’t start the barn fire. Over the past few weeks, I’d pretty much decided I was wrong, that you and everyone else are right, in spite of what he said at the school, that I told you about over the phone on my drive here. But part of what he told me might be true. I’ve got a new theory about who started that fire. I believe this person probably started a lot of fires over the years, one in particular with deadly consequences.”
He hesitated. “Do you have a name?”
“Molly Andrews of Chattanooga, also known as Molly Tate, aka Molly Sterling. My mother.”
Chapter Seventeen
Colin set the photo album on top of the piles of papers that Peyton had spread out on his coffee table. She sat across from him on the other couch, her hands clasped together so hard that her knuckles had gone white. He waved to the newspaper clipping with its headline about the sorority house fire.
“I understand why that newspaper article would alarm you, especially considering everything that you’ve discovered and Brian’s conviction. But while it raises suspicions, none of it is evidence of arson.”
She motioned toward the album. “I didn’t think cops—or marshals—believed in coincidences. That sorority fire is an awfully big one.”
“Because your mom survived a fire as a young woman and her son was later convicted of arson?”
She nodded.
“Honestly, it doesn’t raise any eyebrows for me, given that your mom doesn’t have a criminal record. After our earlier phone call, I checked. Under all three names. The fire at her college is the only mention of her that I could find in any law-enforcement databases.”
“Okay, well, how about the therapist she was seeing? Her and Dad lied about it, pretended it was marriage counseling.” She spread out some of the papers, then extracted the stack of bills from the doctor and held them up. “I looked this guy up online. He’s testified as an expert in two arson cases.” She tossed the bills back onto the coffee table. “And there are other things—my mom’s fascination with candles. She was always buying new scents. We always had lit candles in our house. And the fireplace. Even in the summer she’d have a fire going. Looking back, that seems like an unhealthy fascination with fire to me. And don’t you dare start talking about how much you loved the s’mores she used to cook in the fireplace. You have to admit it’s odd.”
“Okay. I won’t mention that I absolutely loved coming over to your house for s’mores in the summer.”
She frowned.
“Or that my mom loves candles, too.”
“Colin—”
“And that the vanilla-scented candles your mom was so fond of have a special place in my childhood memories. Your house always smelled gre
at.”
She spread her hands out. “Why are you fighting me on this?”
“I’m not fighting you. I’m saying that if you look at each thing by itself, it loses the sinister significance that you’re attaching to it. If you want me to investigate your mom, I absolutely will. But are you sure you want that? As soon as anyone hears even a whiff of this, rumors will start running rampant. You won’t be able to put that cat back in the bag. Your mother’s reputation will be forever tarnished.”
Rubbing her hands against her jeans, she seemed to consider everything, then nodded. “Yes. I want you to start an investigation on her. I understand the risks. But it’s the right thing to do.”
“Because you believe it could prove that Brian didn’t start the barn fire?”
“No. I mean, it might. But that’s not why I want you to look into this. It no longer matters whether he was innocent back then. He’s changed. Maybe prison changed him or he fooled me all along and I’m only now seeing it. I’m telling you, Colin. He scared me at the high school. And his hate for you knows no bounds. He tried to kill you once already, and he’ll try again if he’s not caught. As far as I’m concerned, he needs to go back to prison for a very long time to keep everyone else safe. So, no, none of this is for him. It’s for the families of those sorority girls. If that sorority fire wasn’t an accident, if my mom was to blame, they deserve to know.”
He shook his head in wonder. “I hope you can let go of all the guilt you carry around someday. Because you have a really good heart. You’re a good person, Peyton. The very best.”
She blinked several times, then pressed her fingers against her eyes. “You’d better stop. You’re going to get me crying again. And I am so sick of crying.” She dropped her hands and offered him a watery smile. “So you’ll do it? You’ll investigate?”
“I will. I’ll talk to my boss, see if he’ll make it official. That will make it easier to get the information I’ll need, lend the investigation more authority with witnesses. Arson that causes deaths comes under federal purview. I should be able to take it on.”
“Thank you. I really appreciate it.”
“You bet. But there’s one more thing I want to put out there, just in case it changes your mind. Statistics.”
“Statistics?”
“On arson. Most arson is done for profit. With the barn fire, there was no insurance. There weren’t any highway projects or real estate developments coming through that wanted the property and were trying to intimidate an owner who refused to sell. No matter who set the fire, profit wasn’t the motive.”
“Agreed. That makes sense.”
“Another primary motive is to hide another crime, like to cover up a murder. Fire destroys evidence. In this case, no one was killed—”
“Thanks to you.”
He shrugged. “The kids I pulled out of there were just that, high school kids like you and me. They snuck in for a make-out session. They didn’t have any enemies that the investigation could find. So, again, covering up a crime doesn’t seem like the reason behind the fire either. Not from any evidence that I’ve seen. That pretty much leaves us the psychological reasons, which is what was presented at Brian’s trial. The prosecution argued that he was a firebug, that starting fires for him was a compulsion, an impulse control problem.”
“Impulse control is one of the specialties of the doctor who treated my mom.”
“That’s also a specialty of the doctor who treated Brian when your dad made a deal to keep him from being charged as a juvenile.”
“The fires Chief Landry mentioned?”
