House on Fire

by Bonnie Kistler

  A card was stapled to the tissue wrapping. A business card. EMILY WHITMAN, it read, ASSISTANT TO SHEIKH MAZIN AL-KHAZRATI, followed by two lines of Arabic characters. Below that was a phone number with a 202 area code. Washington. On the back was a note written in an elegant script: I cannot begin to fathom the depth and breadth of your pain. I beg of you, do not hasten your mourning, least of all on my account. My sorrows are but dust compared to yours.

  I’m sorry, no rush, take your time seemed to be the distilled message, but the Old World turn of phrase made it so much more moving. It reminded her of the archaic language of the Bible verses she learned as a child. The cadence of those old refrains. Verily I say unto thee and He restoreth my soul. Language that had long since passed from everyday speech and seemed to carry so much more meaning for it. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. World without end. Amen.

  World without Chrissy.

  She went back to the kitchen and closed the door and windows and lingered a moment at the window overlooking the garden. Finches swooped into the feeder and pecked futilely before they took flight again. The tube was empty. It was Leigh’s job to refill it, the songbirds fed heavily this time of year, she should go out and do it now. But she didn’t. She looked out at the spring bulbs pushing up through the earth, and the late afternoon sunshine sparkling on the new green leaves of the trees. She could see Licorice in the pasture rubbing his flank against a fencepost like he was scratching an itch. He was still shedding his heavy winter coat. Both horses were. Chrissy had planned to clip them over the weekend.

  For a moment she couldn’t breathe. Her lungs felt paralyzed, her limbs frozen, as the oxygen wisped from her brain, and she thought: This must be how it feels to die. But it lasted only a few seconds before she choked on a sob and the air rushed back in, wet and ragged. She needed to turn it off, shut it down, all these springtime images of new life and rebirth outside the window. She needed to flee upstairs and dive deep into the burrow of Chrissy’s bed.

  But as she spun from the window, something caught her eye. The top fence rail beside Licorice was down, and Romeo was nowhere in sight.

  This happened every few months. Romeo got loose and went wandering in search of the neighbors’ garden delicacies. The pasture had a good fence, but with the top rail down he could easily jump the bottom two. Chrissy had a theory that Licorice was the culprit: he head-butted the rail to knock it free from its slot in the post, then stood back and egged Romeo on like a little boy trying to get his brother in trouble. Every time Romeo got loose, it was Licorice she scolded.

  Leigh ran to the kitchen and slid her feet into her shoes and burst outside. Romeo wasn’t in the pasture or the barn, and she grabbed a lead line and went hunting for him. The Markhams’ house on the corner was Romeo’s most likely destination. Their apple trees weren’t in fruit now, but he probably had fond memories of gorging himself there last fall. She jogged down the road past swaths of sunny yellow daffodils, and when she rounded the corner, there stood Romeo with all four feet braced. There stood Kip, too, hanging on Romeo’s halter with his own feet braced, tugging hard as he tried and failed to get him to move.

  Leigh gave a sharp whistle and Romeo’s head came up. So did Kip’s. He dropped the halter and backed away, and she ran down the road and snapped the lead line on Romeo’s halter. Kip bent to pick up his backpack from the ground. “He wouldn’t budge.”

  “So I noticed.” She clucked her tongue and started back, and Romeo followed in an easy amble beside her. Kip trailed behind, and Leigh stopped and waited for him to fall into step on the other side of Romeo. She glanced at him over the horse’s withers. Seventy degrees and sunny and he wore the hood up on his sweatshirt like some kind of ghetto gangster. “You took the bus home?” He hadn’t ridden the school bus for years; he always managed to finagle a ride from someone.

  “Yeah.”

  “How did it go in school today?”

  “Fine.”

  He wasn’t normally a monosyllabic grunter like most teenaged boys. Normally he would spin out at least five minutes of entertaining conversation about the day’s headlines. She glanced at him again. The bruise on his cheekbone was green going to purple.

