House on Fire

by Bonnie Kistler

  Peter saw her then and started toward her, and she took off so fast that dust clouds detonated from her tires.

  She drove blindly, and she had to stop behind the Hermitage and wipe her streaming eyes before she could see to go on. She looked up in the mirror, but no one was following her, not Peter, not even Shepherd. She looped around the far side of the Hermitage and down the hill, and she was starting to pull out on Hollow Road when another car suddenly rounded the bend in front of her. She slammed on the brakes as a dusty old Saab rolled past with a priest behind the wheel.

  Blink and she almost missed it. The driver wore a black coat and a clerical collar, and she stomped on the gas and took off after him.

  It was ridiculous. She didn’t even believe Kip’s story about the priest, and here she was chasing a man down Hollow Road for no reason other than he wore a Roman collar. But still she followed him. She had to know. If he did happen to be on the road that night, if he did happen to see anything, she had to find out.

  The Saab reached the end of Hollow Road and turned onto Providence, and Leigh merged into the traffic and followed from two cars behind. She’d never tried to tail a car in her life, but in a law practice that sometimes required proof of adultery, she’d often hired investigators to follow the wayward spouse, and she had a general sense of how they did it. Hang back a few car lengths but keep him in sight. If the target glanced in the mirror too much, if he seemed to get suspicious, speed up and pass and follow from ahead for a while.

  The Saab looked like it must be twenty years old. There were pits of rust around its undercarriage, and the trunk lid bounced with every bump in the road. The priest drove five miles below the speed limit and so did Leigh as the cars behind her zipped around to pass. After a few miles, she pulled out and stole a glance inside as she passed him. He had thick hair going to silver and he sat up very erect with both hands firmly on the wheel. His lips were moving, and she thought he must be talking on a Bluetooth until he threw his head back with his mouth wide open and she realized he was belting out a song.

  She dropped back. After a few more miles, he took a turn west, deeper into the countryside, and she followed past horse farms and vineyards until he turned onto a narrow rural road. No other cars turned with him, so Leigh had to follow right behind as he turned again through a pair of stone pillars that opened onto a long curving drive. A quarter mile ahead on the top of a hill she could see a gleaming white manor house with a columned portico, but the Saab turned before it got there, onto a gravel road through a patch of deep woods. The road twisted around a bend and arrived at a little stone house that was probably once the caretaker’s cottage for the estate up on the hill.

  Leigh pulled in behind the Saab as the driver got out and looked back at her with a quizzical smile. “Can I help you?”

  She hadn’t mistaken his priest garb. Under his suit coat, he wore a black clerical shirtfront and a crisp white Roman collar. He was tall, and handsome in a patrician sort of way, like an English gentleman in tweeds and wellies on his weekend farm, or one of the older male models in a Brooks Brothers catalog, the ones who wore a golf shirt on one page and a white dinner jacket on the other.

  Leigh stood behind the shield of her car door. “I’m sorry to intrude,” she said. “But I wonder—could I ask you something?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Three weeks ago,” she began. Was that right? It seemed like yesterday, but it also seemed like it was something she’d been living with forever. “Three weeks ago last night, there was an accident on Hollow Road. I saw you driving there just now, so it occurred to me— I mean, it wasn’t an accident exactly. A truck went off the road into the ditch and hit a tree. There were two teenagers inside, a boy and a girl?” She paused. Her throat was closing up again.

  “Yes?” he said, still smiling his encouraging smile.

  “And I was wondering—if you were driving past—? If you saw it happen?”

  His smile faded. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish I could help you.”

  She put a hand to her shaking mouth. Of course he couldn’t. She was such a fool to follow him here. She was such a fool to hope.

  He started toward her. “Did something happen—?” He stopped, and his face went suddenly still. “You’ve lost someone.”

  She put her hands over her face and started to cry.

  He came up and touched his hand to her elbow. “Please. Come inside. Have a cup of tea.”

