House on Fire (ARC)

by Bonnie Kistler

  He flipped idly through the commencement program until he came to the page listing the academic prize winners. The English medal to Sondra Brill, math to Sanjay Patel, physics to Norman Chu, and what do you know, history to Christopher Conley. His Crusades paper was what did it, which was funny, considering he almost didn’t bother turning it in. What was the point? The DA wasn’t going to drop the charges when he saw all his AP credits. The governor wasn’t going to give him back his internship. The once-bright ribbon of his career potential wasn’t going to unspool before him, ever again. He’d been busting a gut his whole life, it seemed, to build up credits for the future, when all that really mattered was life in the present.

  But in the end he turned it in. What the hell, it was done and he knew it was a winner, so why not throw his parents a bone? Give them one small flicker of pride in their otherwise reprobate son.

  He half-dozed through a couple more speeches until at last it was time to march across the stage and do the handshake and tassel-flip. Hold your applause to the end, Dr. Fulton said, but the parents ignored him as happily as the kids did. Every name called out elicited a burst of clapping and fingers-in-the-mouth whistles. The laughter came even louder than Kip’s when Damian Callahan’s dad hollered “Get a job!” as Damian crossed the stage.

  Christopher Conley came next, and abruptly the laughter died and so did the applause. The arena was silent except for a buzz of whispers—is that the kid who—?—and six hands clapping too hard in an audience of two thousand. Dr. Fulton’s face was impassive as Kip walked across the stage toward him. Kip gave him a lopsided grin and took his diploma and marched on.

  His family joined him on the field afterward. His mom gave him a big hug, and his dad clapped him on the back. Gifts were being bestowed all around them. Flowers thrust into the girls’ arms. Watches unwrapped. For a few lucky ones, car keys dangled. Once that might have been Kip. Last year his dad gave him a We’ll see when he asked for a car for graduation. But that was before his first DUI, and definitely before the second one turned into a manslaughter charge that was costing him a fortune. But he shouldn’t complain. He’d already gotten his graduation present, a sweet customized computer with a souped-up processor and enhanced graphics and the Intellocity browser and all the rest of his dream specifications. Thank your father, his mother said, then his dad said, Thank your mom, which meant for once they’d been able to agree on something. Collaborate even. So there was something to celebrate.

  He watched the other parents and kids as they said their good-byes, the parents heading home and the kids heading off to their parties. He wasn’t going to any of the parties. He was going to a restaurant instead, with his little original nuclear family.

  Just as well, though. He had a serious case of the munchies.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Grief doesn’t have a timetable,” Stephen said during the first of their Saturday sessions in the Snuggery. “It takes its own sweet time, and it’s no use trying to rush past it. It’ll jerk you back in a heartbeat.”

  “But don’t I have to move on at some point?” Leigh said, wondering Do I?

  “Don’t put your grief on a countdown clock. It won’t end simply because you tell it to.”

  She swallowed a hard lump in her throat. “Does it ever end at all?”

  He shocked her with the bluntness of his answer. “No. Never.” But then he laid his hand over hers and spoke more softly. “It does change. It changes into something more bearable. Give yourself time to let that ­happen.”

  But time was in short supply at the start of that summer. All the matters she’d farmed out to her colleagues during her bereavement came home to roost within days of her return to the office. And not all of them had been well tended in her absence. She had delinquencies to cure, pleadings to amend, apologies to tender. She worked through lunch most days and ordered dinner in and seldom made it home before nine.

  The boys were home from school but already at work at their cater-waiter jobs and out every evening past midnight. Leigh was asleep by the time they got home, and they were asleep when she left in the morning, and she saw little more of them now than when they were away at school. And heard even less. They no longer indulged her with live-voice telephone calls. It was back to texts again. Outta milk. U c my ipad? She couldn’t even count on the old standby of home-cooked meals to lure them in. They were getting all they could eat at work.

  On Saturday they were booked for an afternoon wedding reception, so she was surprised to find their old Honda in the driveway when she returned home from her session with Stephen. Surprised and so delighted she didn’t even mind that they’d blocked the garage door. She parked on the street and was halfway to the house when she realized the old Honda wasn’t theirs. A woman was behind the wheel, on the phone. She had a file open on her lap and looked like she was sweltering in the afternoon heat even with all the windows open. Leigh could hear her exasperated voice. “No. I told you, not until you clean your room. I don’t care what Courtney’s doing. You’re not going anywhere until you clean that room.”

