Burning Down the House (36 page)

I suddenly remembered I’d left my
own iPhone next door. Maybe Rob could go get it for me tomorrow. I personally had no desire to set foot in that house ever again.

Dad
gathered me in his arms, hugging me for what must have been the fortieth time that night. “Right under our noses. All this time. Honey, I’m so sorry. I never in a million years would have thought…”

“Yeah
. Me neither.”

His hands stroked my hair, the way they used to when I was a little girl and he was rocking me to sleep.
“Would you like me to fix you a cup of herbal tea or something?”

“No, that’s okay. I just
want to go to bed.” I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, thanks to the sedative. Or maybe it was due to the fact that it was 3:30 in the morning.

He kissed the top of my head,
holding me tight before whispering in a hoarse voice, “I love you, ladybug.” I think he was trying not to cry. Which of course made me teary-eyed myself.

“I love you too, Daddy.”

Rob came in as I was climbing into bed. He had my phone in his hand. I gave him a sleepy smile as he laid it on my nightstand.

“I turned it off so no one can disturb you.”
He pulled the comforter up over me. I fought against the sedative, wanting to stay awake just a little longer. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him alone all night.

“Don’t go.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” He sat beside me on top of the covers, one arm above my pillow. His other hand rested protectively over me. I could see the raw scrapes on his swollen knuckles. My father had them too. They’d really done a number on Weston. It was a wonder they didn’t kill him. From what I’d pieced together, Doug (believe it or not) was the voice of reason who stopped them before it went too far. I just hoped they weren’t going to get in any trouble for tearing into him the way they did. Nah…Chief Landry would never let that happen. Besides, I couldn’t exactly foresee an outpouring of sympathy for the man. Not after what he did.

I looked sidelong at
Rob with bleary eyes. “So…how was
your
night?”

With a dry laugh, he shook his head at my dark humor.
“You’re gonna be the death of me. I think you took twenty years off my life tonight.”

“I guess it
was kind of a crazy scene to walk in on.”

“We didn’t just spontaneously show up,
Sara.” He sounded puzzled. “Didn’t you hear your dad telling Landry what happened? You were sitting right there. I figured you must be listening.”

“No.”
I’d been a little out of it at the time.

“It was
Riley.”

“
Riley?
”

“Yeah…he called your dad. Said he didn’t know where you were, but
it sounded like something was wrong.”

I
scooted up in bed quickly. “Oh my
God
- the phone! That’s right, I never ended the call, did I? He was still there, he must have heard what was going on…” I was amazed he was able to make out any of what was said, especially over the music. “He was trying to apologize to me for what he said the other day in the theatre. And then I heard Habanera and it freaked me out so I dropped the phone…” And to think, all this time he was the scapegoat everyone was pointing a finger at. Including me. “Holy shit.”

“Talk about irony, huh?
Tell you one thing - I owe that guy one hell of a debt of gratitude. Not to mention a major apology. If he hadn’t made that call…” His eyes grew shiny and he paused to lean his head against mine. “God, baby, there’s no telling what might have happened to you…”

“I had it under control.” Okay, maybe that wasn’t quite true. But I refused to consider the alternative. It was easier to
convince myself that the situation wasn’t as critical as it really had been.

“I don’t believe you.” His breath was warm against my cheek.

“I did! Trust me, I wasn’t going down without a fight.”

“
I hate to tell you this, but you were already down.”

“
Temporary setback,” I persisted stubbornly.

“
If you say so. I’m really glad to know that you’re a fighter.” His lips brushed my temple before kissing me lightly. “Because I don’t think I could make it if I lost you. The truth is, you’ve wrapped those fingers so tight around my heart, it doesn’t even have a rhythm of its own anymore.” The unshed tears were thick in his voice as he pulled me closer to him. “Every beat is controlled by your touch. Without you, everything I am would fall to pieces and there would be no putting them back together. And no reason to even try. So you can’t leave me, Sara. You just can’t, and that’s all there is to it. As long as I’m breathing, you have to keep breathing too. That’s the deal.”

“Rob…”

“I mean it. I can’t handle the thought of him or anyone else hurting you. You can’t even imagine the amount of self-restraint it took for me not to kill that son of a bitch tonight.”

I
recalled the condition Weston had been in when the paramedics loaded him into the ambulance. “He probably
wishes
he was dead right about now.”

“
Yeah…well, I wish he was too. So I guess that makes two of us.” He balled his fingers into a fist, then spread them open, working them back and forth.

“Does your hand hurt?”

“Not really. Does yours?”

“I don’t even feel it right now.” I sank back into the pillow, struggling
once again to force my eyes open. “Stay with me tonight.”