  The little stone cottage had a glass sunroom on one side, curiously, since the surrounding woods crept in too close for any sunshine to penetrate. The sunroom had its own entrance, and the priest steered her there, carefully, as if she’d suffered a bad fall and might have broken something. Leigh hid her face as he guided her through the door and into a deep-cushioned chair. She was humiliated by her tears in front of this stranger. Humiliated by the way she’d followed him like some kind of psycho stalker. This is not who I am, she wanted to tell him, I haven’t been who I really am for a while now. But she couldn’t speak through her tears, and anyway, he was doing all the talking, telling her in a soothing voice to sit back, relax, here’s a stool, put your feet up, I’ll go and pop the kettle on.

  He ducked through a doorway into the main house, and she took her hands from her face and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Her chair was covered in a plush burgundy fabric worn shiny with age. The stool was a faded needlepoint, and the stone floor was crisscrossed in overlapping layers of Oriental rugs. The wall the priest disappeared through was crammed full of books on floor-to-ceiling shelves, and hundreds more were stacked on the floor, the coffee table, the desk, and every other dusty dark wood surface. The room had the look of an old-time study except that the ceiling and the other three walls were made entirely of glass. The trees overhead and the greenery all around made her feel like she was in an inside-out terrarium.

  He returned with two teacups rattling in their saucers and set hers on top of a stack of books on an end table. Leigh murmured her thanks as he settled into the chair beside her. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “For breaking down like this.”

  “No, don’t. We should never apologize for grief. It doesn’t mean we’re weak. It’s simply the price we pay for love.”

  It was too high a price. It was costing her everything. “This room,” she began. She looked up and around the space. The light filtering through the foliage overhead was soft and tinged with green, like sunshine through a wisteria arbor. “It reminds me of a fairy tale.”

  He smiled. “I often wonder if the woods sprang up after the sunroom was added, or if they planned to cut down the woods but lost heart. I’m only renting here, but I foolishly brought my whole library with me, and this was the only space that would accommodate it. So into the sunroom I moved it. It looks odd, I know, but I’ve come to think of it as a metaphor for the civilized mind. Educated”—he waved toward the wall of bookshelves—“but open to new and different ideas.” He swept an arm to take in the three walls of glass. Then his eyes twinkled. “If you’ll forgive the self-aggrandizement.”

  “No, I love it. This room, I mean.”

  “My Snuggery I call it, at home or wherever I go.” He took a sip of his tea. “Though my ex-wife liked to call it the Growlery when she thought I was being grumpy.”

  “You were married? But—I thought—”

  “That I was a Catholic priest? No, I’m the Episcopal variation. Catholicism without celibacy as they say.”

  “Oh, I should have realized. I was raised as an Episcopal. Though we always called it Catholicism without the guilt.”

  His laugh was a little rueful. “We’ve done a fair job of minimizing shame, but I’m afraid the guilt’s still with us.”

  “I’m not sure I know the distinction.”

  “I like to frame it this way. Shame is what you feel when society is judging you. Guilt is what you feel when you judge yourself.”

  “Ah.” She nodded and took a tentative sip of tea. It was nothing fancy, just a
strong brew of good hot tea. “Which is worse, I wonder?”

  “Oh, I’d have to go with guilt. Nobody can punish you like you can punish yourself. But the question is, do we want to eliminate it? Yes, it hurts, but it serves a purpose. Where would the conscience be without it?” He held out his hand. “I’m Stephen Kendall, by the way.”

  “Leigh Huyett. And I’m so sorry for barging in on you this way.”

  “I’m not.”

  “No, really. This isn’t like me. I hardly recognize myself these days. I’m driving everyone away from me. And now chasing after strangers on the road. I’ve turned into a crazy woman. A bitter, ugly, old crazy woman.”

  “Not old, surely,” he said. “And not ugly by a long shot. As for the rest—” He spread his hands. “I don’t know you well enough yet to say.”