  “Good,” she said. Normally she would have followed up with questions about last week’s calculus exam, and was Ryan’s father back from Tokyo, and how were things going with Ava? But today none of those questions would come to her.

  Romeo’s head dipped up and down between them as they walked toward home. “Kip,” she began. “I know this is a terrible situation for you. I know you must be scared.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he pretended to study the blossoms on the Markhams’ trees.

  “But you’ve got one of the finest criminal defense lawyers in the country, and we’re all going to help you get through this. You know that, right? We’re going to do everything we can for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “But I need you to do something for me.”

  His eyes shifted to her.

  “I need you to take back what you said. About Chrissy driving.”

  He looked away.

  “Recant is the word lawyers use. Which tells you right there how commonly it comes up. That there’s even a word for it. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. Just say you made a mistake. It’s not like you signed a sworn statement or anything. There’s no question of perjury. Just tell your dad and Shelby the truth.”

  “I did. I am.”

  She sighed. “You know what I do when I cross-examine a witness who’s changed his story? It’s what every lawyer does. You confront them with their prior statement, then get them to admit they’re telling a different story today. Then you hit them with the zinger. So were you lying then or are you lying now?”

  “I already admitted I was lying before.”

  “And so was Chrissy, you’re saying. You want us to believe she was lying, too.”

  “No. I mean, she didn’t want to. I had to—”

  He broke off. They’d reached the driveway, and he peeled off to the back door as Romeo picked up his pace to the barn. “Kip, wait a minute.” She struggled to hold the horse back. “Could you help me fix the fence?”

  He turned around, and maybe it was a trick of the light, or the shadow cast by his hoodie, but suddenly his straight dark hair turned to copper curls and his scowl became a grin and it was Chrissy standing there, shimmering in the sun like a desert mirage. She glowed, she sparkled, she was as three-dimensional as a holograph, and as real as a dream.

  “I have homework,” he muttered.

  The image dissolved into ash. It was only Kip standing there in Chrissy’s place.

  Chapter Twelve

  Pete met with the loan committee on Monday and wrenched a three-month extension out of them on his upcoming balloon payment. But nothing ever came free, especially where banks were concerned, and it was going to cost him an extra point. A steep price to pay, but three months meant he could push this worry onto the back burner and leave the front one open for more pressing concerns.

  Like Hollow Road. Drew Miller was withholding this month’s progress payment on the house, and Pete didn’t have much ground for arguing otherwise given their lack of progress. He needed to hire more men, but he couldn’t afford it. In six weeks the twins would be home from school, and they’d provide some good cheap labor, but until then he had to run a pretty lean crew. The only thing he could do was light a fire under his guys, get as much work out of them as he could.

  But he felt like lighting a bomb under them when he pulled up the drive and found half of them not working at all. They were standing in a circle staring at a stack of lumber. Miller’s Porsche was there, too, and that was another distraction they didn’t need. His wife, the swanling, was perched on the hood as usual, filing her nails. “What’s going on?” Pete asked her as he swung out of the truck.

  Yana rolled her gamine eyes. “Drew ees show off new toy. Go and zee.”
>
  King Midas was in the center of the circle of men. Some kind of game console was on the stack of lumber, and he had his phone in one hand and was working the joystick with the other. All the men were craning their necks to watch the screen on his phone.

  “Hey,” Pete said as he came up.

  The guys gave a guilty start and scattered, leaving Miller alone with his toy and a shit-eating grin on his face. “Check it out,” he said.

  Pete leaned over for a look at his phone. It didn’t look like any video game he’d ever seen. Instead of a battle scene, an image of leafy green foliage covered the screen. “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s a vision quadcopter. Cost me fourteen hundred dollars. But look at that image. GPS-stabilized, baby.”

  Pete looked at the screen again, then the joystick. “Wait a minute.” He could hear a buzzing overhead, like the sound of a hummingbird hovering by his ear. He looked up. “Are you telling me you launched a camera drone? You sent a camera drone over the neighbor’s wall?”

  “Free airspace, my friend. I got every right.”

