Smoke (18 page)

“Ayuh.”

“Good, good. And the more information I have, the easier it is to determine what’s important and what’s not. Makes sense, right?”

“Sure.”

“Excellent. And Ms. Martin over there, you know what she does, yes? Yes. Good. Well, she tells me the fire started in your backyard, and naturally, I’m sure you’d think the same thing I’m thinking if you learned the owner of the house whose backyard it had started in was about to lose his house to the bank, wouldn’t you?”

“I can see that.”

“Of course you can. You’re a rational fellow, I can tell. So, naturally, when we found that out, and you hadn’t told us about it, it made us . . .”

“Suspicious?” John asks.

“Precisely.”

John rubs his hands across his chin and looks at me between the bars. “You think that fire was set on purpose?”

“She can’t answer your questions,” Donaldson says, as much to Phillips as to me.

“So’s I got to tell you whatever I know, and you don’t have to do the same?”

“That’s how this works.”

“Doesn’t seem fair.”

“I can see how you’d feel that way. But we all have to live by the rules, don’t we?”

John nods.

“That must’ve been real upsetting to receive those papers, wasn’t it?”

John chews on his lip for a minute, getting that vacant look in his eye. “It was pretty upsetting, I’ll admit. But it weren’t no surprise or nothing. Hadn’t been paying the mortgage for months. Knew it was only a matter of time.”

“That must be right stressful. Wondering all the time whether you were going to lose your home.”

“That’s the way life works sometimes.”

“You’re a better man than me. I’d be hopping mad. Paying the bank all those years and them raising the rate on you like that? Making it so it was impossible to make the payments. And then your work drying up. Terrible, just terrible.”

John blinks rapidly a few times, like he might be holding back tears.

“Did you say something, Mr. Phillips?”

“You talked to that kid yet?”

“Now, what kid would that be?”

“I told her,” he says, pointing at me. “We saw him at the shelter. Tucker, I heard his mom calling him.”

The thing I miss the most about living in Nelson is water. More specifically, the ocean. Not that my native Ottawa was on the ocean; far from it. But every summer, when my parents were still together, I would be packed into the back of a four-door sedan along with everything else the car could hold, and we’d be off on some epic car ride to the ocean. Maine. Cape Cod. New Hampshire. Nova Scotia. Prince Edward Island. I don’t know how my parents stood it in the days before iPads and DVD players, but they did.

When we’d finally arrive at the end of whatever road they’d chosen, there’d be the ocean, its saltiness filling up our senses, making even the texture of your skin feel different after a few days.

I had this ritual. I’d walk down the beach in my bare feet and stride right into the water up to my knees. I’d stand there and stare out at the vastness, feeling the pull of current sucking at the sand between my toes as I exhaled in and out, in and out, letting myself become one with the tide.

There are pictures of me like that going back to when I was two. Always from behind, my body changing and growing throughout the years, but the core always the same. This was my happy place, my center, me.

It’s not that there isn’t water in Nelson. There are beautiful lakes within an easy driving distance, and being on their rocky shores and cutting through their black surfaces with my body is also essential to my well-being. But there’s really nothing like the ocean for restoring me to myself.

That’s what I’m thinking about now, as I receive yet another dressing-down from Rich about my shoddy investigative skills and how I’m skating on thin ice and if he has to use one more metaphor I’m out on my keister.

If I could plant my feet in shifting sand, everything would be all right.

“Let me get this straight,” Rich says to me in his office after he’s been filled in by Detective Donaldson on what took place during John Phillips’s interrogation. “You’ve known since yesterday that my nephew was potentially involved in all of this, and you decided to keep that information from me?”

Because that’s the reason I kept the name John Phillips gave to me to myself: Tucker Wells, son of Honor, is also Rich’s nephew. A nephew I’m fairly certain he’s helped out of a jam or two along the way, and a nephew who—if he somehow
is
responsible for the fire—would pretty much ruin Rich’s chance for reelection.

