“Hold on to me.”
She did, and he held on to her, until they looked toward the stairs and Angelo was watching them.
“Angelo. Come.” Charles pulled a third chair from the dining room table. “Sit down.”
He was wearing Charles’s clothes that Dorothy had left for him, loose on his thin frame. His face was closed and shrouded in silence, but something inside was shaken. He sat by them quickly, and his eyes were further open than the narrow slits that usually were the windows between him and the world.
“How are you?” Dorothy asked.
“I am okay.”
“You look all right. Are you hungry? What do you need?”
“I am okay.”
“He is,” Charles said. “He’s fine. Angelo. I’m so glad you’re all right.” His hand, which had been holding Dorothy’s before, clamped on to Angelo’s. “I’m so glad.”
Angelo didn’t answer, but it wasn’t a hard silence. The yearning in his eyes said more than he ever had in words.
“I don’t know where we’ll put you now,” Dorothy said. “Your room is gone. You’ll have to stay in the guest room.”
“What room?” Angelo asked.
“Your room at the shop is gone. You’ll have to stay here,” Dorothy said.
“I will not leave?” He was frowning, trying to understand.
“Why would you leave?” Charles said.
“That judge said there is no more probation.”
Charles’s mouth dropped. “No! Angelo! That never meant you had to leave! Of course not.” And then seeing the bewilderment in Angelo’s face, he started to laugh. “Is that what you thought? Angelo, if you want to, you can stay forever.”
“I will stay,” Angelo said, and very firmly.
“Well good, then. That’s taken care of.” Charles let go of his hand. “But we don’t have a shop anymore. It will be a while before you have anything to do.”
“Your books?” Angelo asked. “There was fire.”
“There was fire.” The joy burned away. “Yes. We lost the whole building except the basement. Angelo, tell me what happened.”
“I was in the basement.”
“Why were you in the basement?”
“I went to watch that money.”
“How did you know it was down there?”
“You did not take it away in your car.”
“Why did you go to watch it?”
“That man following, that was bad. He wanted the money.”
“What man?” Dorothy asked.
“We saw someone on the way to New York,” Charles said. “So you were in the basement. Just waiting?”
“I was waiting. And then the door opened.”
“The front door?”
“That door opened and I heard walking up there, then walking on the stairs down.”
“What about the door?”
“He tried to open but I had it locked already. But he unlocked it.”
“He had a key?” Charles asked.
“That lock, it is too easy,” Angelo said.
“What happened when he opened the door?”
“That door didn’t open.”
“The chair,” Charles said. “You had it against the door?”
“That man pushed, but I held it closed and the chair held it.”
Charles stopped. Dorothy was hardly breathing and her face was white.
“It’s all right,” Charles said. “Angelo is sitting right here with us. Whatever he tells us, he made it through.”
“It’s terrible,” she said.
“But it’s over. Go ahead, Angelo. Did he ever get the door open?”
“No, it didn’t open. Then he went back up the stairs. Then the light went off.”
“He turned off the electricity.”
“I locked the door again if he would come back. Then I waited and then I smelled fire.”
“Did you go up to see?” Charles asked.
“I looked up the stairs, but it was all fire.”
“Could you have gotten out?”
“That man, he might be waiting for me to come out.”
“So you went back down.”
“He would get that money if I went out.”
“The money isn’t as important to me as you are, Angelo!” Charles shook his head. “You could have died down there.”
“I think it was a very big fire,” Angelo said. “You say that room doesn’t burn in fires. Then the smoke came.”
“Maybe it was the better thing to do. You probably wouldn’t have gotten through it. John Borchard didn’t.”
“That man did the fire?”
“That’s what the police say. He didn’t get out, Angelo. He died right above you.”
“He was not a good man. I said be careful.”
“Yes, you did. We both had to be careful.”
Angelo’s perils had taken Dorothy’s thoughts from her own. “I think that’s enough,” she said. “Come into the kitchen, both of you. We need to eat. We’ll have a long day. We need to get back over there to get the books out. I’ll call Morgan and Alice.”
“You get something for Angelo,” Charles said. “Tell Morgan to meet me at the store in twenty minutes, and tell Alice to bring boxes. Have her buy a couple hundred somewhere. And lots of packing.”
“Don’t you want anything?” she said. “You must be starving.”
“I need to think what it means. Angelo, are you sure you had the door locked in the basement?”
“It was locked.”
“But he still got it open?”
“That man, he must be good on locks.”
Charles stared out the window. The sun had gone. In just a few minutes, clouds had covered it.
In just a few minutes more a car had arrived, loudly. Its door slammed and the doorbell rang, while a voice called through the window.
“Mr. Beale? Are you in there?”
Charles jumped to the door. “Congresswoman. Come in. Dorothy, Karen Liu is here.”
“I just heard,” Karen Liu said. Charles had barely gotten her seated. “My staff got a call that John Borchard was killed in a fire. Then they said it was in a bookstore in Alexandria. Oh, Mr. Beale! I drove right over. The street was closed. I called and found out where you lived.”
“You found us,” Charles said.
“I have some coffee,” Dorothy said.
“Yes, please. What happened? What was he doing?”
“I don’t know for sure. The police think he was trying to burn down the building and he didn’t get out in time.”
“That’s horrible! Mr. Beale, you know how I felt about him, but I never wanted anything like this! Did he…?”