He nodded.
She sat back, rubbing her arms as if to ward off a chill. “I knew he’d gotten in trouble, of course. But I never knew about those fires, and just how much trouble, until the chief mentioned it. I thought all this time that Brian was getting help for his anger issues, learning to channel his energy in more constructive ways. I had no idea it was this bad. Chalk that up to one more lie my parents told me.”
“I imagine they were trying to protect you. You were young, with your whole life ahead of you. Maybe they wanted you to be happy and not be dragged down by all the worry they were going through.”
“Maybe. It’s dragging me down now, that’s for sure.”
“Then I’ll get right to the point. Thrill-seekers, pyromaniacs, are extremely rare in the world of arson. Which makes having two in one family more unlikely than likely. But it’s the last statistic that’s the most telling. Over ninety percent of arsonists are white males. The episodes are often driven by anger. And intelligence is generally lower than your average person. Not always, but the majority of the time. It seems to have to do with their ability to reason and think through the effects of their crimes. The lower intelligence contributes to their lack of impulse control. Be honest. Does that sound like your mother or your brother?”
She was quiet for a moment, then nodded. “Mom was more on an even keel, really calm—unless she was fighting with Dad. Then again, he was the one doing most of the yelling. Yeah, it sounds like Brian.”
He rested his forearms on his thighs and clasped his hands together. “It’s getting pretty late. I know you must be tired. Do you want to stop?”
She stifled a yawn, then smiled. “That was your fault, for reminding me how tired I am. But, no. If there’s more that you can tell me, I want to hear it. If you can prove to me that my mom’s innocent, I’ll sleep a lot better tonight.”
“I don’t know that I can definitely prove she’s innocent. But we can talk about the fire. We never have before. You sure you want me to go on?”
“I’m sure. But—” she motioned toward his hands “—I don’t know that it’s fair to ask you to do that after everything you suffered because of that night.”
“It was a long time ago. I’m more than willing to discuss what happened in light of your questions about your mom. The night of the barn fire, she was a chaperone right? In the dance hall?”
“Yes. I think there were seven or eight chaperones. The dance hall was huge. Half the senior class was there. No one was supposed to leave the building, but of course a lot of people snuck out here and there. The setting was gorgeous, lots of paths through the woods, waterfalls and party lights throughout, strung on pergolas and buildings. A great place for couples.”
He smiled at the memory. “It was beautiful. So were you. I seem to remember arriving late, getting a couple of dances, then sneaking you outside to steal some kisses by a waterfall.”
She shook her head, but a smile played about her lips. “You were always stealing kisses by waterfalls. One of our favorite waterfalls was on the other side of the mountain from this place. I can’t remember a more beautiful view in all of the Smokies.”
Her smile turned sad and he understood why. They’d made a lot of promises when they were young. One of them was to buy that land one day, build their dream house and make babies beside that waterfall.
None of those promises had been kept.
“But you weren’t supposed to be at the dance at all,” she said.
“Our family trip out of town. Dad cut it short because of something that came up on one of his cases. As soon as we got home, I went to the dance looking for you.”
“Right,” she said, staring off as if picturing it in her head. “After the waterfall, we were heading back when one of my friends ran up to us, all excited about some guy asking her out. She wanted to tell me about it, so I promised I’d meet you back in the dance hall in a few minutes.” She cleared her throat. “But that didn’t happen. The next time I saw you, you were on a stretcher being taken into an ambulance. And my mother was yelling at me to come with her, that we had to go with Brian. The police were arresting him and she wanted us to follow him to the police station.” Her haunted eyes met his. “I should have told her no. I’m so sorry, Colin. I made so many mistakes.”
&nb
sp; There was a lot they needed to discuss, one day, to clear the air between them. Their past, everything that had happened after the fire, was the elephant in the room that they’d never talked about. But late at night when they were both tired wasn’t the time for that conversation.
“Let’s get back to your mom. We were trying to see if she had an opportunity to start the fire.”
She twisted her hands together. “Right. I’m guessing most of us could have gone to the barn during the dance if we’d wanted to. How do I prove whether my mom did or didn’t go down there?”
He drummed his knuckles on his thigh, considering. “There’s only one way I can think of that might prove where your mother was at the time of the fire. But you’re not going to like it.”
“Try me.”
“Tell you what. I’m not even sure it’s an option. Let me look into it first and see if I can work it out.”
“Ah. One of those supersecret US Marshal types of things.” She hid another yawn behind her hand. “If I weren’t so tired, I’d argue with you to tell me right now. But honestly, even my curiosity isn’t strong enough to keep me awake much longer.” She stood and adjusted her shirt, which had ridden up around her hips. “Aren’t you going to bed too?”
“You go ahead. I’ll get the lights, have a quick look around to make sure things are secure.”
She glanced at the windows behind him. “Oh. Okay. Well, good night, then.” She started toward him, then stopped, looking uncertain. “Can I hug you? Your bruises—”
“Are pretty much gone. I’d hug you anyway.” He stood and pulled her into his arms. It felt so good to hold her, especially since she’d been gone for over a week and he’d really never expected her to come back. He finally let her go only because he didn’t trust himself to hold her any longer without kissing her. And kissing her would leave him aching for so much more.