The Burning Road to Divorce After the Fire novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Second Take

Melanie came up the grade at dusk with Biscuit on the seat beside her and her phone in a freezer bag.

Kurt was on the barn steps with a pot of coffee, and he stood up when her truck stopped.

I had told him she was coming.

I had not told him what I thought she might say, because I did not know.

"I won't take long," Melanie said, and then she sat down on the bottom step and put her face in her hands.

Biscuit leaned on her leg.

I sat beside her.

Kurt poured her a cup and put it in her fingers, and she held it without drinking.

"I lied in your kitchen," she said. "I didn't mean to. I told you what he told me."

"What did he tell you?"

"That the fire jumped the ridge on my side. That it was coming for the ranch." She wiped her face on her sleeve. "I never got an evacuation order, Lainey. I never got a text or a siren. I never smelled smoke until after."

"Then why did you believe him?"

"Because it was Brent." She laughed, thin and broken. "Because I've believed him since I was sixteen."

"Tell her all of it," Kurt said.

"I'll show you," Melanie said.

She took the phone out of the freezer bag, and her hands shook.

"I have a camera on my front gate. It records to my phone. I didn't look at it for two weeks. Then the clinic, and the tape, and what you said about the time." She swallowed. "I went back to 3:51."

She held it out.

I took it.

The video was gray and grainy, with a time stamp in the corner.

At 3:51 a.m., a white news van stopped at the ranch gate and sat with its headlights on.

A second car pulled up behind it.

A woman got out in a blazer, holding a clipboard, and a man with a camera on his shoulder got out of the van.

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