said he could make a body jump when he got riled up.
That long-ago night she’d kept fiercely trying to hear, kept hoping he’d make everyone jump this time. She wanted him to get her mom and dad out of that fire. She wanted him to do what sheriffs do. Make things better. Make them right.
Instead, he pulled one fireman aside-closer to the girls by accident; he was trying to get away from that madhouse noise near the fire truck. “Look,” he said. “I don’t see a reason to run too deep an investigation-”
“There’s a lot of damage. A lot of-” Lily could see the fireman answering, arguing, looking unhappy, but she couldn’t hear most of the conversation. The sheriff’s voice had been closer and clearer.
“I know. I see. But we all know Campbell lost his job. Been what you call despondent. Three girls to support, no money coming in. I know he’d never have done nothing to hurt his family by intention. But I can believe a fire intended to get some insurance money got out of control.”
“Herman, I agree that that’s possible.” The old fireman pulled off his helmet, wiped a river of sweat from his brow. “But unless we investigate, I won’t have a clue how that fire started.”
“There’s only one likely reason. That’s all I’m saying. And I don’t want to hurt those girls more they’re already hurt. You hear me? There’ll be a cloud over their father’s reputation as it is. You want to make that worse?”
“No, ’course I don’t…”
Lily couldn’t remember much else, but looking at Herman Conner now brought back that night, like being slapped with the heat and the loss all over again.
He might be twenty years older, but he was still tall and lean, still just as sharp-edged. He’d lost half his hair, and the eyes looked baggy and tired. When he barged out of the office and caught sight of her, his face turned pale under his ruddy tan.
“Sheriff Conner…” She stepped forward. “You have no reason to remember me, but I’m Lily-”
“Lily Campbell. And of course I remember you. You were the middle one with the big eyes. Never thought I’d see any of you girls in this town again.”
Her polite smile froze. She remembered Pecan Valley as everyone being kind, with a lot of “honeys” and “ma’ams” and “bless her hearts” in drawling, liquid voices. Herman’s tone wasn’t harsh, just stiffer than starch.
“I wondered if you could spare me a few minutes,” she said.
“Why sure. Got a mighty busy morning, but I’d always spare the time for a pretty girl, bless your heart, honey.”
There was the old-fashioned Southern flattery she remembered; yet somehow, she felt increasingly uneasy as he motioned her into his office.
She came immediately to the point. “I wonder if you still have the investigation record of the fire when my parents died.”
“Aw, honey. I was afraid you were here for something like that. Sweetheart, it’s foolishness. Your daddy was a good man. When the mill closed, he just lost his way, sank into whatcha call a depression, a serious depression. He adored you girls, you must know that. And your mama. He would never have done anything to hurt you, not deliberately.”
“I believe that, too,” she said. “But I’d still like to see the report from the fire.”
“Well, the investigation report is public. I’m sure you know that. But I think it’s a bad idea for you to go digging there, honey. There’s nothing to gain. Nothing to know. We all knew what happened. Your daddy was desperate. Didn’t know how he was going to support you girls and your mama. There wasn’t a job to be had for quite a while, after the mill closed. What we think-what we all believed at the time-was that he set a fire for the insurance money. Only, he just didn’t know much about accelerants, didn’t know how or when such a fire could get out of hand.” The sheriff leaned back as if relaxed for the first time all day. “We all felt bad. The whole town. And he died trying to save you girls, you know.”
“I know.” For an instant, the memory gripped her, the heat and choking smoke, her dad carrying each of the girls. The second-story drop. The firemen below. They were getting hoses and ladders and such, but that was all too late. She was the last one out the window, unwilling to let go of her dad, unwilling to leave him. Then the drop into the dark night, the hard thump into the fireman’s arms, and then…
Her dad silhouetted with the fire behind him-then the sudden woosh of fire and her dad disappearing, her screaming and screaming for him…
“There, there, little honey.” Herman Conner lunged out of his chair, yanked a generic tissue from the box on his desk. “You need to forget about this all. It was a tragedy. An awful, awful thing. Hurt the whole town, too. But it just won’t help to dwell on it.”
“I’ve tried to believe that. But I’ve come to believe the only way I can move past it is for me to see those records for myself.”
“Well, I’ll see what we can scare up for you, of course. Where are you staying?”
“Louella’s Bed-and-Breakfast.”
“For how long?”
She couldn’t stay more than eight weeks, not without risking her teaching contract for the coming year. But the answer she gave the sheriff was the one she wanted to be true. “As long as it takes.”
He sighed. “All right. Well, I’ll get Martha on it, and whatever we can chase up in the way of records, we’ll send over to Louella’s soon as we can. But my advice to you is, amble around town for a bit, remember the good times from when you three girls were little. If you’re looking for what they call closure, that’s the real stuff that matters. Remembering how folks cared about you all, your family, you three girls. Remembering what a nice town this was to grow up in, how loved you were. Everything that matters, honey, it shouldn’t be about that one unfortunate night.”
“Thank you for the advice. And I appreciate your getting those records to me.”
Lily walked out of the police station with her stomach a-jangle and her mind all tangled up. In principle, she knew the sheriff was right. Her sisters had managed to move on, find great guys, get over the past just fine. She
But something inside her just couldn’t rest. A lot of it was about her dad. She never believed he’d started that fire. Every memory of her dad was wonderful and loving, including the very last one, when he sacrificed his own life to save hers. He was no coward…yet that’s what they’d always said. That he’d set the fire for insurance money, the act of a coward if ever there was one.
Her dad was a hero, not a coward.
She knew it in her heart.
She just had to find some impossible way to prove it.
Chapter 2
Two nights later, Griff heard the rare sound of fire engine sirens, followed by a rush of cop cars down Main Street. It was just nine, the sun thinking about dropping and the air drowsy with heat.
He was just shutting down the place. Jason had stuck with him, was pretending to do extra clean-up while Griff hunched over a table with the day’s receipts. The day’d been busy. Everybody stopped for ice-cream on a summer day. Even so, the ice cream parlor couldn’t support a cat, so it occasionally amazed Griff that folks actually believed he had no other source of income.
Of course, it had always worked well for him to be seen as a generic lazy scoundrel and a womanizer. Nobody pried any deeper. Why would they?
“You hear the sirens?” Jason asked.
“Yeah. First time all summer.”
Jason squirted more window cleaner on the glass counter, even though he’d cleaned it twice already. “I heard
