House on Fire

by Bonnie Kistler

  “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want. I know it must have been awful.”

  “No, I—I mean about—Chrissy.”

  “Oh.” Now she didn’t know what to say. It was an accident. It was nobody’s fault. It was a terrible loss for all of them, Kip as much as anyone. More than anyone, perhaps, except for Leigh herself. He never meant to hurt her. He never would. “It was an accident,” she said finally, out loud.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Shh.” She reached out and brushed his hair off his forehead. For a moment he didn’t move, then his breath trembled out of him and he rolled up against her and hid his face against the folds of her robe.

  “Kip, I’m here. You can tell me.”

  When he finally spoke, his words came out in a muffled choke. “It was a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “What?”

  “The bail. We can’t afford that.”

  “You let us worry about that.” She wondered how Peter had managed it.

  “We can’t afford Shelby either, and all these expert witnesses she’s talking about.”

  “You don’t need to worry about that either. You don’t need to worry about anything, okay? We’re all here for you, you know that, right? Your dad and mom and me. Even Gary.”

  “The Gang of Four,” he mumbled. That was the name he coined for his aggregated parents and stepparents. Imagine, she thought, a thirteen-year-old plucking a term out of Chinese history to describe his newly reconstituted family. He was always something special, this boy.

  “That’s right.” She put her arms around him. “The whole Gang of Four.”

  By the time Peter got home, she was dressed and waiting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. Shepherd burst inside first, and she gave him a quick pat as she rose and went to Peter. He pulled her close and nuzzled her hair, and when she turned her face up, he kissed her, gently.

  She searched his face as they parted. He looked exhausted, and for the first time she realized: all those hours and days she was sleeping, he probably wasn’t. The toll showed in the sags under his eyes, but his mouth was smiling as he held her back in the circle of his arms. “It’s good to see you up,” he said.

  “Peter, the bail—”

  “Taken care of.”

  “But the collateral—”

  “Rose Lane.”

  “Oh, no.” That was supposed to be his next big payday; he’d been counting on it for months.

  “It’s fine,” he said and kissed her again.

  She knew to let it go. “Are you hungry? I could fix something.”

  “Let’s just forage. We must have enough leftovers to feed an army.”

  She opened the refrigerator while he got out the plates. “Boys make their connections okay?”

  “Yep. They promised to call when they get in.”

  “They won’t, though. They’ll text. I never hear their voices when they’re gone. It’s like their vocal cords don’t stretch beyond the house.”

  He laughed.

  Half of a spiral-sliced ham sat in the refrigerator alongside some kind of green bean salad. “Sandwiches okay?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer, but a second later he was behind her with his arms around her. “I love you,” he murmured into her ear.

  “Me, too.” She tried out a smile. “Always and everywhere.”

  He hollered for Kip while she spread the salad and sandwich fixings out on the kitchen table. She poured a glass of milk for Kip and opened a beer for Peter. No alcohol for her, though, not with the narcotics still paddling dopily through her bloodstream.

  Kip came into the kitchen. “You okay?” Peter caught him by the arm, and he nodded and ducked into his chair.

  The kitchen table was square with two chairs pulled up on either side. They dragged in extras on Mia’s weekends or when the twins were home, and when all the children were home, they ate in the dining room. But for everyday meals they ate here, two on one side of the table and two on the other. Peter pulled out her chair and gave her knee a reassuring squeeze as he sat down beside her.

  It wasn’t until she looked across the table at Kip that she saw the livid burst of blood under the skin along his right cheekbone. “Oh, no!” She jumped up. “Did the cops do this to you?”

  “No.” Kip flinched as she grabbed his face and turned it to the light.

  “One of the prisoners?”

  He shook his head free. “I just tripped.”

