Page 32 of Strict Confidence (Rochester Trilogy 2)
She’d forgive me, too. That’s the part that makes me feel sickest of all. That diary punched a hole through her understanding of the past. Then I said things that made it worse.
The things that came out of my mouth. Jesus.
I walk around the corner of the house, revealing myself to the wide-open landscape. The hair on the back of my neck stands up… as if someone’s watching.
I glance along the line of the cliffs.
Along the tree line. Everywhere a person could be.
There’s too much destruction to see anything clearly. In the bedrooms the inner walls stay partially standing. All it takes to get inside is pushing back damaged siding. It crumbles under my hands. A pocket watch peers out at me from the floor of the room. This was Rhys and Emily’s bedroom. I push inside, and the feeling of being watched dissipates.
Paranoia brought on by stress. That’s all it is.
My feet sink into the heat-weakened hardwood. If I’m not careful, I’ll fall straight down to the cellar. Every footstep has to be considered. It doesn’t take my mind off the prickling sensation all down my spine. If someone is here, on the property…
A gust of wind moves through the gaps in the structure. Its touch chills the back of my neck. Under my shirt. Everywhere under my coat. I feel like a ghost just walked through me. I feel like a ghost would have done less harm to Jane, unless it was a ghost who set the fire.
I’ve been back to the scene once before. A deputy escorted me around while I threw whatever I could find into boxes to bring to the inn, but this is the first time I’ve had free rein.
Then I was restricted to the least damaged part of the house. Now I wade deeper into the area blackened and weak with fire, everything still smelling of smoke seven days later.
The glint of cherry wood reflects the sunlight through its layer of soot. I climb over rubble and unrecognizable burned furniture. It’s my desk. Rhys’s desk, technically. I didn’t want to change too much when I moved in. Paige had been through enough changes in her life without also watching me redecorate her childhood home. But I’d never been completely comfortable in another man’s home. Especially that man. My brother. We’d been competitive at best. Toxic and violent at worst. I always felt the lingering dark energy, a kind of subtle menace. The knowledge that he would fuck someone over if he could get away with it.
Somehow, the light has chased away that feeling.
Soot dances in the sun, surprisingly active, almost playful. Rooms that were heavy with history are now a pile of wood and fabric, made ordinary by ruin.
The fire was devastating, but one good thing came of it.
It cleansed the house, more effectively than a tidal wave.
The desk fell through the ceiling of the dining room. I climb over singed chairs and the large, cracked table to get there. My leg protests every goddamn crater. I used to ski the black diamonds in Vail. Now I’m reduced to leaning heavily on disjointed furniture to move around. When I first fractured my leg, it was a straightforward recovery. The strain of the fire, of being trapped under a beam, has irrevocably fucked it up. I need weeks of bed rest, according to the doctors. Months of physical therapy. Instead I’d checked myself out against their advice the next day. Paige needs me. Jane needs me, too.
There were two large flat-screen monitors on the desk. My computer’s tower underneath. None of that is anywhere to be seen. It’s probably under some of this other debris. The papers I’d been working on are gone. Burned to dust, probably.
The bottom of the desk has crumpled like an accordion.
The top is still intact. I open the first drawer, revealing a keyboard that seems barely bruised from the fall. The next drawer used to contain manila folders stacked neatly. Now they’re crammed full of papers spilling over each other. I pick up one piece of paper. It’s the court documents granting me guardianship of Paige. Her birth certificate. I gather the papers roughly and stuff them into the manila folder. The fact that they managed to escape both the fire and whatever chemicals the firefighters used to douse the flames is a minor miracle.
“Not safe for you to be climbing around in there.”
I make a sharp turn at the voice. My foot cracks through the floor and I almost drop the folder. It’s not a ghost who stands outside the dining room window—or the wall where the window once stood. It’s the fire chief. Hanging close behind him is the bastard Joe Causey.
“No, Chief,” I say. “It isn’t.” Alan Diebold has been the fire chief in Eben Cape for about as long as I can remember. He’s personally attended most of the fires in the area. People still talk about the one he missed. The old bookstore, down on the main street in town. He was in the hospital with a heart attack. “Just wanted to see what was left.”
