Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down (22 page)

Do you have change for a dollar?

She rummaged through a drawer. I'm sure we do.

We'll be back in a few minutes.

Take your time. Your father will probably be another half hour at least.

Nick motioned to his brother. Jeff hopped from his chair and followed Nick down the hallway, walking with his handheld game, until they found two vending machines between the obstetrics ward and the cardiology department.

Take your pick, Nick said. You can have a soda or a snack.

Nick handed him quarters. Jeff squinted at the panels of both machines. Nick meandered down the hallway while his brother chose, back toward the cardiology wing and its waiting room. He glanced through the pane of glass at the lingering patients, a waiting room more full than it had been earlier in the week. Some watched the overhead television. Some paged through magazines. A little girl sat writing something in a small notebook with her feet dangling over the edge of her chair and Nick wondered what a girl so young was doing in the cardiology ward.

He heard the beeping of his brother pressing buttons on the machine. For the sake of brief quiet, Nick placed his hands over his ears. He peered into the cardiology waiting room through the cupped silence, the sound the same as holding a conch shell to his ear, an emulation of the ocean. The sound of a void. The sound of lack. Empty
space. A hissing rush of unfilled air. He imagined the Ndolo house and wondered if Matt's father would find it the same: nothing left. Muscle burned away from bone. The sheer force of Fahrenheit degrees needed to diminish an organ to ash, what he knew by researching cremation and what must have happened inside every house. Benji's mother. The charred ghost of her heart. Nick watched the people in the cardiology waiting room and imagined the raging circuits of faulted veins that brought them here. He watched them until his own heartbeat weathered his ears, the rhythm of a storm.

MATT SAT INSIDE
the Fiesta, his mother behind the wheel, the car stopped at the curb of Christina's house. The engine idling. The house a fortress beyond the windshield.

I'll wait for you here, his mother said.

She won't want to go.

No one wants to go. No one wants this to be happening but it is.

Matt stepped from the car. The sun was deceptive. The sky cloudless. Unbroken and smooth as the shell of a robin's egg but the air was brisk. Matt moved across Christina's front lawn, dappled with pinpricks of frost. Christina's brother answered the door and looked only vaguely surprised before motioning him into the foyer.

How're you holding up? Matt asked.

Fine. What are you doing here?

Christina came down the hallway in a pair of sweatpants and a baggy sweatshirt before he could answer Simon, her hair mostly dry, the tips still wet.

Hey, she said. Her face looked more startled than he'd hoped.

My mom's outside. We need to borrow you.

For what?

Not for long. Only for an hour or two.

She glanced at her brother. It's okay. Everything's fine.

Dad would kill you if he knew, Simon said. He disappeared into the living room.

He knows I was out, Christina whispered, but he doesn't know anything else.

My mom knows, Matt said. She was up when you left my room. She called my father and we need to take you to the station. You're not in trouble. I promise. He just needs to hear what you saw.

I barely have anything to tell him.

You do. You have more to tell him than anyone else in town.

I'm scared.

I know. But my mom and I will be there with you, too.

Christina glanced back at Simon. Hey, I'm going out for a little while.

Can you bring food back? Maybe a pizza?

Make your own damn lunch.

I would but there's nothing in the fridge.

Matt heard Christina's voice soften. What kind do you want? I'll be back in an hour. Two at most.

Papa John's. Mushroom. Dad left us some money on the counter.

Christina pulled on a pair of sneakers. She headed into the kitchen and came back with a twenty that she slid into the pocket of her sweatpants.

Matt let Christina take the front seat and from the back saw his mother pat her on the knee. You're not in trouble
,
she said. The police just need to know what you saw. They traveled toward the police station at the other end of the school district. No one spoke and Matt noticed the police cars and crime investigation units moving through the streets, their sirens quiet. Beyond them the porches of homes, steps dotted with pumpkins. Some of them carved with sharp faces and others untouched and Matt imagined the impossibility of Halloween, a once-deluge of parties and candy and costumes that felt as distant as the leaf-littered streets of his childhood.

At the police station, Christina followed him and his mother through the double doors and past the reception area to a series
of small rooms without windows. Matt knew these rooms from the few times his father had let him tour the station. Offices. Meeting rooms. A break room filled with coffee and shrink-wrapped snacks. They stopped in front of a closed door marked jim howell, forensics specialist. Matt's mother knocked and his father appeared, his gaze falling on Christina. He led her down the hallway to a type of room Matt remembered his father once showing him. A lone table. A camera. A microphone to take down testimony. Matt saw another officer waiting for Christina in the sliver of the doorway.

Who was that? Matt asked when his father returned to the office.

Witness services. I can't interview her as a forensics specialist.

She's scared to death, his mother said. Poor kid.

They'll take good care of her, Matt's father said. He sat down at his desk scattered with photographs and reports, not unlike his desk at home.

What's all of this? Matt asked. What did you find?

I didn't go to the Ndolo house. I've been in the office all morning.

Any news? Matt's mother asked.

They're still diagramming the house and its contents.

Benji had a brother. Matt remembered what Christina told him. A little brother. Was his brother in the house?

Matt's father was silent.

Dad, was his brother in the house?

Matt's father sighed. His brother. His father. His mother. No one survived.

Matt stood. This is fucked. Do you know how completely fucked this is?

Calm down, his mother said.

How can anyone calm down? What the fuck is happening here?

We're trying to figure that out, his father said. Believe me.

I don't know what to believe. Every day there's something else, something new, another siren or police car blazing down our street.

Matt felt the room's smallness and the air's limits before he felt the shame of screaming at his mother and father.

If you'll just sit down, his father said.

Tell me.

I can't tell you everything. I'm bound by—

Confidentiality. Please. Just tell me something. Anything you know.