  “Oh. Well.” She stood back with her hands on her hips. “That’s going to bruise. Hold on.” She grabbed a clean dish towel and filled it with ice cubes from the refrigerator dispenser and tied it in a knot. How many times had she done this over the years? She didn’t know why she never bothered to invest ten dollars in a real ice bag. No, she did know. Because it would be too much of an admission that her children were going to get hurt. That they were breakable. She handed the homemade ice pack to Kip. “Here. Hold this on it.”

  He placed it gingerly against his face, and they all busied themselves with passing dishes and assembling their sandwiches. It felt almost peaceful for a few minutes, breaking bread together in silence. But Leigh knew she had to ask about the charges and discuss what came next. They had to start planning how to deal with this. It was what families did when an outside threat loomed. They closed ranks and worked together to shield themselves from it. If anyone else had been in the truck with Kip that night, if anyone else had died, Leigh would be leading the strategy sessions by now. She’d be heading up the Kip Conley Defense Committee. If it was anyone else but Chrissy.

  “Leigh,” Peter said softly.

  She looked up with a start.

  “You need to eat something.”

  “Oh.” She made herself smile as she picked up her fork. “I am. See?”

  Kip was picking at his meal, too, half-slumped over his plate with his elbow on the table and the ice pack holding up his head.

  “You call your mom?” Peter said.

  “Not yet.”

  “Come on. That’s the deal. You have to keep her in the loop.”

  “I know! I will. I just—” He put down the ice pack and sat up straight. “I need to tell you something first.” His eyes shifted to Leigh. “Both of you. About what really happened.”

  Leigh felt suddenly weak.

  Peter squinted at him. “What d’you mean, really?”

  “Chrissy rode over to Ryan’s to get me, and she put her bike in the back—”

  “Yeah, we know. You already—”

  “Then she got in the truck. Behind the wheel.”

  Peter’s chair squealed against the floor as he pushed back hard from the table. “What?”

  “She insisted on driving. She said zero tolerance and all that. She was afraid the cops would stop me and I’d get slammed. I said no, but I couldn’t get her to shove over, and it was late and I finally said okay you can drive if you go the long way on Hollow Road.” The words tripped and stumbled out of Kip’s mouth. “She did fine until that dog ran out in front of us. She jerked the wheel too hard, and the road was wet and she lost control. We went in the ditch and she couldn’t get out of the mud, so I got out and made her slide over. But before I could get us out of there, the cop pulled up. I didn’t want Chrissy to get in trouble for driving without a license, not when she was only trying to keep me out of trouble. So I said to her, I was driving, okay? So that was the story we went with. But it was just a story. Chrissy was driving. Not me. I’m—sorry.”

  His voice trailed off at the end, and Leigh put her head in her hands and sighed. Here he was, at it again. Christopher Con Man, working another scam. And after she had such hopes that they could have a peaceful evening and try to work through this together. Now Peter was going to take his head off for pulling this kind of stunt, lying about something like this with Chrissy dead in the ground.

  Peter’s breath came out in a loud exhalation, too, but it wasn’t a sigh—it sounded more like a rush of relief. “Kip!” Suddenl
y he was lit up. “This is—this is huge. Why didn’t you say something? You should have told me.”

  “I was afraid it would look like I was making it up to save my own skin.”

  Leigh got to her feet. That was exactly what it looked like. She understood that he was scared and desperate, but blaming Chrissy? Peter needed to nip this in the bud. Send Kip to his room with an I’ll deal with you later. But suddenly hope was blooming across Peter’s face. He was so desperate to find a way out that he couldn’t see that it was obviously a lie. Chrissy didn’t drive. It was only a game when Peter let her take the wheel out in the fields. She was only fourteen. It was ridiculous to think she’d muscled her way past Kip into the driver’s seat.

  “Come on. We need to call Shelby,” Peter said, and he pulled Kip up out of his chair and after him down the hall.

  Leigh sighed again. Now they were going to drag Shelby into this travesty. She trailed after them through the length of the house to the den. Peter was bent over the desk, scrolling through the directory on the speakerphone in search of Shelby’s number. “Here we go,” he said and pressed the button.

