What Burns Away (16 page)

And that first night while we lay awake in his house, wondering what we could have done to prevent my father's death, Dean burned down the barn where my father shot himself because I asked him to.

Hollowed by heartache, I called Dean that night to break the news. “I'm going to burn that fucking place down. I swear I will,” I told him, my voice trembling.

“You don't have to,” he whispered. “I'll do it for you.”

“When?” I said.

In the distance a foghorn yowled.

Dean cleared his throat.

“For you, I'll do it right fucking now.”

• • •

Nearly five years ago, in 2007, before the economy tanked completely and home values plummeted, Dean bought what remained of Craig's oceanfront property from the banker and my mother. He had started snatching up local waterfront properties, which back then seemed to quadruple in value every couple of years. He thought if he bought the place and held on to it, he would make a killing.

In one of our early Facebook correspondences, when I wrote to him about my sadness over selling our home in Mystic, how we lost everything we had invested in it, and how we had to borrow money to bring to the closing to pay out the buyers when we sold, he responded with the details of the Quayside acquisition:

Claire—

Buying real estate is emotional business. I do it all the time, and it was still hard for me to buy the place from your mom and Craig. I remembered the tragedy there, thought about your old man walking out back of that house, already dying. And because I had those feelings about it, I guess I wondered if I couldn't honor his death again in some other way once I owned it.

There was a bidding war on every property along the beach in those days, everyone thinking waterfront could never lose. People offering forty or fifty thousand over asking prices. I did the same and overpaid.

But the day we closed on the Quayside, I started building out back. A stone wall from the last bits of foundation where the barn sat, and all I could think about was you.

Eventually, that stone wall fenced in a garden—lilacs, honeysuckle, daisies, mums, all perennial. Same stuff your dad grew on Willard Street. It was for him, you know? And you too.

What I'm saying is real estate isn't always about the investment.

Yours,

Dean

• • •

I returned from the bathroom, the floorboards of the inn groaning as I stepped across them to the bed where Dean waited. Attempting to maintain some distance between us this time, I sat.

Dean handed me my wine, and I listened to see if sleeping Jonah had stirred. But the adjoining suite remained hushed. The only sound between us was the crackle from the hearth, warming the draft from the room.

I sipped from the glass, pressed my lips together, and nodded, while Dean's blue eyes seared right through my reservations. We stared at each other, both of us tentative about the complex intersection of our present and the past, and I felt myself surrender.

Dean squeezed my hand.

“Come look at this,” he said, pulling me up from the bed.

He led me across the room and pushed aside the heavy drapes to reveal a window seat.

We sat close and watched the sunset. There, out over the Sound, stratus clouds reflected pink and orange light, stretching across the horizon like saltwater taffy.

Dean put his arm around me. I kept my eyes on the distance, but even so, the measure of our breathing became a slow combustion.

“The Atlantic,” he whispered. “For you.”

Charged, we turned toward each other.

Dean leaned closer, all tenderness.

We kissed.

The first match was lit.

And just like the fires of our youth, the kiss bloomed, our lips parting as we grew fully aflame. Kissing harder, reaching for each other, we lulled and surged, our skin gone sweaty and damp. Dean climbed on top of me, and the kisses reeled us backward through time.

Pressed up against the windowpane, I heard Dean's voice, a rumble in my ear, say, “All these years.”

He slipped a hand under my sweater and rested it at the small of my waist. Our kisses softened. Delicate pecks on ears and necks. Dean's mouth explored my collarbone.

I tilted my head back against the window, the glass cool on my cheek, while his palms, uneven with callouses, roamed my shoulders and chest. His fingertips strayed inside the lace trim of my bra, then further—down my ribs, over the fabric of my jeans, and beneath.

I closed my eyes. And remembered.

Dean whispered, “Look at me.”

We stood, our bodies pressed into a single silhouette, undressing.

“We should stop,” I whispered.

“I need you,” Dean said.

And it was done.