Matt's father glanced at his mother. She looked away.

His father motioned to the papers beneath his hands. They're still in progress, but these are some of the lab reports. From fire debris analysis.

From which fire?

The Trenway fire. It's just too soon for today's fire, but we've had time to cross-reference the other two. We've found no evidence of accelerants. In either house.

So this is all just a coincidence. Dad. You really believe this is random?

Honestly, we don't know. We just know there's no sign of foul play. Both of them came back completely clean. We'll see what we find with the Ndolos' house.

Matt looked at his father. Why was Benji's mother standing in the yard?

That's why Christina's here, his father said. It might not matter at all.

His mother touched his knee. Please, Matt. Let's just wait and see.

Matt wanted to scream. Of course it mattered. He wanted to punch the walls.

NICK WAS IN
the living room with his brother when the telephone rang. Jeff splayed on the carpet watching cartoons, their father preparing them a late lunch in the kitchen. His father had at last gotten out of surgery, a scheduled C-section, and had met them straight-faced in the waiting room though Nick could see they'd surprised
him.
We didn't know where else to go,
was all Nick said. And though his father was never demonstrative he drew both of them into an embrace, patients waiting around them, the television buzzing through the waiting room the news that all of them already knew. He pulled them against his lab coat, his name stitched into the breast pocket scratching Nick's cheek
.
From the living room, Nick heard his father at the stove. The sizzle of a frying pan. The sharp scent of hot sauce fanning in from the kitchen. The midafternoon sun pierced the windows and warmed the room when the telephone split through the din of cartoons.

Nick answered the phone and heard Matt's voice.

I already know, Nick said. I saw the news this morning.

That's not why I'm calling. Nick glanced at his brother and carried the phone into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

Then what? Nick asked. His bedroom blinds were closed, the air full of visible dust. He opened the blinds and then the window, a crack of cold air blasting in.

I just got back from the police station. We took Christina there to talk to an officer. She saw Benji's mother outside her house last night just before it burst into flames.

Nick's eyes fell to the manila folder on his bed, spread open, the morning's
Post-Dispatch
article on top with its blaring headline.

Why was Christina there?

It doesn't matter. What matters is that the fire analysis has been done.

On Benji's house?

Not yet, but on the other two homes. They're still investigating, so you can't tell anyone what I'm telling you.

What? What did your dad find out?

No accelerants were involved. Nothing. Not anything that indicates arson.

That's bullshit, Nick said. You and I both know that's bullshit.

I know. I said the same thing to my dad.

Nick exhaled on his bed. Brisk air leaked in through the open
window, a crack currenting through the room. He glossed his hands across the rough print of the news article.
PANDEMONIUM
. The headline screamed at him, an admission of madness.

What did Christina see? How's she doing?

She saw the house burn. But she's okay. Nick heard Matt hesitate. She and Ryan broke up. That's why she was there. I'm sure she wouldn't mind that I told you.

Is she doing okay?

Probably not. But she was mostly shaken up by what she saw at Benji's house.

What did the police ask her?

We just took her home. She seems fine, but she wouldn't say what they asked. My guess is not much, at least nothing beyond what she told me. She saw what she saw, but the police don't know what it means. My dad said it might not matter at all.

What do you want me to do?

Matt sighed. None of this can go into a yearbook. But you can look into it. Would you? You know where to search. What a fire investigation analysis means. What kinds of accelerants they look for. I don't know. None of this makes any goddamn sense.

This isn't our job, Matt. We're not going to find anything the police can't find.

Would you rather just sit here? Under curfew? Waiting for class to start?

Nick looked around his room. The bed unmade. An entire folder of articles and photographs overwhelming his sheets.

I'll look into it, he said. What are you doing today?

Nothing. My dad's still at the office. My mom's out running errands.

And Tyler? Nick hesitated to ask.

I don't know. I haven't talked to him in two days.

Everything okay?

Fine, I guess. How's Sarah?

She's fine. Nick imagined Sarah's living room, the sun pressing in, her legs straddling his lap and the weight of her pushing against him. She's finally getting out of bed and feeling better, Nick said. An evasion he was certain Matt heard.

Tell her hello, Matt said. Christina wrote a profile of Benji last night. He's not a junior so we can't use it. But I'll see what I can write today.

You can take it easy if you need to.

I should go, Matt said. Let me know if you find anything.

Nick hung up as his father called his name and the smell of cooked eggs reached his bedroom, the open window's breeze whipping the aroma through the room.

THE DAY'S LIGHT
had just started to disappear when Matt's father came home from the police station, a half-eaten tray of lasagna on the table between Matt and his mother. Matt's father stepped into the kitchen and slid out of his shoes, the overhead light catching the circles beneath his eyes. Matt glanced away, speared the last of his lasagna. His father had aged rapidly in the short span of a week.

Were the streets deserted for curfew? Matt's mother asked. You should be careful coming home after dark.

No one's out, his father said. Only necessary vehicles. Only police.

There's no way everyone in Midvale County will obey that rule, Matt said.

I don't want you out, Matt's mother said. Don't even think about it.

Matt wanted to protest, just for the sake. He thought to raise his voice but found no will. There was nowhere to go.

We could watch a movie here, he conceded.

What movie do you want to watch?

Halloween's in two weeks. Something scary is probably on.

Matt's mother looked across the table at his father, who ladled a square of lasagna onto his plate. A small crack of worry fault-lined her brow.

We could watch a movie, she said. Though nothing too scary.

After Matt washed the dishes, his mother checked the television listings while his father swirled kernels in a pan and waited for the corn to pop. Matt leaned against the counter beside him. The piano trill of
Halloween
's opening credits floated into the kitchen.