  Shelby would be livid. She didn’t receive business calls on her personal line. If she picked up at all, it would only be because she saw Leigh’s name on her caller ID. She’d be furious when she discovered it was Kip spinning this lie.

  The beeps sounded through the speaker as the call connected. “Peter, wait,” Leigh said.

  “What?”

  She glanced over at Kip where he stood in the corner, clutching his elbows. “Can we talk about this first? Before we take it outside the family?”

  Peter gave her a quizzical look as Shelby’s silky voice entered the room. “Leigh?”

  “No, it’s Pete. And Kip. He has something important to tell you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Kip took a breath. “I wasn’t driving,” he said. He didn’t look at Leigh. “Chrissy was.”

  Leigh looked at the ceiling as he told it all again. His delivery was smoother this time. His rehearsal in the kitchen must have helped. Peter watched him and gave him little encouraging nods as he spoke. He didn’t look at Leigh again.

  The line was silent when Kip finished. The quiet before the storm, Leigh was sure of it. Shelby was about to explode with anger. How dare you? she’d say. How dare you defile the memory of that sweet girl? What kind of coward are you, not to take responsibility for your own actions?

  “Okay,” Shelby said. “Let’s talk about how we prove it.”

  What? Leigh blinked at the phone on the desk.

  “Did anyone see you drive away from the party?”

  Kip hesitated. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Of course not, Leigh thought. It would be his word against nobody’s.

  “But there was a witness on the road,” he said suddenly. “This dude stopped to ask if we were all right. He looked like a priest or something, with one of those collars, you know? The black shirt with the white patch at the neck? He must’ve seen it was Chrissy behind the wheel. When he called down to us, I was getting out of the passenger side and walking around to her door.”

  “Good. That’s good,” Shelby said as Peter gave a vigorous nod at the phone.

  “Except he never mentioned a witness before,” Leigh spoke up.

  The mark on Kip’s cheek flamed red from across the room. “ ’Cause before I didn’t want anyone to know Chrissy was driving.”

  “She never mentioned it either. Neither of you did, despite the fact that a witness might have helped prove it happened before midnight. That was our biggest concern that night, remember?”

  Peter stared at her across the desk, but Kip wouldn’t look at her at all. “My biggest concern that night was keeping Chrissy out of trouble.”

  “This priest,” Shelby said. “Did you get his name or his plates?” She was jumping right in with questions designed to locate the witness, as if Leigh hadn’t just established there wasn’t one.

  Kip shook his head. “He barely stopped. He sort of halfway got out and shouted were we okay. And I asked Chrissy, and she said she was fine. I told him yes, and he got back in and drove away.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sedan, coupe, SUV, what?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Peter jumped in. “Four doors or two?”

  “Four, I guess. It was kinda big.”

  “What color?” Shelby asked.

  “Black, I think. Or some dark color. Green or navy.”

  Or deep purple or gunmetal gray. Leigh could understand why Peter wanted to believe him, but not Shelby. She was the most cynical person Leigh knew. She built her whole career on the principle that all of her clients were lying all of the time. “Shelby,” she said in a calm, lawyer-to-lawyer voice. “You know what the prosecutor will do with this. Kip never mentioned a witness or another vehicle the night he was arrested or for four days thereafter. It wasn’t until he spent a night in jail that he came forward with this new version. The prosecutor will rip him apart on those facts.”

  “Of course,” Shelby said. “Which is why we need a corroborating witness. So let’s get out there and find this priest. Sound like a plan?”

  “Yes,” Kip said quickly.

  “Come in to the office tomorrow, and we’ll sit down with my investigator and figure out how to locate this guy. What time’s good for you?”

  “Any time,” Pete said with a nod at Kip. “The sooner the better.”

  “Let’s say nine o’clock.”