  It wasn’t the flattery that made her relax, because she didn’t believe it, not with her rumpled clothes and uncombed hair. It was the yet. As if it wouldn’t necessarily be awful to get to know her better. She settled a little deeper in her chair. It was so comfortable here, in this room full of books and greenery.

  He picked up his cup and took another sip of tea. “Was it the boy or the girl?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The one you lost in the accident. Was it the boy or the girl?”

  “Oh! The girl. My daughter.” A fresh rush of tears came to her eyes. “She was only—” She shook her head helplessly. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—”

  “Maybe you should,” he said. “For some people it helps to put the pain in words. If you feel like talking, I definitely feel like listening.”

  After living in near silence for so long, speaking to no one and listening to nothing but Shepherd’s ceaseless whining—yes, she did feel like talking, especially here in the Snuggery with the Good Reverend Brooks Brothers. But she didn’t know where to begin, and her uncertainty must have shown on her face, because he put his hand over hers again. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me about the accident on Hollow Road?”

  She told him, even though it meant she started to cry again. She told him the whole story, starting with Kip’s first DUI last New Year’s. She told him about their anniversary getaway to Greenbrier and Kip’s partying on a suspended license and Chrissy’s pajama-clad bike ride. She told him about the accident, the night in the police station, and the morning in the hospital.

  “It was all my fault,” she said, weeping. “I insisted on a long weekend away. We left them home alone. We never did that before, not overnight. None of this would have happened—I was so selfish! If only— My daughter—”

  “No. Stop. Please.” He put his cup down. “Your daughter was how old? Fourteen? People hire fourteen-year-old babysitters all the time, and leave them alone in a strange house with small children to care for. You left your daughter in her own house with an eighteen-year-old. There’s no blame to be found there.”

  “But none of this would have happened—”

  “See what I mean about guilt? You’re punishing yourself for something no one else would raise an eyebrow at. Something everyone does, all the time.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head.

  He put his hand over hers. “There’s no best way to grieve,” he said. “But the worst way is to blame yourself. I’ve seen it too many times. I should have kept after him about his cholesterol. I never should have put her in that nursing home. I shouldn’t have let him get on that plane. That’s the worst kind of mourning. It halts the healing.”

  His hand was warm and enveloping over hers. Leigh blinked her eyes open. “Is there a best kind of mourning?”

  “As I say, it’s different for everyone. When I lost my son—”

  “Oh! I’m so sorry.” She felt a hot flush of embarrassment. Carrying on as if she were the only person in the world ever to lose a child.

  He didn’t seem to notice. “When he died, what helped me most was to talk about him. People shied away from even mentioning his name to me, but I relished the chance to talk about him. To anyone who cared to listen.”

  Leigh thought how seldom anyone had spoken to her about Chrissy these last weeks. She remembered how careful Carrie was this morning not to speak her name out loud. And Peter never mentioned her at all. To spare her feelings, probably, but maybe because he’d already moved on.

  “I care to listen,” he said. “If you’d like to tell me about Chrissy.”

  For a moment she thought about trying. But it was too raw. She shook her head.

  “Not yet, then,” he said. “Someday perhaps.”

  She gazed at him. His eyes were blue, she noticed. Not the bright welding-torch blue of Chrissy’s eyes, but three shades quieter. A still mountain lake. Even when he smiled, as he did now, there were such dark depths there.

  “Not yet,” she agreed. “But thank you.”

  By then the sun had climbed high enough to shine through the overhanging tree limbs. Suddenly the room was lit up, and all its dim corners were on display. Stephen switched off the lamp on the table between them. “It only lasts twenty or thirty minutes,” he said. “So I try to savor the sunshine while I can.”

  Leigh rose to her feet. “I’ll savor it on my drive back home. I’ve intruded on you far too long.”

  “Not at all. I’ve enjoyed meeting you.”

  “Me, too.”