  Leigh smiled to herself. The harangue sounded like a replay of a hundred of her own. I’m not going to tell you again, but she always did anyway, three or four times more.

  She came up to the driver’s door. “Oh! Sorry,” the woman yelped, then muttered into the phone, “I’ll see you when I get home.”

  She heaved herself out of the car, a thickset woman of about forty in a wrinkled pantsuit. “Ms. Huyett?” She held out her hand. “I’m Andrea Briggs.”

  Leigh usually had no time for unannounced sales calls, but this harried working mother rang a sympathetic chord in her. She shook her hand. “What can I do for you?” It couldn’t be Mary Kay, not with that heat-blotched complexion. She hoped it wasn’t Amway.

  “I’m from the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office. I’m prosecuting Christopher Conley.”

  Leigh’s smile faded.

  “We’d like to bring you up to date on the case.”

  “Oh. Of course.”

  She should have been eager to hear her out—this would be the conversation Shelby refused to have—but she felt a rising dread as she unlocked the door and ushered the woman to the living room. “Iced tea?”

  “Oh, thank you.” Briggs accepted a glass with a deep sigh of gratitude and sank onto the sofa. “You have a beautiful home.”

  Leigh said nothing as she perched on the chair opposite.

  “It’s such an honor to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you over the years. Your reputation at the bar—it’s first rate.”

  Leigh recognized the bald-faced flattery. She didn’t practice criminal law and only occasionally appeared in Hampshire County courtrooms. There was no reason why this woman would know anything about her.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been out to see you sooner. I usually try to visit with the victim’s family right after the arraignment, but with this case on such a fast track—”

  “Why?” she interrupted. “Why is it on a fast track?”

  “The defense requested it.” Briggs tilted her head. “Didn’t you know?”

  “No.” Apparently Peter couldn’t squeeze the information into a text.

  “We have a trial date already. August tenth.”

  So soon. Chrissy wouldn’t even be four months in the ground.

  “That’s the first thing I wanted to alert you to. So you can clear your calendar.”

  Leigh’s hand went to her throat. “I don’t have to be there, do I?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s vital. Not only your presence, but your testimony.”

  “My—what could I possibly testify to? I wasn’t there. I didn’t see anything.”

  “Not about the accident. You’ll be the face of the victim. It’s important that the jury get to know Christine, what she was like, her hopes and dreams. What a truly special girl she was.”
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  There was no way she could talk about that, to anyone, let alone a courtroom full of strangers. “I don’t understand. Why are you taking this to trial?”

  “Oh, we might still reach a deal. My boss has my plea proposal on his desk. But meanwhile we have to prepare for trial. You know how it is.” She said the last with a little wink to remind her they were sisters-in-arms.

  “Your boss. That would be Boyd Harrison?”

  “The Commonwealth’s Attorney. Yes.”

  Leigh cleared her throat. “Is it true—you recommended no charges be brought?”

  The splotches on the woman’s face went redder. “I’m afraid that’s confidential.”

  “I’m your client, you said.”

  “Yes, but it’s different. This was the exercise of our prosecutorial ­discretion—”

  “You wrote up a nolle pros recommendation and Harrison vetoed it when he saw my name in the file. Is that right?”

  Briggs bit her lip. “I may have spoken out of turn to Ms. Randolph.”

  Leigh stood abruptly and went to the window. It was true, then. Kip’s arrest, the trial—this whole ordeal was because of her.

  “I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It’s really none of my business if Mr. Harrison’s charging decisions happen to benefit a friend.”

  “A friend?” Leigh wheeled on her. “You think he’s doing this as a favor to me?”

  Briggs squinted up. “Maybe I’m not privy to the whole story—”

  “Obviously!”

  “I don’t understand.” Briggs looked flustered and genuinely confused. “What side are you on?”

  Leigh stared at her until Briggs put down her glass and gathered up her file. “I apologize for upsetting you. Perhaps this was too soon after all.” She heaved to her feet. “But please, do consider testifying, won’t you? It could make all the difference.”

  She was only doing her job, Leigh reminded herself, and she was taking time away from her children on a Saturday to do it. She didn’t deserve to be treated like the enemy. “I’ll think about it,” she said as she showed her to the door.

  But afterward all she could focus on was what Peter must be thinking. That this was all her fault. No wonder he moved out. No wonder he stopped coming by after only a single visit.

