He met her, expression grim. 'You're certain you're ready for this?'
'Do I have a choice?'
They both knew she didn't and they started up the curving drive-way, toward the detached garage. A separate structure, the garage nestled behind the main house. A covered walkway connected the two buildings.
As they neared the structure the smell of the fire grew stronger- not just of wood smoke, but of what she imagined was charred flesh and bone. As they turned the corner of the driveway she saw that a large, irregularly shaped black mark marred the doorway.
'The heat from the fire,' Matt explained. 'It did more damage inside. Actually, it's a wonder the building didn't come down.'
A half-dozen years ago, while working for the Tribune, Avery had been assigned to cover a rash of fires that had plagued the Chicago area. It turned out the arsonist had been the estranged son of a firefighter, looking to punish his old man for kicking him out of the house. Unfortunately, the police hadn't caught him before he'd been responsible for the deaths of six innocent people-one of them an infant.
Avery and Matt reached the garage. She steeled herself for what would come next. She understood how gruesome death by fire was. Matt led her to the side door. Opened it. They stepped into the building. The smell crashed over her. As did the stark reality of her father's last minutes. She imagined his screams as the flames en-gulfed him. As his skin began to melt. Avery brought a hand to her mouth, her gaze going to the large char mark on the concrete floor-the spot where her father had burned alive.
His suicide had been an act of not only despair but self-hatred as well.
She began to tremble. Her head grew light, her knees weak. Turning, she ran outside, to the azalea bushes with their burgeoning blossoms. She doubled over, struggling not to throw up. Not to fall apart.
Matt came up behind her. He laid a hand on her back.
Avery squeezed her eyes shut. 'How could he do it, Matt?' She looked over her shoulder at him, vision blurred by tears. 'It's bad enough that he took his own life, but to do it like that? The pain…it would have been excruciating.'
'I don't know what to say,' he murmured, tone gentle. 'I don't have any answers for you. I wish I did.'
She straightened, mustering anger. Denial. 'My father loved life. He valued it. He was a doctor, for God's sake. He'd devoted his life to preserving it.'
At Mart's silence, she lashed out. 'He was proud of himself and the choices he'd made. Proud of how he had lived. The man who did that hated himself. That wasn't my dad.' She said it again, tone taking on a desperate edge. 'It wasn't, Matt.'
'Avery, you haven't been-' He bit the words off and shifted his gaze, expression uncomfortable.
'What, Matt? I haven't been what?'
'Around a lot lately.' He must have read the effect of his words in her expression and he caught her hands and held them tightly. 'Your dad hadn't been himself for a while. He'd withdrawn, from everybody. Stayed in his house for days. When he went out he didn't speak. Would cross to the other side of the street to avoid conversation.'
How could she not have known? 'When?' she asked, hurting. 'When did this start?'
'I suppose about the time he gave up his practice.'
Just after her mother's death.
'Why didn't somebody call me? Why didn't-' She bit the words back and pressed her trembling lips together.
He squeezed her fingers. 'It wasn't an overnight thing. At first he just seemed preoccupied. Or like he needed time to grieve. On his own. It wasn't until recently that people began to talk.'
Avery turned her gaze to her father's overgrown garden. No wonder, she thought.
'I'm sorry, Avery. We all are.'
She swung away from her old friend, working to hold on to her anger. Fighting tears.
She lost the battle.
'Aw, Avery. Geez.' Matt went to her, drew her into his arms, against his chest. She leaned into him, burying her face in his shoulder, crying like a baby.
He held her awkwardly. Stiffly. Every so often he patted her shoulder and murmured something comforting, though through her sobs she couldn't make out what.
The intensity of her tears lessened, then stopped. She drew away from him, embarrassed. 'Sorry about that. It's…I thought I could handle it.'
'Cut yourself some slack, Avery. Frankly, if you could handle it, I'd be a little worried about you.'
Tears flooded her eyes once more and she brought her hand to her nose. 'I need a tissue. Excuse me.'
She headed toward her car, aware of him following. There, she rummaged in her purse, coming up with a rumpled Kleenex. She blew her nose, dabbed at her eyes, then faced him once more. 'How could I not have known how bad off he was? Am I that self-involved?'
'None of us knew,' he said gently. 'And we saw him every day.'
'But I was his daughter. I should have been able to tell, should have heard it in his voice. In what he said. Or didn't say.'
'It's not your fault, Avery.'
'No?' She realized her hands were shaking and slipped them into her pockets. 'But I can't help wondering, if I had stayed in Cypress Springs, would he be alive today? If I'd given up my career and stayed after Mom's death, would he have staved off the depression that caused him to do…this? If I had simply picked up the pho-'
She swallowed the words, unable to speak them aloud. She met his gaze. 'It hurts so much.'
'Don't do this to yourself. You can't go back.'
'I can't, can I?' She winced at the bitterness in her voice. 'I loved my dad more than anyone in the world, yet I only came home a handful of times in all the years since college. Even after Mom died so suddenly and so horribly, leaving so much unresolved between us. That should have been a wake-up call, but it wasn't.'
He didn't respond and she continued. 'I've got to live with that, don't I?'
'No,' he corrected. 'You have to learn from it. It's where you go from here that counts now. Not where you've been.'
A group of teenagers barreled by in a pickup truck, their raucous laughter interrupting the charged moment. The pickup was followed by another group of teenagers, these in a bright-yellow convertible, top down.
Avery glanced at her watch. Three-thirty. The high school let out the same time as it had all those years ago.
Funny how some things could change so dramatically and others not at all.
'I should get back to work. You going to be okay?'
She nodded. 'Thanks for baby-sitting me.'
'No thanks necessary.' He started for the car, then stopped and looked back at her. 'I almost forgot, Mom and Dad are expecting you for dinner tonight.'
'Tonight? But I just got in.'
'Exactly. No way are Mom and Dad going to let you spend your first night home alone.'
'But-'
'You're not in the big city anymore, Avery. Here, people take care of each other. Besides, you're family.' Home. Family. At that moment nothing sounded better than that. 'I'll be there. They still live at the ranch?' she asked, using the nickname they had given the Stevenses' sprawling ranch-style home.
Of course. Status quo is something you can count on in Cypress Springs.' He crossed to his vehicle, opened the door and looked back at her. 'Is six too early?' 'It' ll be perfect.'
Great.' He climbed into the cruiser, started it and began back-ing up. Halfway down the driveway he stopped and lowered his window. 'Hunter's back home,' he called. 'I thought you might want to know.'
Avery stood rooted to the spot even after Matt's cruiser disappeared from sight. Hunter? she thought, disbelieving. Matt's fraternal twin brother and the third member of their triumvirate. Back in Cypress Springs? Last she'd heard, he'd been a partner at a prestigious New Orleans law firm.
Avery turned away from the road and toward her childhood home. Something had happened the summer she'd been fifteen, Hunter and Matt sixteen. A rift had grown between the brothers. Hunter had become increasingly aloof, angry. He and Matt had fought often and several times violently. The Stevenses' house, which