  He walked her outside and down the drive to her car. At the door, she turned and held out her hand. “Reverend—”

  “Stephen.” He took her hand and held it in both of his. “And again, I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you.”

  “You have helped me. A little.”

  “May I give you a blessing?” He winced an apology. “It’s what I do. But I promise I won’t proselytize.”

  She laughed. “Go on then. If you must.”

  He placed a hand on her head. “Leigh. May you know the peace that passes all understanding and may it guard your heart and mind, always and everywhere.”

  Those words coiled through in her mind as she drove out the narrow lane to the road. Always and everywhere. Her I love you words to Peter and the kids. She’d forgotten they came from the Bible, if she ever even knew. It was simply a phrase inculcated in her during her childhood, the same as goodness and mercy. They were only ever words to her, a familiar phrase that made for clever names for her two barn cats. But now they seemed to have come to life, personified in that gentle man. Goodness and mercy.

  A car was parked at the end of the cottage lane, a black SUV, and she had to cut around it to reach the road. A man sat behind the wheel, and as she drove past him, she had a feeling, a little low zap like static electricity that made her eyes dart up to the mirror. But the man wasn’t looking at her at all. He had a camera to his face and was snapping pictures of the rolling countryside on this beautiful spring day.

  And it was a beautiful spring day. The sun was spilling a pale gold over the new green grass, and the roadside rhododendrons were blooming in brilliant bursts of pink and purple, and Leigh did feel some measure of peace as she drove to the highway. Not enough to pass all understanding, but something. She’d fallen out of the habit of going to church—weekends were always so hectic in their household—but she thought she might enjoy attending one of Stephen’s sermons. It would be nice to see him again, to listen to his soothing voice and feel that little bit of peace settle into her soul. It was too bad she didn’t get the name of his church.

  Her phone burbled with an incoming text, and at the next stoplight she took a glance. It was from Peter, sent more than an hour after she stumbled on his happy family scene. Sry I miss U OK?

  This was why they never used to text each other. She couldn’t tell what he meant. I’m sorry. I miss you? Are you okay? Or only Sorry I missed you, okay? Two very different messages. She could parse through the language of a complex statute and discern the legislative intent with the best of them, but the meaning behind those five near-words eluded her.

  OK, she replied.

&
nbsp; Chapter Seventeen

  “Put that away. Pay attention.” Pete rapped his knuckles on the table. He was spending thousands of dollars for the opinions of the doctor and lawyer across from them, and there Kip sat playing with his phone.

  Shelby and the doctor exchanged a hoo boy look, and for a second Kip’s face flashed dark with defiance, like he was ready to pick up his phone and stomp out of the conference room. But only for a second. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He slid the phone across the polished wood-grain surface of the table and let it fall into his lap. His expression when he looked up again was perfectly bland.

  Dr. Harold Rabin was a neurologist who used to specialize in brain aneurysms, and now, Pete gathered, specialized in court testimony. He had curly white hair that grew in a dense mat around his bald spot so his head resembled one of the sugar-frosted crullers laid out on the credenza. He’d reviewed all of Chrissy’s medical records and for a further fee was prepared to give expert testimony that her death could not be causally connected to the accident because it was equally likely that her aneurysm was congenital.

  “Isn’t that kind of a big coincidence, though?” Kip said. “If she was walking around with this thing in her head for fourteen years, and it didn’t burst until ten hours after she bumped her head in the truck?”

  “Stop.” Shelby threw up a hand like a crossing guard. She was wearing a bronze silk suit today, and it made her green eyes look almost yellow. Like a tigress. “There’s no evidence she bumped her head in the truck. Nothing beyond your own statement that she might have and what—?” She looked to the doctor. “A faint contusion on her scalp?”

  He nodded. “Which could have been sustained in any other minor injury in the previous twenty-four hours.”

  “Remember, it’s the Commonwealth’s burden. And the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt. Not simply possible, or more likely than not.”