DAWSON DID not set the fire. After Reese called Lila McDaniels, he’d come in to interview the young man. It was after midnight on Friday. The boy and his mother were waiting for him when he arrived at The Lemonade Stand after he finished processing the scene.
“My aunt’s husband just left her,” the fourteen-year-old said. “Mom had to go to her and I couldn’t let her go out alone.”
Mandy Dawson nodded. “He was with my sister and I the entire time,” she said, one of the saddest looks Reese had ever seen on her face. Like a woman who’d lost all hope. “He’s afraid to let me out of his sight.”
But Faye had seen the boy outside.
“When the next-door neighbor called, saying there was a fire, Kyle jumped up and ran out to see,” Mandy said, looking at her son with moist eyes. “My sister and I were actually excited to see him act like a normal kid again—even for a second.”
“I’m a normal kid, Mom...” The boy watched his mom with the concern of a much older man. Then he turned to Reese. “Mom’s...my grandfather...and then my dad...she doesn’t defend herself.”
“I didn’t want them to hurt Kyle,” the woman said. And Reese knew he was in way over his head.
No, Reese, my ex-husband hurt me, not our son.
What did you do with that?
The beast he was trained to fight raged by certain rules. You just had to assess the weather and the mood of the fire, then apply the right process. There was never a fire that they wouldn’t win against. It was just a matter of how long you had to fight and how much damage you could or couldn’t prevent in the meantime.
But this...
“And now here we sit,” Mandy said, looking at Reese, her eyes still wet with unshed tears. “Because Kyle ran outside, he’s suddenly a suspect? What has he ever done? My son’s a great student. He’s never been in any kind of trouble. He’s a good boy...”
Reese was done here.
“He’s not in trouble,” he said. But just to be certain, he had to ask, “What size shoe do you wear?”
“Nine, why?”
“No reason.”
He looked at the boy, knowing that he could fix at least one small portion of Mandy Dawson’s hopelessness. “We’re questioning everyone who was outside tonight,” he said. “Because you are both residents here, we wanted to make certain you got back safely, first and foremost. We’re just looking for anything you might have seen, however innocuous, anything you might have noticed or that caught your attention, for whatever reason. A candy wrapper on the ground. A person standing alone—”
“I know that my father’s white truck was nowhere to be seen, and that he wasn’t outside with the other people standing around...”
The boy had been looking for signs of his father. He hadn’t noticed anything that could help Reese. The fire truck had just been arriving when he’d run outside. He’d noticed plenty while he’d been standing there, just not anything that might point to a perp. Clearly Kyle was interested in the business of fighting fires. If Reese had hired someone to report on the activities of his crew, if he’d been running a secret performance review, he’d have just received a great one.
Reese thanked Kyle and his mother for their time, apologized for having created any unnecessary angst by requesting a meeting with them and left.
He spent the entire drive home resisting the temptation to go back. To ask if he could do anything to help. He spent the next hour at home, telling himself not to call Faye. He was out of his league on this one.
There was nothing he could do.
The urges he was feeling were his own issue—a product of living with bone-deep regret. Of having lost someone close to him because he hadn’t been aware enough. Hadn’t done enough.
His skills lay in firefighting.
It was best if he just stuck with that.
* * *
FAYE WAS OFF all weekend and spent every waking moment with her son. Trying to fill the two days with happy memories, as though they could wipe out years of frightening ones.
He wanted to go to the beach, so they spent both days there. She made picnic lunches. Bought him a boogie board and herself an umbrella with a weighted stand. She bought sunscreen and beach towels—all things they’d had in their old life but she’d left behind.
Elliott was fine with the plans—as long as they didn’t include her.
“I’m not sitting with you,” he said as she packed up their gear on Saturday morning. He’d come into the kitchen in his new fluorescent green and blue suit with a drab green T-shirt, carrying his new boogie board. She’d picked up the oversize shoulder bag with her blanket, two beach towels and the book she wanted to read.
“Fine.”
He didn’t usually sit when they went to the beach. He played in the water.
The cooler sat on the counter, filled with ice and food. Another bag held drinks and cups and paper towels. “Could you get the cooler, please?” she asked him, putting her purse on her opposite shoulder. “It will fit on top of your board.”
“No.”
“Elliott.”
“You wanted the dumb picnic, you carry it.”
The whole “happy memory” plan in mind, she picked up the cooler.
“Could you at least get the bag?”
“No.”
“Elliott!”
“No. I don’t want that junk. I shouldn’t hafta carry it.”
His disrespect couldn’t be ignored. Sara had made that point very clear. “We don’t have to go.”
“Fine.”
Dropping his new board on the floor, he stepped on it, and then off, dropping into a chair, his arms on the table. “I didn’t want to go to the stupid beach, anyways,” he said.
“I thought you did.”
“Not with you, I didn’t.”
Two years’ worth of battling his hateful words still hadn’t thickened her skin enough to prevent their sting.
“But you want to go.”
He shrugged.
“And you’ll get hungry and not want to have to come home with me for lunch. You like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which is what I packed.”
He didn’t budge, his expression sour.
“So...you carry the cooler down with your lunch and I won’t walk beside you once
