Brent’s voice shook. “What — what you doing?”
“Easy come, easy go.” He brought the match to the stack of bills, lighting the corner.
“No!”
The bills burst into flames, thoroughly soaked with lighter fluid. Ryan tossed them into the fireplace. Brent rushed forward. Ryan grabbed the fireplace poker, cocking it like a baseball bat. “Not another step, Brent!”
He stopped in his tracks, his face filled with anguish. The money was burning, but Ryan looked deadly serious. He was nearly in tears. “Ryan, man. Please don’t burn it.”
Ash fluttered up from the fireplace. The bills burned quickly. Ryan didn’t budge. “You lay a hand on Sarah, I’ll burn it all. I swear, I will burn every last bill.”
“Okay, man. Just be cool, okay?”
“It’s the rule,” he said, as if to remind himself as much as Brent. “No one gets the money. No one tells anyone else about the money. Not until we find out who paid it to my father and why.”
Brent backed away slowly. “Okay, my friend. You’re the man. You make the rules. I’m going home now. Just don’t burn any more of that money. That’s fair, right? You and me just pretend like this little episode never happened.”
Ryan kept the poker cocked, ready to crack Brent’s skull if he had to.
Brent stepped backward to the door. “No problem here. If you say that’s the rule, that’s the rule. I’ll just go home and tell Sarah we gotta play by the rules, that’s all.”
“Get the hell out of my sight, Brent.”
Brent gave an awkward nod, then hurried out the door. Ryan went to the front window and watched him pull away. He glanced back at the fireplace. The money was a glowing pile of smoldering ash. Thousands of dollars. Gone. Strangely, he felt good about that. He glanced up the staircase, toward the attic. There was still plenty more to fight over.
Or plenty more to burn.
He checked the clock on the end table. Mom wouldn’t be home for another hour. He stoked the ash with a shot of lighter fluid, then threw on some kindling and a dry, split log. As the fire hissed and flames reached upward, he closed the screen and started up the stairs.
16
At 9:00 P.M., Amy had a date. With Taylor.
The Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado was the largest planetarium between Chicago and Los Angeles. All summer long, Fiske sponsored Friday night programs in astronomy, followed by public viewings at the observatory. The evening programs were way over Taylor’s head, more on the level of college students than a four-year-old girl. She had loved the Wednesday morning family matinees, however, learning how runaway slaves had used the Big Dipper to find freedom, and taking a tour of the solar system with a make-believe robot. The simulated displays inside the dome were impressive enough, but Amy had promised to take her to the observatory for a look at the real nighttime sky. Tonight was the night.
They spent more than an hour at the Sommers Bausch Observatory, viewing double stars and galaxies through a sixteen-inch telescope. The big hit, however, was simply viewing Saturn and its rings through a much smaller telescope on the deck. Taylor was full of questions. Her mother had all the answers. Forty hours of graduate study in physics and infrared astronomy hadn’t gone completely to waste.
“This is so cool,” said Taylor.
“You like astronomy?”
“Only if I get to stay up late every night.”
Amy smiled. It sounded like something Amy would have said to her own mother years ago. Taylor had interest, no doubt, but she didn’t show the passion for astronomy that Amy had shown as a kid. Then again, ever since she’d started working at the law firm, Amy hadn’t given her the same level of encouragement her own mother had given her. There just wasn’t time.
She had tried not to show it in front of her daughter, but her focus had been elsewhere most of the night. She was thinking about Ryan, though not about the money. Something he’d said at the restaurant had stuck in her mind. She found it intriguing how he wished he had known his father better, thinking it might help him better understand himself. She knew that exact feeling, the eerie sense that you are what your parents were, the fear of making the same mistakes they’d made. In Amy’s case, the same deadly mistake.
Amy walked toward the edge of the observation deck, toward a little two-and-a-half-inch telescope. She pointed it due overhead, where Lyra passed Boulder on summer evenings. She quickly found Vega, the brightest and most prominent star in the constellation. Just below, she knew, was the Ring Nebula — the star she had lingered over on that summer night her mother had passed away. The one that was dying, like her childhood dreams and everything her mother had encouraged her to do.
She hadn’t taken a good look at the Ring Nebula since that night. She didn’t have to. Modern astronomers didn’t gaze into the sky to do their studies. They aimed the telescope and let their instruments do the looking. Not that Amy didn’t enjoy looking at the stars. She did. It was just this one, in particular, she couldn’t bring herself to look at.
She lowered the telescope a few degrees. She used averted vision, looking out of the corner of her eye, the best way to see faint objects in the sky. The greenish-gray rings came into view. She blinked hard. Part of her wanted to look away, another part wouldn’t let her. Staring into space, it looked exactly as it had twenty years ago. It even felt the same. Cold. Lonely. The memories were flooding back. The Ring Nebula had opened a window to her past. She could see an eight-year-old girl shivering with fear as she climbed the shelves in her bedroom closet, reaching for the attic that would be her escape…
The ceiling panel popped open easily, quietly. She pushed it up and to the side, opening her passage to the attic. The trapped air felt hot, heavy. With one last boost she was in.
The flashlight pointed the way. She remembered from the last time, when she and her friends had been playing, that another entrance panel was just a few feet away. That one led to the spare bedroom across the hall. On hands and knees she crawled across the rafters, taking care not to drop the flashlight.
She stopped when she reached the other panel, lifted it with one hand, and looked down from the attic. The closet was exactly like hers — a clothes rod on one side, built-in shelves on the other. She tucked the flashlight back under her chin and climbed down, again using the shelves as a ladder. When she reached the bottom, she crouched into a ball and took a minute to orient herself. If there was an intruder in the house, he might not find her here. She could just stay put, hide out. But the thought again crossed her mind — what if Mom needed her? What if she was hurt?
She rose slowly. She had to go out there. And she couldn’t take the flashlight. If someone was in the darkness, it would give her away like the North Star in the night sky.
She switched off the flashlight and opened the closet door. The hall was just a few steps away, beyond the bedroom door. She covered them quietly, then peered down the hallway. She saw nothing. She waited a few seconds. Still nothing. Her heart was in her throat as she stepped from the safety of the spare bedroom.
Her mother’s room was upstairs, like Amy’s, but on the opposite end of the house. It was dark, but Amy found her way. She was relying more on memory than her sense of sight. She could hear the oscillating fan in her mother’s bedroom. She was getting close. She stopped at the doorway. The door was open just a foot. Amy took another step and peeked inside.
The lights were out, but the streetlight on the corner gave the room a faint yellow cast. Everything looked normal. The TV on the stand. The big mirror over the bureau. Her eyes drifted toward the bed. It was a mound of covers. Amy couldn’t really make out her mother’s shape. But she saw the hand. It was hanging limply over the edge of the bed. A sleep far deeper than Amy had ever seen.
“Mom?” she said with trepidation.
There was no answer.
She said it again. “Mom. Are you okay?”
“Mom, Mom!”