“Yes, but—”

“Does that sentence end with an explanation of why I shouldn’t fire you right now?”

“I was trying to spare you.”

“Spare me?”

“If it was nothing. If it turned out that John Phillips was responsible, after all, I didn’t think it was worth upsetting you.”

“But yet you stood in this very office not twenty-four hours ago and tried to convince me to let you interview him.”

“Because it was the right thing to do.”

“Because you thought that if I knew who it was, I wouldn’t let you?”

“I’m not quite sure how to answer that.”

Rich sits down in his desk chair heavily. I’m certain all he really wants to do is file this information away in a drawer and forget it ever happened. But it’s too late for that now.

“I want to know how Wicks got hold of this story,” Rich says. “Or maybe it was you who told him?”

“What? No, of course not. Why would I do that?”

“To draw attention away from Phillips.”

“I don’t have any vested interest in Phillips.”

“You think he’s innocent.”

“I do. We need to go out to the school and interview those kids.”

“I don’t think that’s called for. Perhaps a quiet conversation with Tucker on the side, but—”

“That’s exactly what we can’t do. Not with the newspaper sniffing around. What if his name gets out? That’s going to look like favoritism, like you have something to hide.”

Rich tips his chair back slowly. He’s quiet for a full minute, maybe more.

“Do you have a strategy? For what you would do at the school?” he asks.

“Tucker has a gang of friends. I’d start with them and see what that turns up.”

“All right, I guess we don’t have any choice. I’ll call the administration and tell them you’re coming. Take Deputy Clark with you. And the parents will have to be alerted and present during the interviews. And you had better tread lightly. If I hear that you’ve been making unfounded accusations against anyone . . .”

“Of course, I understand.”

I pass Judy on the way back to my closet. She’s playing online Scrabble with someone and has just gotten a ten-letter triple word score.

“Nice one,” I say. “Do you have Joshua Wicks’s number?”

She doesn’t look up. “It’s on the website.”

“You know it isn’t.”

“What do you need it for?”

“I have something I need to ask him about.”

“Tucker Wells?”

“How do you know about that?”

“I have ears, don’t I?”

“Do you have the number, Judy?”

“I’ll e-mail it to you.”

“Thank you. That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

She ignores me, intent on her game.

I sit behind my desk as my phone flashes with a text. It’s from Ben.

Call me
, it says simply.

I feel my heart speed up in a way it hasn’t in years.

I remember the first text I got from Ben; it was something suggestive, and then he sent another one patting himself on the back for taking to texting so quickly. But that was a long time ago. Too often lately, our texts have become just another way to communicate household chores—could I bring home some milk, did he remember to take out the trash—or to continue whatever argument we were having in a passive-aggressive way that did credit to neither of us.

Now he wants me to call. He must be on break, because he wouldn’t have me call him in class, but I can’t be certain. Ben is right; I don’t know his schedule anymore. Another detail I’ve let slide, another thing to beat myself up for.

My body feels full of self-inflicted bruises.

Ben picks up on the third ring.

“What’s going on?” he asks without preamble. “All the blinds are down. In administration.”

I know from experience that this act is reserved for when things are at their worst. Like some cheap venetian blinds will give the administration the superpowers they need to solve whatever crisis drove the blinds down in the first place.

“Ugh. And they’re saying nothing?”

“They never say anything. We get more info from the students. They always seem to know what’s going on before we do.”

“Wasn’t I saying that the other day?”

I wish I could catch the words as they tumble out of my mouth, roll them back up into my brain.

Thankfully, Ben doesn’t take it badly. “You were.”

“Are you hearing anything from that quarter?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“What?”

“You wouldn’t tell me anything this morning, and now you expect—”

“That’s not the same thing and you know it.”

“Do I?”

I turn my desk chair around so I’m looking out my meager window. I should’ve known this would happen. That whatever thin veneer we’d coated ourselves in these last twenty-four hours wouldn’t last. It hasn’t had time to harden.

“Elizabeth? You still there?”

“Still here.”

“Why did you call?”