• • •

We sat holding each other on the window seat, and Dean's hand stroked the inside of my thigh. “Being here with you,” he told me, “is so perfect. I was an idiot to ever let you go.”

Chilled by a draft from the window beside us, I pulled my sweater over my shoulders and stared into his eyes, their blue that of an infinite sky.

“But you searched for me,” I told him. “And I needed to be found.”

“We've always been there for each other when it really mattered,” Dean asked. “Haven't we?”

In the last of the twilight, a thick fog rose from water.

“We have,” I sighed, my emotions roiling.

He held tight to my hand and bent forward to kiss my forehead.

I closed my eyes, and a wash of disgrace moved over me. I thought about Miles and panicked, comprehending the weight of what I'd done and how I had permitted myself to become my mother, the one person I never wanted to be.

Dean pulled me back. “You know, Claire, that I'm drowning.”

“Drowning?” I said.

“That house,” he said. “Sometimes I feel like it's killing me. It's weird. Just like your dad.”

I studied his face and tried to understand exactly what he was telling me.

“Mama!” Jonah screamed, his cry from the adjoining room all alarm, that fear of waking in an unfamiliar place. “Mama!” he shouted again.

Dean rubbed his thumb over my bottom lip. “We need to find a way.”

I moved aside to dress and struggled to collect myself.

“Come, Mama,” Jonah cried. “Come!”

Conflicted by own guilt and desire, I went to my son. And as I hoisted him from his blankets, he tucked his bunny under one arm and rested his head on my shoulder. “My mama,” he said.

We swayed while he roused, a slow dance that soothed his whimpers. And when I laid him down for a diaper change, Jonah pulled off his socks and sighed. He made an immediate request. “Yummies?” he said, then added another. “Dada?” An anxious flutter fanned in my chest.

I snapped his pants and poured his milk, then rummaged through our carry-on for his lunch box. We returned to the connecting room, and I noted how the pillows were rearranged and the wineglasses set away.

Fully dressed, Dean sat in a wingback chair. “Morning, sleepyhead,” he told Jonah. Then he smiled at me. “Little man has got himself one pretty mommy.”

I sat on the bed against a stack of pillows and quietly spooned Jonah his applesauce.

In a veiled hush, all three of us faced the window, heeding the early nightfall. And while Jonah quietly ate his supper, I replayed the warmth of Dean's breath on my skin, the firm grip of his hand on my waist, the force of his body pulling me back against it, unable to shake the entanglement of my remorse and the desire for more.

“Claire,” Dean interrupted. His voice sounded strange. “Do you think maybe we should just…finish it off?”

A shiver ran through me. “Finish what off?”

“The Quayside,” he said.

I tore Jonah's peanut butter sandwich in two and handed him half. “I'm not sure what you mean.”

“Like I said—I'm out at sea on this. That house is pulling me under. For the longest time I couldn't see any way out.” His speech was frenzied. “But then I started thinking, what if there was an accident? A fire? The insurance on it is $950,000. I'd be able to pay off the mortgage, keep the business, and move on. No one would get hurt. And then, who knows? Maybe you and the little guy, you could come home for good. Where you belong. You could start over. With me.”

He searched my face for approval.

I trembled, thinking about what he was saying—what it would mean not only to stage a fire, but also the prospect of leaving Miles, the complexity of dividing up our things, and what all of it would do to Jonah, who loved his daddy so much. I faltered for a response, unable to get my bearings. Then, I thought about fire itself—that sensation of striking a match to, of all places, that house of horrors that tormented me the most.

I whispered, “We'd never get away with it.”

“That's what I keep telling myself, but then I think, maybe we would,” Dean said. “Of course, it would have to look like an accident. And wouldn't your dad have loved it, seeing that fucker gone?”

“He would,” I agreed, knowing with certainty that my father would've loved nothing more than to watch Craig Stackpole's house burn and collapse upon itself. In fact, if he were alive, maybe he would have torched the place himself.

Dean reached under the lamp shade to switch on the light and illuminate the dark. “It's not like we've never done it before.”