  They were still saying their good-byes as Leigh left the room and went back to the kitchen. Their three plates sat barely touched, and the homemade ice pack was weeping across the surface of the table at the fourth place. Chrissy’s place. Leigh grabbed up the towel and ice in both hands and carried it dripping across the floor to the sink, then went back to the table with handfuls of paper towels to mop up. The water had already pooled to the edge of the table and was trickling in steady plops onto the seat of Chrissy’s chair. She wiped it down furiously and dropped to her knees to wipe the floor, too. Shep was under the table, as always during mealtime, and he licked her hands as she scrubbed the floor.

  She got up and scraped her plate into the garbage and was rinsing it off at the sink when Peter came in and sat down at the table. “Is Kip coming back to dinner?” she asked without turning.

  “No, he’s gone up to his room.”

  “He didn’t finish his sandwich.”

  “He thinks you don’t believe him.”

  She shut the faucet off. “And you do.”

  “Yeah, I think I do. I mean, it all makes sense.”

  She turned then and leaned back with the edge of the granite counter cutting into her spine. “How? Tell me.”

  “Because I taught him better than to swerve for an animal. He knows that’s dangerous. But Chrissy, she argued the point with me every time I took her out. So I can see her doing it. I can see her grabbing the keys from him, too. She was all about SADD and don’t drink and drive, remember? She wouldn’t go over there to rescue him only to have him drive home drunk.”

  “Except he wasn’t drunk, not at point-oh-five-five. She’s seen enough of her father to know what drunk really looks like. And he could have swerved reflexively no matter what you drilled into him. For a dog? I think even you might have swerved. Oh, Peter.” She reached for another dish towel and wiped her hands. “Isn’t this all just wishful thinking? You want to believe it.”

  “I want him to get off.” He studied the label on his beer bottle. “Don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. But not if it takes a lie.”

  “I guess that’s where we differ.” He got to his feet. “I want him to get off no matter what.”

  He headed into the family room with his beer, and a minute later she heard the TV switch on. Now there were two plates of almost untouched food left on the table, and she picked them up and scraped them both into the garbage.

>   Chapter Ten

  Shelby Randolph’s office was on I Street a few blocks from Leigh’s office on K Street. Both law firms were big and prestigious with hundreds of lawyers representing Fortune 500 companies, and both women were partners in their respective firms. But the similarities ended there. Leigh was something called a service lawyer, which Pete understood to mean one who handled the peripheral needs of the corporate clients brought in by the powerhouse partners—drafting wills for CEOs, procuring visas for the imported talent, and in her case, handling their divorces. Whereas Shelby was the powerhouse lawyer at her firm. Her specialty was white-collar crime, and she had a long roster of government-contractor clients she defended in billion-dollar fraud cases. She didn’t represent teenagers in DUI cases even when the DUI led to a homicide charge. Pete knew she was doing this strictly as a favor for the family of her oldest friend.

  But Kip was treated the same as any other client when they arrived at her office in the morning. Shelby’s assistant met them in reception and led them through corridors of steel and glass and abstract art to a corner conference room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Lafayette Square and offering a glimpse of the White House through the trees. Soon another woman came in, pushing a cart laden with minipastries and a full coffee service. And finally Shelby swept into the room in a strangely dramatic black dress with one white sleeve.

  A retinue of three other people funneled in behind her. She made the introductions. Frank Nobbin was her chief investigator, a retired police detective from Baltimore. Elliott Sousa was something she called a social media coordinator. And finally there was her paralegal, Britta, a young woman who silently took notes for the duration of their meeting.

  There were some papers to sign first, a retainer agreement, a revocable waiver of confidentiality so Pete could be present. Then Frank Nobbin took over. He was a crusty old black guy with a gray brush mustache that gave him a permanent frown. He questioned Kip about every detail of last Friday night while Shelby sat back and watched Kip stammer through his answers. It was like pulling teeth, but Nobbin finally got him to give up the names of a dozen kids at the party, including a girl Pete never heard of who was more or less Kip’s date for the night. He also got him to identify every variety of refreshment on offer. Kip remembered a couple bottles of tequila and vodka circulating through the party but was adamant that he had only two beers.