“I’ll tell you that story, I promise, but first I need to tell you something that happened when you were just a little girl. Do you remember when this store burned down?”
Goose bumps ran up Ellie’s arm from her wrists to her elbows. Of course she remembered that day. Everyone in Broadlands remembered the day Tim Ray died. Up until the stroke, her father still mentioned Tim’s family in their family Thanksgiving and Easter dinner prayers, and Amelia had told her that Steve still walked around in a funk, snapping at everyone in his house, on the anniversary of the fire.
Once she asked her father about the firefighter they always prayed for, and her father told the story of a giant fire at Nancy’s Emporium, an enterprise already out of business and abandoned. It was started in the basement by some hitchhiker from the highway who broke the lock to the basement with a rock. Later, it was determined that the vagrant lit a fire in one of the no-longer-functioning stand-up freezers. But because of the nature of the freezer, it burned and burned and burned until it got so hot that it exploded, causing a whole section of the floor to collapse. It just so happened that Tim, wearing only half his gear, was navigating the fire against his supervisor’s orders, and when the building collapsed, Tim went down with it. She once heard Steve talking about how they pulled him out of the rubble three hours later once they had gotten it under enough control that no other lives would be risked. By then, he was long dead and so horrifically burned, there was not much left to retrieve.
“I don’t know what that has to do with any of this besides being the location of your super creepy art studio.”
Caleb steepled his fingers together and stared at her over them like a supervillain with some kind of evil plan.
“Ellie, it has everything to do with this.”
CHAPTER 34
AMELIA
Tuesday, May 10
“Arson?” Amelia gasped, still standing with her back to the door, not sure she’d heard Steve’s convoluted plan correctly. “You have lost your mind. My goodness. What in the world are you thinking?”
“What am I thinking? I’m thinking that someone has to take care of this family, especially now that we have your dad weighing us down too. And you, my dear,” he said, shooting the term of endearment at Amelia like a spear, “owe me. I’ve given and given and given so you could do your music stuff while I sit around in this crappy office day in and day out. So, today, you are going to give back to me. You are going to help us.”
Amelia forced herself not to respond. No way in hell she’d help burn down the office. Why would she perpetrate fraud and put her own home and belongings at risk, not to mention her good name, just because Steve had gotten them into debt? There had to be a way other than guns and gasoline and committing actual crimes.
Randy, who’d been standing silently tapping his foot back and forth in a rat-a-tat pattern, finally spoke up.
“We don’t need anyone else. Let’s just do this.” He shifted his attention from Steve to Amelia, a building panic shown through the tension in his shoulders and restless fingers. “You won’t tell anyone, right, Amelia? You know how to keep a secret. She knows how to keep a secret, Steve. I’m sure of it.”
This lapdog version of Randy was disconcerting and such a strange contrast to the real estate agent she’d considered as a potential business partner. She didn’t know who was more disturbing—the manipulative criminal mastermind her husband turned out to be or the sniveling crony Randy transformed into.
“I can keep all kinds of secrets when I want to, Randy,” she replied, saying his name like she was speaking to a child, “but . . . I don’t think I want to keep this one. You two have a blast setting the house on fire. I’m going to go.” Amelia pointed her thumb over her shoulder toward the kitchen, the moment feeling too surreal to be scary.
As Amelia turned to leave, Steve spoke loudly.
“You aren’t thinking of doing anything stupid, are you?” His nostrils flared, and his muscles seemed puffed up like feathers on a bird preparing for a fight. “You’ll be arrested too, you know, and then you’ll leave our children with no parents. What kind of mother would do that?”
Those words, they had power. When Steve spoke to her like that, Amelia’s mind would grow cloudy, and things she thought she knew suddenly became unsure. She knew she was a good mother; she knew it. Her children loved her. They felt safe and cared for. They were fed and clothed and clean, but when Steve questioned her parenting, all of those sureties faded into gray and then black.
“I don’t believe you,” she responded with a firm resolve even though every part of her mind was racing through a cloud of questions.
“Remember what it was like to grow up without a mom? You want to do that to our girls? You want little Cora and Kate to have to tell the kids at school that their mommy and daddy are in jail? What kind of mother are you? You are so selfish, Amelia. Pure selfishness.”
It was hard to stand up against the barrage of words. He hadn’t touched her, he hadn’t even raised his voice, but she felt as though she were being held down and hit repeatedly. They made her wonder if perhaps she was a bad mother and wife. Maybe she was the selfish one. Look, Steve was willing to risk everything to make life better for her family. All she ever did was play at a few stupid wedding receptions, ribbon cuttings, and the occasional festival. She refused to take the job with Randy. She insisted on keeping her father out of a home. She never had the laundry folded and put away, dinner on the table, floors washed, house decorated like everyone else’s wife did. And then here she was again, standing in the way of Steve taking care of their family.