Chương 5
He had been complaining all morning about the chirp.
Noah was covering his ears theatrically every time it sounded.
Liam thought the noise was funny.
Emily had returned from the store with a multipack of batteries and set it on the kitchen counter.
Daniel had said, I’ll do it.
“Daniel.”
Hayes nodded once.
Emily said, “He told me he changed it.”
Hayes did not say anything.
That afternoon Emily and Claire went to the house for the first time since the fire.
A city notice still hung near the front entry. The roof above the rear section was burned through, and the windows were boarded. The air smelled of wet ash even from the sidewalk.
Emily stood at the curb.
Claire waited beside her.
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes.”
“You can come back.”
“No.”
Neither moved.
A delivery truck passed behind them.
Somebody two houses down dragged a trash bin to the curb.
Life continued here too.
Emily walked toward the front door.
A fire investigator named Marcus Bell met them in the driveway. He had already spoken with Emily once at the hospital on the night of the fire, though she remembered almost nothing from that conversation.
He wore work boots and carried a clipboard.
“I can give you about twenty minutes,” he said. “Some areas are still restricted.”
Emily nodded.
Inside, the house felt smaller.
Water damage had swollen the floors. The living-room ceiling was stained brown. The twins’ drawings remained taped crookedly to one wall.
One showed four people holding hands.
Emily had no idea which boy had made it.
She stared too long.
Claire touched her back.
Bell said quietly, “We can stop.”
“No.”
The fire had started near the rear laundry room.
An electrical fault in an old power strip was the working cause. Daniel had plugged a portable heater into it during a cold week, despite a warning label against using high-load appliances with extension devices.
Emily had seen the heater before.
She had complained.
Daniel had told her she worried about everything.
“You’re sure it wasn’t intentional?” she asked.
“Nothing we have points to arson.”
“So he didn’t start it on purpose.”
“We have no evidence he did.”
Emily was relieved.
The relief made her feel sick.
She had not known until that moment that part of her had begun imagining worse.
Bell led her toward the stairs but would not allow her up.
“The heaviest smoke accumulation was on the second floor,” he said.
“The boys were in their room.”
“Yes.”
“Were they awake?”
Bell’s eyes shifted toward Claire.
Emily noticed.
“Tell me.”
“I can’t tell you what they experienced.”
“Could they have been awake?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“That’s a medical question.”
“Everybody keeps telling me whose question everything is.”
Bell closed his clipboard.
“Emily.”
It was the first time he used her name.
“The medical examiner can tell you they died from smoke inhalation. That means they were breathing after smoke reached the room. Nobody can give you an exact minute-by-minute experience. Anybody who does is guessing.”
Emily looked toward the dark staircase.
“Could someone downstairs have heard them?”
Bell hesitated.
“That would depend on conditions.”
“Daniel was downstairs.”
“I know that’s being investigated.”
“What about the smoke detector?”
Bell’s expression changed slightly.
“The upstairs hallway unit had no battery installed.”
“Could the fire have knocked it out?”
“The compartment was open. We found the battery in a kitchen junk drawer.”
Emily stared at him.
Claire whispered something under her breath.
“What?”
Bell looked uncomfortable now.
“The battery?”
“What kind was it?”
He checked his notes.
Emily interrupted.
“Was it new?”
“Yes.”
She saw the kitchen as it had been.
The packet on the counter.
Daniel annoyed because she kept reminding him.
Later he had held up the detector while she was brushing Liam’s teeth.
Fixed.
She had believed him because the chirping had stopped.
Emily laughed.
It came out wrong.
Claire grabbed her hand.
“He didn’t replace it,” Emily said.
Bell said nothing.
“He just took the battery out.”
The detector had stopped chirping.
That had been enough.
On the way out, Emily stopped in the kitchen.
One cabinet door hung crooked. Black watermarks ran down the refrigerator.
The junk drawer had been removed as evidence.
She stood where Daniel had probably stood when he dropped the battery inside.
A tiny, stupid act.
Maybe he had intended to replace it tomorrow.
Maybe tomorrow had become the next day and then the next.
People imagined catastrophe as a thing built from monstrous choices.
Sometimes it was built from a man being irritated by a beep.
Claire said, “Em.”
Emily looked at the counter.
“I reminded him.”
“I know.”
“He said he did it.”
“I know.”
“I should’ve checked.”
Claire closed her eyes briefly.
“Do not do this to yourself in every room.”
Emily turned.
“I left them with him.”
“You believed their father when he said a smoke detector had a battery.”
“I believed him about a lot more than that.”
“That part you can deal with.”
“My boys can’t.”
Claire did not have an answer.
For once, she did not try to invent one.
Three days later Margaret came to Claire’s house.
She did not call first.
Claire opened the door, saw her, and immediately said, “No.”
Margaret wore a black coat and carried a leather handbag held against her stomach with both hands.
“I need to speak with Emily.”
“No.”
“Claire, don’t behave like a child.”
Claire laughed.
“You hit my sister at her children’s funeral.”
“I was grieving.”
“So was she.”
“I lost my grandsons.”
“And she lost her sons.”
Margaret’s face trembled.
It was the first time Emily had seen uncertainty break through the older woman’s anger.
Emily stood at the end of the hallway.
“Let her in.”
Claire turned.
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to hear what she came here to say.”
Margaret entered.
She refused coffee.
May you like
Claire made some anyway, loudly, staying in the kitchen within earshot.
Margaret sat on the edge of the couch.
