Chapter 5

The file came in under the fire marshal's cover sheet Tuesday morning with a red stamp, and I read it at the folding table in the back of the church hall with a cup of coffee I never touched.

Twenty-nine pages. Incident report, witness statements, photographs with a paper clip, an insurance adjuster's note from October 1994.

The photographs are what I want to talk about.

One of them is looking up at the house from the yard side, and you can see the whole north wall blackened, and my bedroom window, and my mother's window. The other one is looking down Coon Hollow Road, and if you know that road - I drive it, I've driven it since I was seventeen, I know where the mailbox used to be - you can see the corner of a fence line at the top right of the frame. That fence line is still there. I've pulled cars off that shoulder a dozen times.

The file doesn't mention the fence.

The file says the point of origin is the southeast corner of the structure, at the exterior wall, at an outlet. The house we lived in was a two-bedroom box with the kitchen at the southeast corner and my mother's room at the west and my room at the northeast and the crib along the north wall of my room.

The southeast corner of that house was a wall. There was nothing on it. There was never anything on it.

I sat there and read it four times because I wanted to make sure I wasn't crazy. The file places me and my crib and the baby twenty feet from a fire that it says started all the way on the other side of the house.

Then the part that made me put the coffee down.

The signed statement from the fire investigator says the cause is "likely electrical, no accelerant detected." There is no lab page. There is no sample sheet. There is no chain of custody. There is a handwritten note clipped to the back in different ink: "Per counsel, no further investigative action required. Case closed 6/94."

Counsel. In a fire investigation. Somebody wrote the word counsel in the middle of a fire file for a house on Coon Hollow Road.

I had my radio on the table, tuned to dispatch out of habit. It crackled and I didn't answer it. I was reading the adjuster's note that says the dwelling was "underinsured" and "condemned for occupancy," dated July, when my mother was already living in a rented room on Water Street and I was already sleeping with my arm wrapped because they'd grafted skin off my thigh and it hurt to move my blanket.

Then my phone rang.

Not a number I knew. I picked it up anyway because I'm an idiot with a tow truck and that's my whole personality.

"Ms. Keene? This is Alice Fenwick, I'm Mr. Ottaway's executive assistant."

"I know who you are."

"Mr. Ottaway asked me to reach out. He's aware of your yard situation and the loss of the wrecker, and he wants me to tell you the company will cover all of it." She was smooth. Practiced. Not unkind. "Full flood damage on the shop and the building, replacement of the tow equipment, and he'd like to do it privately, without the county paperwork. He said to tell you he's got a soft spot for you and your mother."

I looked at the note on the back of the fire file. Per counsel.

"Which Mr. Ottaway."

"Dalton Ottaway, president." A pause. "Is there a problem, ma'am?"

"Yeah. Tell him blue is my favorite color."

"I'm sorry?"

"Tell him blue." I hung up. My hands weren't shaking, which surprised me. I put the file in my tote and I went out and stood on the church steps in the rain and lit a cigarette I don't smoke.

That evening, driving Route 19 over the ridge to bring my mother her mail because the low bridge is gone and the mail carrier won't go around, I saw it.

A pickup with the Ottaway Fuel & Grain logo on the door, parked in the Pinewood Rest lot, facing the entrance.

Engine off. Nobody in it.

I drove past, turned around at the Sunoco, and drove back, and by then there were two men sitting in it with coffee cups, not looking at anything.