That night I let Jonah sleep in my hotel bed, holding him close, waking in the morning to his small hand driving a Matchbox car down my arm and across my belly where my shirt had risen up.

“Road,” he said, tracing a finger across the purple raised scar on my low belly, the incision the obstetrician cut to save us both, a wound that still seemed raw.

My cell phone rang, and as I felt for it on the bedside table, I knocked down one of the two empty wineglasses. I replayed Dean's toast, his mouth, his hands, his touch, all the ways he had welcomed me home.

“Mama's phone!” Jonah cheered when it sounded again.

In the soft yellow light of morning, with his tussled blond hair, the footy pajamas Jonah wore made him appear more baby than boy. I caressed his face, feeling that all-consuming love I never understood until his birth.

The phone buzzed a third time. The call was from my husband, one I didn't want to take, but I picked it up anyway, leaden with remorse and obligation.

“How are you?” I said into the receiver.

“Okay, I guess. Miss you guys.” Miles sighed. “I've done all I can with the investigation, not sure what will happen. But it's been handed over to the authorities, and now I'm focusing on my clinic and research.”

“That's good,” I said. “We'll be home in a few days.”

I handed the phone to Jonah and told him, “Say hi to Daddy.”

“Cookies?” my son asked, pressing the phone to his ear.

He pointed to a box of animal crackers poking out of the diaper bag, the special treat Miles gave him on our way to the airport. Miles said something that made Jonah squeal with delight before he dropped the phone on my pillow and returned to his tiny cars.

I took the phone back. “So, have they started to rebuild the lab yet?” I asked.

Miles cleared his throat. “Yes. Repairs should finish in eight weeks or so. And we've finally gotten enough support in the division to suspend Dalton indefinitely, even if we can't directly link him to the fire quite yet. His volatile behaviors have exacerbated to the point of safety concerns on the wards since accusations about his part in the arson were made, so that's about to settle out. How's it been there, seeing your mom? I'm worried. You okay?”

“We're fine.”

There was concern in Miles's voice. “I know I haven't been very attentive, Claire. Are
we
okay?”

I skirted his question and told him, “Mom and I are getting along okay.” The lying turned my stomach.

“You're all staying with your sister, then?”

“Hotel,” I said.

“I see.” Miles paused. “I thought you told me you were staying with Kara?”

“Change of plans,” I bumbled. “Call me tonight, after work. I'll clarify our return details and have a better sense of our plans later on.”

“Hurry back. I'll be at the airport whenever you land,” Miles assured me.

Outside my room there was a knock at the door.

“I better run,” I said, kicking off the covers.

“Knock-knock,” Jonah hollered.

“I love you,” Miles said. “Kiss my boy.”

“I will. Talk soon.”

Waving Dean in, I bore the guilt of a traitor, everything I considered my mother to be, and I hated myself for letting things go this far, so far that I could no longer turn them around.

Dean carried a duffel bag and a tray holding two Dunkin' Donuts cups. He handed me a scalding coffee and placed a bag of donut holes on the bed next to Jonah.

Jonah furrowed his brow. “Cake?” he said, his voice a question.

“Yummy,” Dean encouraged. “All for you, buddy.”

Jonah dumped the donuts onto the bed. “Uh-oh!”

“Have you thought about it, Claire?” Dean said, leaning in to kiss my forehead and easing himself onto the bed beside me. His stare was pleading. “That house will take me under.”

“I know,” I whispered.

I rested a hand on Dean's knee and a buzz ran through me, along with the comprehension that his request was a favor owed, the reciprocal act come due for the long-ago risk he took for me.

“A fire,” he said. “Getting rid of the Quayside. It can save you too, erase all that happened there.”

Dean leaned over the side of the bed, unzipped the duffel bag he carried in, and pulled scrolled blueprints from a tube. Succumbing to my old desire to please him, I took the sketches from Dean's hand and his fingertips ran across my palm. In the space of a breath, our joint arson was no longer a singularity hinted at, something we circled around and forestalled, but a decision extorted by a place that tormented us both.

