“Someone is checking the walls,” said Hannah. “Making sure there’s no fire left.”
Gabriel would know for sure, but Michael couldn’t think of a reasonable way to ask for him to join them. When they stepped through the door, he automatically reached for the switch, then told himself to stop being an idiot.
“We killed the electric for the street,” offered Marshal Faulkner. “Gas and water, too.” He swept his flashlight across the foyer floor.
Michael almost wished he hadn’t. All the wide beam showed was a cone of smoke and dark dust swirling in the air. The light found the stairway bannister: all black. The carpeted steps, too.
“Jesus,” Michael whispered. He was glad his brothers weren’t here.
The flashlight beam moved higher. “We can’t go upstairs,” said the fire marshal. “I don’t like the look of those steps.”
Michael thought about what that meant. He had his phone in his pocket—if it had even survived the swim in the creek. The case was water resistant—an investment he’d made after losing a phone in a koi pond once. He checked now and found it working. Did his brothers have theirs? What about clothes? Schoolbooks?
Identification? Car keys? His own wallet was plastered inside his back pocket, but his ID and credit cards seemed intact. He had no idea what his brothers might have on them, if anything.
Marshal Faulkner hadn’t waited for a response. He’d moved into the dining room. Michael watched the flashlight beam play along the floor, the walls, then the table.
Everything had a fine layer of soot.
The marshal stopped at the far side of the room, until Michael couldn’t see him through the haze, just the bouncing beam of his flashlight. “How long did the fire burn?”
Michael shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“When we broke in, we didn’t see anything actively burning,” Hannah said. “The place was hot and full of smoke.”
The fire marshal’s flashlight stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. “Do you remember stopping the fire?”
“No.” Michael suspected Gabriel had, but it wasn’t like he could say that. His brother certainly wouldn’t have used a fire extinguisher. But Michael had no other explanation. If he admitted not being here when the fire started, would that look better or worse? He didn’t know.
Then his eyes followed the light beam as it stopped on the door at the opposite side of the kitchen, leading to the garage—where he kept all his landscaping equipment and supplies.
If this house had gone up in flames, he wouldn’t have just lost their home, he would have lost the business, too.
“No fire in here,” the marshal said. “Just smoke damage.”
“How can you tell?”
“No burn pattern,” said Hannah. “Look at the floor and the walls.”
He couldn’t see anything but dark grey ash everywhere.
The light centered on him. “You all right?”
Maybe the residual smoke was getting to him. He cleared his throat. His eyes burned and he rubbed at them. “Yeah,” he ground out. “Fine.”
Hannah found his hand in the darkness. She squeezed once.
He didn’t squeeze back—but he didn’t let go either. He followed the arcing light back into the foyer.
Here, he could see what they meant about the burn pattern. The carpeting was black, but too black. The stairwell had been on fire. He could smell the difference, too, now that he was paying attention. Something stronger and more acrid than the smoke alone.
The flashlight hit the living room carpeting and illuminated the edge of the sofa.
Or what was left of the sofa. Michael only recognized it from its position in the room. No more green upholstery. Nothing left but the arm of a charred shell.
The fire marshal stepped back into the archway separating the foyer from the living room, shining his light along the carpeting, then along the ceiling.
The drywall had burned away, and Michael was looking at charred beams and exposed insulation. Then the light skittered down the opposite side of the room, where a few bookcases and cabinets had been built into the wall.
Michael remembered being eight years old, resentful of his three toddler brothers who never shut up. He remembered sulkily “helping” his father install those wall units, probably just an excuse to keep him out of his mother’s hair.
Why are we building this, Dad?
Because your mother wants bookcases.
Then why isn’t she building them?
Because I want to give them to her.
He couldn’t remember how much he’d actually helped, but he remembered holding a hammer, his father’s hand secure over his as he showed him how to hit a nail. He remembered being proud of the finished product, of his mother’s reaction.
Now there was nothing left. Just a burned shell of where the bookcases used to be.
Hannah edged closer to him. “If this is too much—”
“It’s fine. I’m fine.”
It wasn’t. He wasn’t.
Hannah didn’t move away. Her voice was very soft. “You’re shaking.”