  “Helluva wrong foot to get off on with your new neighbors.”

  “Yeah? Well, they started it when they put up that fucking wall. Hold on.” Miller bobbled the phone in his right hand as he tried to maneuver the joystick with his left. “Let me fly in under those trees there and see what they’re hiding.”

  Pete walked away, shaking his head in disgust. He started this business because he wanted to build exceptional homes with quality craftsmanship. He never set out to work for assholes, but that was where he ended up. Leigh, too. Some people might think they were rich, Leigh with her big-time law practice and Pete with his own business, but the truth was they were both servants to the real rich. He built their houses, she got them their divorces. The same was true of Ted, who drove their boats, and Gary, who whitened their teeth.

  Kip was supposed to be the one who broke out of the family mold. He was going to be his own man. People were going to bow and scrape to him. That was the dream, right?

  Still could happen, Pete tried to tell himself as he headed inside. In fact this ordeal could be the thing that kept him from turning into one of those rich assholes. If he got past it.

  The HVAC crew was on-site today. He found them on the second story with the prints for the ductwork rolled out on the floor, and they all got down on their haunches to go over them. They were going to have to deviate from the plan in the master bedroom, since the Millers had ordered a last-minute change to the ceiling—vaulted instead of coffered—which was going to cut into the space available for the ducts. They needed to come up with some kind of work-around, but the HVAC crew was out of ideas, and for the moment, so was Pete. “I’ll work on this tonight,” he told the team.

  He was hauling himself to his feet when a clamor erupted outside, a crash followed by a stream of obscenities. He ran to the window in time to see Midas hurl the drone control console to the ground. “Fourteen fucking hundred dollars,” he screamed, while the swanling clapped a hand over her mouth to hold in her giggles.

  Pete stopped for some Chinese takeout on the way home. Leigh hadn’t had much of an appetite for anything he brought home all week, but she was a big fan of sweet-and-sour—just like me, she liked to tease—and he hoped the shrimp would tempt her.

  He came in the kitchen and stopped short. The air was full of the aroma of roasting chicken, and Leigh was at the island, tied up in an apron and chopping a green pepper. “Oh, no,” she said at the sight of the takeout bag in his hand. “I should have called.”

  “No problem.” He sniffed the air appreciatively. “This’ll keep.” He opened the refrigerator and stowed the Chinese inside, then, hands free, came around the island and gave her a backward hug.

  She leaned back into his arms. “How was your day?”

  “Good. Great. No problems. Yours?”

  She smiled over her shoulder. “Fine.” The lively look wasn’t quite back in her eyes, but the smile was enough to make up for it. More than enough. She had a beautiful smile. She could light up a room, and this one seemed brighter than it had for days.

  He went upstairs to shower and change. On his way back down he popped his head in Kip’s room. He was at his desk on the computer, the same as any other day, except today a clergyman beamed from the screen. Kip had been clicking through minister mug shots for days.

  “Any luck?”

  He shook his head.

  “How about the car?”

  “No.”

  “Well, don’t worry. We’ll find him.” It had been a week already and still no response to the newspaper ads or any of the internet postings. Pete clapped both hands on Kip’s shoulders. The boy’s muscles felt like sailor’s knots, and he gave them a brisk rubdown. “School okay today?”

  “Fine.” Kip clicked through to another photo, this one of a cherubic-looking man with a bristle of curly white sideburns.

  Pete hesitated. “Coming down for dinner?”

  “I’ll grab something later.”

  It was a week since he’d joined them at the dinner table. Once Pete wouldn’t have tolerated that. It was one of the rules of their household that the whole family sit down for dinner together. But the tension between Leigh and Kip was building more and more every day, and Pete was afraid it might blow if he tried to force him to the table tonight. Besides, it would be nice to have an evening alone with Leigh while her happy mood lasted. “Yeah, okay,” he said finally. “There’s sweet-and-sour shrimp in the fridge, and there’ll be some leftover chicken, too.”