“I told you, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Are you…you aren’t going to try to go to work, are you?”

“No.
I’m staying here with you. I’ll call Mr. Crawford in the morning.”

I sighed drowsily. “It is morning.”

“In a few hours then, Miss Pedantic.”

“
I’m s’posed to be at the college at one…”

“Forget
that. It’s not happening. Tomorrow you rest.”

“Tomorrow’s today
,” I mumbled, fully aware that I wasn’t making a lot of sense. I’d never been so physically or emotionally drained in my life, but for some reason my brain was still resisting sleep. When I stifled a yawn, he responded by tucking the covers in around me.

“I want you to go to sleep now.
Close your eyes for me…that’s my girl. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

The last thing I said before falling under was,
“You know I love you, right?”

“
I know, baby girl. But I promise you I’ll never get tired of hearing it.”

31

“Eyes on your own paper
, Miss Marsh.”

His back is to me while he
busily scrawls something across the whiteboard, so I’m not sure how he can tell what I’m looking at. There is nothing on my desk. Did he forget to give me a copy of the test? I’m confused, not sure what it is I’m supposed to be doing. I’m afraid I’m going to fail.

It’s quiet.
Jordan and I are the only ones in the classroom. She’s wearing her green homecoming dress but the stuffed koala bear in the seat behind her has her crown. It looks like it’s been stepped on; it’s all broken and twisted. Her head is bent over the paper in front of her and she’s scribbling furiously. I try to catch her eye because I want to ask where she got her exam paper but she’s concentrating so hard, I can’t get her to look my way.

He turns to face the class but
it’s me he’s looking at. I don’t want him to ask me a question. He’ll know I have no idea what’s going on.

“
Do you have the answer?”

I don’t know what to do.
I can’t even make out the equation on the board. The lines are nothing but a smudged blur. Desperately I look to Jordan for help but she’s still hunched over, writing away.

“Hurry up,
time is running out. I need a solution.” He sounds impatient.

This isn’t good. How will I graduate if I
can’t pass this class? There’s a weird, flickering glow coming from the other side of the closed door. I notice it through the small square window. It’s a bright, phosphorescent orange. The hallway is on fire. Should I tell someone or does everybody already know?

He snaps his fingers for my attention. “Eyes front! Solve the problem,
Sara!”

Jordan
rises and starts walking slowly toward the door. He ignores her, doesn’t even appear to notice her drifting right past him. I don’t think she should go out there. Surely it isn’t safe.

“No, don’t go,” I say to her. She keeps walking
, trancelike. Why can’t she hear me? I want to get up and stop her but I can’t move. My body is stone.

“Don’t go.”
She opens the door.

“Solve the problem,
Sara!”

“Don’t go!”
She’s disappearing down the fiery hallway.

“Solve the problem!”

“DON’T GO!”

Gandhi
once said, “Those with the greatest awareness have the greatest nightmares.”

He should have also mentioned that the nightmares
quickly fade, that they’re easily forgotten, but once you have that awareness it never leaves you.

I didn’t want
the awareness. I wanted to go on in blissful ignorance, oblivious. I wanted everything the way it was before, all sunshine and innocence, when getting a bad haircut or a low score on your SAT’s was the worst you had to fear. When those violent news articles you stumbled across on the internet were just that, stories, because they were happening somewhere else, to people you didn’t know, so they never seemed real because none of it affected you.

I wanted to turn back the clock
to the days before Jordan’s death and change the course of her fate.

I wanted
Richard Weston to be nothing more than what he used to be, the most popular teacher at Hillcrest, a devoted husband and father, the next-door neighbor you waved to from your front yard…instead of a sociopath who valued the façade of his reputation more than the life of one of his students.

What I
didn’t want was the guilty burden.

Of knowing that I was the one who ultimately
destroyed Peyton’s family. Strange as it seems, I blamed myself for that. If not for me, her world wouldn’t have been turned upside down. Maybe she and her mother would never have found out the truth. They could have gone on living their flawless lives.

Neither did I want to accept that
my irrational fears had caused me to doubt the person I loved, the person I was supposed to trust. Not that Rob would ever hold it against me. He’d seen enough in his own life to know that often, appearances are an illusion.

Then there was the undeniable fact that
Riley had been thrown under the bus and even though I wasn’t the one driving, I could certainly be counted as one of the passengers. Just because a guy is something of a schmuck, that doesn’t make him a killer. But I’d treated him like a convicted criminal. We all had. And while he and Rob were busy pointing fingers at one another, the true monster was right underneath our noses the whole time. Smiling with those guileless dimples.