I glanced at drawings and questioned Dean: “Why exactly do you need me?”

He nodded and sipped from his coffee. “Owner is always the first suspect. And you, mother with a small child, living a thousand miles away, would never even be considered.” He caught my eye. “And because I know you. Some place deep inside, you've always wanted to burn that house down yourself. If there's a fire, it should be yours.”

And I'll admit it. I wanted to do it. I wanted to char it into dust, that place that stole my father from me. “But you'd be there to help?”

Dean tucked my hair behind my ear. “How I see it is this. I'll plan a breakfast with Fergus Shannon from the urban planning board, and you'd go to the house. I'll need an alibi later when questions are asked.”

“So I'd go alone, then?”

Dean leaned against me, delicately slipping his hand under my T-shirt. “Yeah. Has to be you alone. And I don't think it'd be smart to take you over there beforehand. I don't want anyone to see anything or
anyone
unusual. We'll use the sketches to jar your memory, but you know the place. Nothing structural has changed inside. It'll be fast. In and out.”

“What about Jonah?” I said.

“Can't you bring him?”

“Bring my
son
to burn your house down?”

Dean scratched his head. “Well, what choice do we have?”

Admiring my precious boy's creamy skin and pursed lips, as he sat on the edge of the bed with jelly from a doughnut hole on his chin, I thought about how scared I have always been of losing Jonah, how if he were ever taken from me, my will to live would be gone. And for the first time since I stepped onto the plane, I was aware of how much was at stake, how much danger I had put us in. How, really, with one slipup there with Dean, I stood to lose everything.

“What if we can't get out?” I said. “What if something goes wrong? I can't put him in harm's way like that.”

“Could you leave him here?” Dean asked. “Take care of it while he is sleeping? Or set up some toys and he can play in the crib?”

Listening to Dean, it became clear to me that I was talking to someone who had never had children, someone who had never known that kind of fear and love, those interlaced emotions of parenthood. To acknowledge this difference between us was to feel my desire for him wither and retract. The spell I was under dimmed in the temperance of the morning discussion, while Dean casually examined the plans to refine the logistics of the arson.

But the idea of the flames, the cleansing that category of fire could bring me, didn't release its hold. I wanted that house to burn just as much as, hours ago, I had wanted Dean. I could see the ruins so clearly. I could smell the clean licks of flames and the ash.

“Jonah's safety comes first,” I said, struggling to maintain perspective.

“Of course,” Dean told me, but I could see he was less worried than I was, and I realized that there was no way that I could make him understand my level of concern, that feeling of absolute dread I got in imagining the well-being of my child being compromised.

Dean was already moving on. “Too bad your parents—I mean, your mom—had the electrical redone before they sold. High-end stuff. Otherwise we could just overload a socket. It would have been a no-brainer.”

“Yup. Too bad.” His flippancy both annoyed and shocked me, and for a moment I buckled beneath the full weight of the risk I was about to take, before the image of a blackened shell of a house emblazoned itself on my mind. I had burned my mother's car when I was a child, and no one had even thought to question me then. And not even forty-eight hours ago, a Madison police officer had practically looked through me, incapable of even considering that I could hold either the spark or substance of a flame within myself.

No one had ever understood that but Dean.

Dean went on. “Whatever we do, it can't be tagged as vandalism. It has to be an accident, a fault with the structure, or some human error. A cooking fire is fine, but they tend not to do enough damage. I don't want a rebuild. I want a demolition job, nothing left—ashes to ashes, dust to dust. A scrape or a teardown. A clean slate.

“And you…you've been fascinated by fire since high school, always reciting random facts about flames. A firebug even when I met you. Fiddling with cigarette lighters, burning napkins and candy wrappers. And you studied science in college, right? So shouldn't we just blaze that motherfucker right outta here?”

“Combustion is not what I studied, exactly,” I said, pulling Jonah into my lap. “But I do know the chemistry, the atmospherics, the way a contained fire undergoes a cycle of growth.” I warmed to the subject. “The house will act like a hearth, inside of which the fire will move from a kind of full engagement toward smoldering. So, if you want to take out the structure quickly—to have the blaze be devastating—we need the heat to amass in an explosion.

