Chapter 30: Home

"No," I said out loud.

Margo stopped laughing and looked at me.

Half the lawn looked at me too.

I didn't care.

"No, thank you," I said. "I'm home."

The cold sat behind my eyes for one long breath.

Then it went out, and it didn't come back.

Beside me, Cormac had gone completely still.

His eyes were somewhere far away.

Then they came back, and found mine.

"It asked me too," he said quietly. "Just now."

"What did you say?"

"I said I've got a shift Tuesday."

I laughed so hard I had to sit back down on the wet grass.

Margo laughed because I was laughing, and Cormac sat down beside us and put his arm around us both.

The television crew filmed that too.

Valerie was held without bail.

Arson. Reckless endangerment of a child.

In May the district attorney reopened the alley.

The man in Norfolk suddenly remembered every letter.

Bradford was arraigned on a Monday in a gray suit, with both hands still bandaged.

He didn't fight a single charge they read him.

He was out on bail by the afternoon, living in a hotel.

The house in Brookline smelled like smoke all the way up to the third floor.

Three weeks after the fire, Winifred called a meeting of the trust.

She held it in the boardroom at Kingsford Holdings, at the long glass table where Bradford had sat since our wedding.

Twelve directors. Two lawyers. Me, in a clean shirt with flour on the cuff.

Bradford came, because she made him.

He sat at the far end.

Winifred sat at the head, with her cane against the glass and her mint chocolates in front of her.