“Because you asked me to.”

“No, I meant . . . Forget it.”

“I wanted to talk to you,” I say.

“You did?”

“Don’t act so surprised.”

“Everything surprises me, these days.”

“Me too, whether you believe it or not.”

“If you say so.”

“Look, I am coming to the school, okay? We’re going to be doing some interviews.”

“No wonder the blinds are down.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m having trouble believing that one of these kids could be the cause of all this.”

“That’s because you see the good in everyone.”

“You really think that?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I do.”

We fall silent again, but somehow it’s better this time.

“You have that thing with my mother today, right?” Ben says. “That fitting thing?”

“I think so. At four thirty.”

“Maybe we could go to dinner after?”

“Thai Thai?” I say, hopefully.

“That sounds good.”

“It’s a date.”

My mouth stumbles over the words, but maybe this is what we need. A date. A beginning. A foothold.

Or maybe I should stop overthinking everything for once and let it just be dinner. Sustenance.

“I’ll meet you there at six,” I say.

“Will do. And don’t be too tough on Tucker. We don’t know if he did anything yet.”

“How did . . .”

“You’re not the only one who can keep secrets.”

CHAPTER 20

Back to School

Mindy

Before turning up at the school,
Mindy had the presence of mind to call ahead (she couldn’t show up during class hours these days and expect to be admitted), and so Ben was there waiting for her by the side door, as he said he would be.

As with Elizabeth, she hadn’t interacted with Ben since The Falling Out. She’d seen him around town and in the distance at school events, but they hadn’t spoken. It was strange to Mindy that she hadn’t realized it until now, but she’d missed Ben too. Even though it was Elizabeth she’d been closest with, they were all friends separately. It was one of the things she’d loved about them, about her and Peter and them. When the couples had dinner, they didn’t split along gender lines; they all talked together. Or she’d talk to Ben while Beth talked to Peter. Ben knew as much about Mindy’s life as anyone (well, almost, anyway), and when someone like that goes away, they take a piece of you with them. But it made perfect sense that they hadn’t spoken. Elizabeth was the one who’d brought them together, and the fight had torn them all apart.

“You want to come in?” Ben asked. He looked older than the last time Mindy saw him up close, more mature somehow. As if the last traces of childhood were erased by what had gone on in his life since she knew him. Which seemed an odd thing to happen in a year, until Mindy thought about the last twenty-four hours of her life. If she’d taken a picture of her own self three days ago and compared it with how she looked this morning, she was certain she could tell the difference.

“Is there somewhere we could go outside?” Mindy asked.

“I’ve only got thirty minutes till my next class. But hold on a sec.”

Ben disappeared back into the building while Mindy shivered inside her anorak, though it was more than adequate protection against this ridiculous weather. It was hot without any chance of rain. The slate sky was indistinguishable from the layer of smoke between it and the ground. She’d only worn it out of habit.

The fire. In the chaos of the morning, Mindy had forgotten to check for the latest update. She pulled out her phone and tapped on the saved link in her browser. It was still growing. Officials were hopeful that the water drops, which had stopped an hour ago, would do the trick. But just in case, crews would begin preparing structures closest to the fire’s path. Cutting down trees and removing undergrowth. Bringing in hoses and equipment to be ready at a moment’s notice. One of the areas where that work was under way included Ben and Elizabeth’s house, she saw when she opened the map. She couldn’t imagine what that must be like. Yet there she was, burdening Ben with her own troubles.

She was about to leave when Ben reappeared wearing an anorak similar to Mindy’s. It was part of the town uniform, one for every season. Perhaps they both wished that if they dressed normal-weather appropriate, they might bring it to pass.

“Follow me,” he said.

They walked in silence to the edge of the school grounds. Voyages occupied a ten-acre campus near the river that snaked through the southern edge of the valley. Though it was one of the older schools in the district, several substantial endowments from alumni meant that the low collage of buildings looked freshly built. The classrooms were sunny and large, the class sizes small, and the facilities incomparable.