“I’m sure,” I said.
Ryan led us toward his car, sending a message through his walkie-talkie, letting his team know he was okay, and where he was going, and then adding, “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll call my dad.”
A car braked to a halt beside Ryan’s Jeep, and Annika spilled out, leaving the door ajar, her hair untamed, her eyes wild. “She’s okay?” she called. “You’re okay?”
I barely had time to turn in her direction before she was falling into my arms, burying her face in my hair. “They wouldn’t let me back down your street, or mine. Nobody would tell me anything.” She lifted her head, stared at Ryan. “And you weren’t answering your phone.” She reached around me and smacked him on the upper arm, which made Ryan smile. “And then I heard sirens and followed the lights….”
“I’m okay,” I said. “Where were you?”
But Annika was just shaking her head, her curls tickling my cheek.
“She called,” Ryan said.
“You saw the fire?” I asked.
“Before,” Ryan answered again. “Apparently couldn’t get any signal on her cell, which tipped her off.”
“I looked over the wall to your house,” she said, “but I couldn’t see anything. Still. I knew. I took my car and saw the other one parked at the end of my driveway, and that’s when I was sure. I drove until I got signal, but the police thought I was crazy. Apparently no cell signal is not exactly an emergency. And then I called Ryan—but turned out he was already on his way….He said he’d call it in. Oh my God, I was so scared.” She shook her head again, and I held her tight.
I turned to look at Ryan, who raised one shoulder in a shrug. “You weren’t at lunch,” he said. And then he frowned. “I wish you’d told me. You could’ve told me.”
“I didn’t want to drag you down into this. Not any more than I already have.”
“Kelsey, you don’t have to drag me anywhere.”
But I thought of the way he had looked at me when he realized I had started the fire. Now he knew all of the truth, and I wondered if everything was about to change. “I set that fire, Ryan. I did it.”
He pulled me from Annika. Held me close. “And I wish I had been there with you. I wish you hadn’t had to do it all alone.”
But I didn’t. Annika and Ryan had gotten help when I could not. And I thought how lucky I was—that even when I believed I was alone in that house, I was not.
—
Annika followed us to the hospital, waited with Ryan out in the lobby while I was taken to see my mother. The police were already in there, and so was Jan, but I pushed through them, pushed straight to the side of her bed, my heart breaking as she smiled. She reached a hand for mine.
“You’re okay?” I asked.
“The bullet went straight through,” she said, gesturing toward the bandage on her upper arm. I knew it would scar, though. That there would always be a reminder. I hoped when she reached her hand for it, when she felt the rough skin that would remain over time, she would remember what she did.
“Okay,” my mother said, taking a deep breath. She turned to the man standing at the foot of her bed. Detective Mahoney. “I’ll tell you everything. But my daughter stays.”
All the stories, all the secrets, came out in the long hours that followed, as I kept watch beside her hospital bed. Jan had called a lawyer, but my mother wasn’t interested in his advice. I didn’t leave her side. This was my story, as well as hers.
Samuel Lyter was his name. A ghost to me, brought to flesh. He was three years older than my mother. He was her boyfriend, and she went willingly. She did. She thought it was her only way out. She wanted to leave behind her terrible past. She wanted her father to come home and see that she had destroyed the house. She wanted him to pay. She did not mean for it to look like a kidnapping, but she couldn’t go back. The story took on a life of its own, as stories tend to do.
Her testimony and my DNA should be enough to bring him to justice, easily. It had started with petty theft, she said. How they survived. Just wait here, they’d tell her, and she blindly listened. Samuel and his brother Martin would leave her waiting in the car, ready to drive off quickly. She did not realize at first what was happening inside.
The lawyer told her—and still she did not listen—that she would be held liable for those crimes as well, whether she knew about the violence happening inside or not. But it didn’t matter: she confessed them all.
By the time she did realize what was happening, around the time the media had also turned on her father, she found out she was pregnant—and she tried to leave. I hoped that counted for something. I hoped that counted for a lot. And that’s when they tied her up, kept her in the basement, burned her back with industrial-strength drain cleaner, doused the room in gasoline, holding up a match as a threat.
And then one day, she escaped.
Her father was dead.
She was guilty.
The media would vilify her too if they knew the truth. And she had something more, now. I was just an idea then, she said. But still, something more.
These were not simple choices. Most things weren’t.
When she finished her story, the lawyer said he wanted to discuss things in private. The police left, but I remained. My mother looked me in the eye, then at Jan. The room smelled like smoke, and I realized it was me. That I was covered in soot and smoke, and there was still half a story that needed to be told—mine. And that this part I would have to do on my own.
Jan placed a hand on my shoulder. “It’s time to go now,” she said, but I shook her off.
“Go, Kelsey,” my mother said. She brought my hand to her face, which was warm and familiar, and she whispered into it, “It’s time for you to go now.”
She released my hand, my fingers slipping from her grip, but I couldn’t back away. “Mom,” I said, but it came out sounding like a plea.
“You’ll be okay,” she said.
I closed my eyes. “Okay,” I said.
One foot in front of the other. Out the door, through the bright hall, into the lobby where Ryan and Annika were asleep in chairs, side by side. “It’s time to go home,” I said, jarring them both awake.
Never mind that I didn’t have one. Never mind that I didn’t know where I was going, or what would happen to my mother, or me, or the three who were in police custody.
All I knew was that tonight I would be going back to Jan’s, and tomorrow she’d meet with my mom’s lawyer. I’d give my statement to the police, and Ryan would come see me, as he was currently promising to do. Annika would call, and we’d figure it out—that’s what Jan was saying. We’d figure it out tomorrow.
Tomorrow, anything could happen.
I was going to see the house today.
The house would become a rubble of debris and ash, a flat piece of land, as if it had never truly existed. It was built from blood and fear, but at the core, it was all still just wood and bolts, glass and concrete.
Whatever remained after the fire would be demolished. They said it was the safest way. I couldn’t live in it, anyway—not after I knew what it had been made from, and for. Guilt. Fear. A self-imposed confinement. The money wasn’t hers anyway. The house did not truly belong to us.
Samuel and his brother, Martin, were in jail awaiting trial, no bond. Eli, it turned out, was only seventeen. Had been missing from his home for nearly a year. His case would be more complicated, and I felt some sympathy for him—for a boy who saw nowhere else to go, who believed there was no choice except the one that had chosen him.