  Kip shrugged. “Hey, Dad?” He pushed back from his computer. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

  That sounded ominous. Pete took a seat on the foot of the bed. The walls of the room were covered with posters, but not the usual sports heroes or bikini babes like the ones plastered over the twins’ room. Kip’s posters were world maps at various points in time. Geopolitical history was his big interest. Because I’m plotting world domination, he used to say, rubbing his hands with an evil mwah-ha-ha laugh. “What’s up?”

  “I was wondering if I could go to Mom’s.”

  “Sure. When? This weekend?”

  “For good. Till I leave for Richmond for the summer.”

  Pete stared at him. “What are you talking about? You have two more months of school.”

  “I was thinking Mom could drive me?”

  “Ninety miles each way? Come on. What’s this about?”

  Kip looked past him to one of the wall maps, the one with all the ’stans in Central Asia that Pete had never learned. Kip could recite them all. “I just think things would be better if I lived somewhere else.”

  “Better with Leigh, you mean.”

  “She hates me, Dad.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “She can’t even look at me.”

  “She just needs time.”

  “It’s been over a week already. What she needs is space. From me.”

  “That’s not true. But regardless, your mom can’t spend three or four hours every day running you back and forth to school. And I doubt you want to live with Gary that long either.”

  Kip’s shoulders rose and fell. “Maybe I could rent a place somewhere around here—”

  “We can’t afford that. Not right now.”

  “Someplace cheap.”

  “There are no cheap apartments in Hampshire County.” Pete got to his feet. “Look, I know things are a little tense, but it’ll blow over soon.” He tapped Kip’s computer screen. “Real soon if we find this priest. You concentrate on that.”

  After dinner they took their coffees to the family room and settled side by side on the sofa with their legs stretched out together on the ottoman. This was their nightly routine and always the best part of the day for Pete. But it was the first night they’d done it since Chrissy died, and it felt new to him and a little fragile. He reached for the remote and looked uncertainly at the TV. He didn’t know the drill for grieving. Was it bet
ter to sit in silence and remember Chrissy, or to plunge back into their normal routine and try to forget her? They’d built such a good life together, he and Leigh, and all he wanted was to get back to it. But that life included Chrissy—depended on Chrissy—and he knew they’d never get back to it. Not without their sparkling girl. The only hope was to try to build a new life out of the ashes of the old one. He didn’t know how. But he was a builder. It was his job to figure it out.

  After a moment he clicked on CNN, and when Leigh did as she always did and picked up a book, he relaxed a little and settled in to watch the news.

  The broadcast cycled through the business report, the sports update, the latest news from the Middle East. Leigh never glanced at the screen. She seldom did, that much was normal, but tonight she never turned a page either. She was only staring at her book. He knew he’d made a mistake, it was too soon to be normal, and he was about to switch off the TV and find something else to do when a report came on that made her put the book down and sit up straight.

  It was an update on the school shooting in Missouri last week. One of the victims had been in intensive care since the incident, and today she died. That brought the total fatalities to twelve, four boys and six girls. The segment concluded with a slide show of their school portraits, ten middle schoolers with fresh-scrubbed faces and broad smiles against a blue studio background.

  Pete glanced over at Leigh as the shining faces flipped across the screen. Her own face was frozen. She stared at the TV like she could see through it and a thousand yards beyond.

  He hurried to turn it off. “Let’s see what’s on the DVR,” he said, and scrolled through the list of their recordings until he landed on a sitcom they usually enjoyed.

  Leigh sat stiffly. But about halfway in, an unexpected punch line, delivered deadpan, tore a startled laugh out of her. A week ago he thought he’d never hear that laugh again, and the light tinkling ring sounded so good to his ears that he hooked an arm around her and pulled her in closer. She tucked her legs up and put her head in his lap, and he stroked her hair while they watched that show and two more stacked up behind it on the DVR. He could feel her muscles relax and her body go limp against his. He wondered if they should sleep where they were tonight. He’d have a stiff neck in the morning, but that was better than waking her to go to bed. She always woke with such a bleak horrible look on her face.