Rob
and I set out to right that particular wrong immediately. Together we went to see Riley, offering all the genuine apologies and heartfelt thanks he was entitled to. Turns out he assumed I’d simply forgotten to press the button on my phone and decided to eavesdrop just for kicks. He said at first he couldn’t hear much, mainly just music, and didn’t recognize Weston’s voice. But just as he was about to end the call, there was a break between arias and he overheard part of the struggle between us.

Weston
calling me a bitch was the clincher. Realizing whoever I was tussling with wasn’t playing, Riley located our home number and notified my father. He admitted, with some embarrassment, that he thought maybe Rob and I were having an argument that got out of control. Rob took no offense. He shook his hand, then threw his free arm around Riley’s neck to express his personal gratitude underneath his breath.

I never asked what
was said - some things should remain personal - but Riley’s only response was to grin and reply, “Ah, don’t worry about it, man - it’s all good.”

We parted as friends.

My dad told me that while I was still sleeping on Saturday, he saw Deanna Weston’s car parked in the driveway next door. She was there for about an hour, I’m guessing to pack up essentials for her and Peyton so they could stay somewhere else. The police were there at the same time, collecting evidence. I wondered if they found anything.

I had naïvely hoped that somehow my name would be
kept confidential, but word leaked out quickly. Cumberland’s a small town. News travels fast on a good day and hypersonic on a bad one. The local news station got wind of it first, and then the reporters started calling. Dad finally unplugged the land line. I wasn’t interested in giving interviews. I wanted to put it out of my head. Until the inevitable trial, anyway.

I dreaded
returning to school on Monday, but since we had semester exams coming up in a few days I had no choice but to suck it up and deal. I couldn’t afford to miss anything. All in all, it didn’t turn out to be the ruthless interrogation I’d envisioned. I wasn’t harassed and badgered for details - well, not too much. For the most part everyone was extremely considerate, particularly when sensing I preferred not to discuss the matter. Even Staci used more tact than I would have thought possible, although the way she kept trying to discreetly follow me around was funny. I knew it had to be driving her crazy. Juicy gossip was the fuel that fed her, and she was wasting away, poor thing.

Fourth period
was the hardest to get through. The substitute in no way resembled Mr. Weston, but still I kept picturing him standing there in his creased khakis and meticulously ironed shirt. It took all my concentration to avoid an outright panic attack. I managed to make it through, but when the bell rang I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Surviving
the first day was a challenge, but it got a little easier as the week progressed. Some of the rumors started reaching my ears. I was an undercover officer who’d been covertly spying on Weston. (Wow, makes a lot of sense - why would I still be at school?) I was part of a torrid love triangle à la
Wild Things
. (Was I supposed to be Neve Campbell or Denise Richards?) My personal favorite was the one that had me putting Weston in the hospital myself with my secret Ninjitsu skills. It was all so ludicrous. Where was this stuff coming from? Now I know why tabloids continue to sell. Some people will believe anything.

The papers
and the web were filled with articles boasting an array of headlines:

Student/
Teacher Affair Ends in Tragedy.

Teacher Arrested, Charged with
First Degree Murder and Arson.

Was
Family Babysitter Next Target on Lothario Teacher’s Sordid List?

Town
Reels in Wake of Local City Councilman’s Confession.

Yep,
you heard that correctly. Weston broke down and admitted to everything. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me - after all, there wasn’t much chance of him clawing his way out of the hole he’d dug for himself. Still, I was amazed to hear that at the arraignment, he waived his rights to counsel and entered a plea of guilty on all counts. It looked as though we would all be spared a lengthy trial. With any luck I wouldn’t have to come face to face with him again.

Although
Friday night’s events kept me from making Saturday’s ballet rehearsal, I attended the rest of the week’s practices faithfully. Call me an overachiever or maybe even a glutton for punishment, but I felt I owed it to Miss Andrews, Erik, and everyone else who’d labored to ensure the success of the performance. Besides, Snow Queen was my role and I’d worked hard to perfect it. I wasn’t about to give it up so easily.

He
had already wiped out two lives. I wasn’t going to let him wreck mine as well. He would never be granted that power. Not by me.

So on Friday
night, with my boyfriend and father in attendance, I disconnected from reality long enough to lose myself in the Waltz of the Snowflakes. And I’m proud to say, following the pas de deux with the Snow King, we received a thunderous standing ovation. During that time a photographer materialized out of nowhere, catching my tearful smile when the two most important men in my life appeared onstage to present me with eighteen white roses.

The
picture in next morning’s paper was captioned:
The Snow Queen’s Heroes.

And sometime during the night on Saturday, December 21st, Richard Weston
chose the coward’s way out and hung himself with a makeshift noose fashioned from his prison jumpsuit.

I
wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

To this day…

I still don’t know how to feel about that.