“We want the warmth radiating from the gases to exceed the ignition temperature of all the exposed surfaces, causing everything to erupt at once. It's called a flashover. And to make that happen we need petroleum distillates for accelerants. Place them near the gas lines.” I sipped my coffee and wiped powdered sugar from Jonah's chin. “Where is the pilot light, exactly?”

Dean was pleased by this question. He smiled and ran a finger along the sketch. “Here's where the lines come up from the basement, through the kitchen, up the side wall to the second story, and into the master suite. The lines feed the second-floor fireplace, the gas insert Heather added when we did the renovation. Before the bitch left.”

“Got it,” I said. “Where's the range?”

“There are two ovens—the range top and stove are along that back wall, but there's also a convection oven built into the center of the island. Right in there.” Dean tapped a finger on the spot.

I handed Jonah his milk and turned to Dean. “Ever deep-fry anything?”

“A turkey,” he said.

“Still have the grease?”

“No, unfortunately not,” he said.

“We'll want some,” I told him.

Dean gave me a quick squeeze. I leaned into his reach.

“There's an arrangement that determines whether a fire burns as a surface fire or something deeper,” I explained. “We want that something deeper. No matter what you're burning, no matter how you're burning it, no matter the fuel, oxygen causes combustion to accelerate. So you'll want to crack the windows open, a few on every floor, but not so much that the flammable gases sneak out. Maybe a half an inch, and we'll be golden.”

“Woman,” Dean said, stealing a quick kiss, “I love the way you think.”

• • •

At the Home Depot in Norwich, far enough from East Lyme that Dean believed we were off the radar, I pushed Jonah in a cart the color of construction cones, and we searched for aerosols propelled by hydrocarbon-based fuels.

Dean walked ahead of us. I told him, “What we need is an accelerant with kerosene, butane, or even turpentine. In liquid form. Mist is best. A fogger, one of those bug-bomb things, rather than a spray. I need to be able to push the button and step away.”

We continued along seemingly endless aisles of lamp shades and paint cans and portable heaters.

Jonah fussed. “Mama, yummies!”

My diaper bag full of snacks was forgotten in the car.

“Be patient, baby,” I pleaded. “We'll get your yummies in a minute. We're almost done.”

We turned past the garden shop stocked with fading poinsettias and clearance shelves of discounted plastic Santa Clauses. Then, down a city block of insecticides, Dean finally waited for us, taking my hand. “Ever wonder if it could have been us? If we could have been a family?” he said. “I could take care of you guys after this.”

“No,” Jonah screamed. “No! That one.” He pointed to a giant plastic reindeer on the leftover Christmas display behind us and screamed. “Mama, that one!”

“He's about to melt down,” I said. “I better go feed him something.”

Jonah pulled a box of weed control from the middle of a display. Spray bottles of Roundup and Miracle-Gro tumbled onto the floor, creating a roadblock for our cart. Jonah's cry was silent, but then turned into the shrill screech only a toddler can make. He shuddered and sniveled as I pulled him from the seat and held him against my chest.

Dean cleared our path.

“It's okay,” I whispered. “That was scary.”

Jonah kicked and shrieked; he slapped my face. Dean got jumpy and paced the aisle ahead. From down the lane he held up a bright yellow can. “Is this the stuff?”

I swayed Jonah side to side. “Bring it here so I can see the ingredients.”

Dean sprinted back and held the can up to my face. “Bud,” he told my son, “let's relax a little.”

I read the warning. It noted that the product contained “ignitable liquids, butane, and other petroleum distillates considered highly flammable.”

“Go away,” Jonah screamed. He swatted at Dean.

I brought him to eye level with me. “Do you want a time-out?”

“Yes,” Jonah shouted.

I put Jonah down, and he threw himself to the ground, kicking and squealing, “No, no, no time-out!”