  Her car was still out on the street. She went out and moved it into the garage, and sat there with the engine idling a long moment. She could barely remember the details of the Harrison divorce. Had she been too aggressive? Had she crossed any lines? Obviously Harrison must think so, to be pursuing this vendetta, and Peter must think so, too. That she’d brought this down on all of them.

  She backed out of the garage and headed out to Hollow Road.

  The landscape had changed since she was last here. Now it was the height of summer and the trees were in full leaf and the roadsides choked with ditch weeds and tiger lilies. Everything looked so different that she thought she might not even recognize the accident scene, but no, she did. There it was, the tree, the creek, the little driveway bridge. A shiver rolled up her spine, and she clutched the wheel and reminded herself: it was an accident, it wasn’t his fault, it could have happened to anyone.

  I’m afraid it’s a package deal, Peter had said when they first started to discuss a future together, and she smiled and said Two for the price of one! What a bargain!

  Ahead she saw Fred Dietrich peering into the mailbox at the end of the Golden Oldies lane. He straightened and grinned and flapped his fistful of mail to wave her down. “Hey, there, Leigh,” he said, stooping to the window. “You just missed Carrie. She’s off to Richmond.”

  “That’s okay. I’m just passing by on my way to Peter’s job site.”

  “Oh, sure. Boy, that place looks amazing. I bet it’ll be in a magazine when it’s done. He is some craftsman, that husband of yours.”

  “What’s going on in Richmond?”

  “Some charity function. Carrie figures if people already have their wallets open, they can shell out a few dollars for the farm.” He frowned at the sheaf of bills in his hand. “God knows we could use it.”

  “Donations down?”

  He gave a grim nod. “You know who we really miss around here?”

  Her throat tightened. Of course she knew. Chrissy was missed everywhere.

  “He was a huge help with our fund-raising.”

  She blinked. “Who?”

  “Your boy Kip. What a whiz he was at getting donors to give. Dialing for dollars, he called it. I used to listen to him work his magic. That boy could charm the birds out of the trees.”

  Of course. How could she forget Christopher Con Man? Always running some kind of scam. Sometimes for good, most times not. “Yes,” she murmured. “Well, bye, Fred.”

  A lump formed thick in her throat as she drove on. Package deal, she remembered, but the price had gone up since then.

  Another half mile brought her to the site. The last time she saw the house it was little more than a shell, but now it was nearly finished, and it was beautiful. King Midas’s first vision for the place was straight out of Gone with the Wind, but Peter had slowly coaxed him into something more organic to the site. Three stories tall but built into the hillside like it grew there. It was made of stone and stucco and copper flashing that winked in the sunlight, with a hundred muntined windows and doors, a gabled pergola at one end, and a vast bluestone terrace at the other. Peter always did beautiful work, but she could see that he’d outdone himself this time.

  It was late afternoon, his crew was gone, and she was able to pull all the way up the drive. But when she reached the top of the hill, she saw that Peter’s truck was gone, too. She should have called ahead. Music was playing from somewhere nearby. She could feel the heavy bass line vibrating through the floorboards of her car. A shadow passed by one of the open windows of the house. Kip was in there, alone, blasting his music like cannon fire through the countryside.

  She sat idling. It was Peter she came to apologize to, and she wasn’t sure what to say to Kip. That she was sorry, but for what? That she did her job and represented an emotionally abused wife to the best of her ability and didn’t foresee that years later Boyd Harrison might take it out on a stepson she didn’t even have at the time.

  After a long moment, she put the car in reverse and backed slowly down the drive.

  She still owed an apology, though, to someone else, and after she returned home, she steeled herself to make the call.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said as Shelby answered at the same moment with the same words.

  They met for lunch on Monday at a new place near Foggy Bottom. It was a long walk from both their offices, but Shelby said it was worth the hike. Farm-to-table, she told her, a real comfort-food restaurant.

  Leigh arrived first to the faux-rustic space and was shown to her seat at a rough-hewn plank table. The place was packed, and as she settled in to wait for Shelby, a party of boisterous young people caught her eye on the other side of the restaurant. There were six or eight of them, young men in shirts and ties and young women in office skirts and dresses. They looked like a lot of the young people that populated Washington—Hillrats or White House interns or GS-9s in some government agency. They seemed to be having some kind of reunion, and Leigh speculated that they went to school together and all came to Washington with their big dreams and high spirits. Ambitious young hopefuls. Kip would have been one of them in five or ten years.

  Shelby swept in ten minutes later wearing a lime-green romper. One of the most respected lawyers in the District and she was dressed in a style Leigh stopped putting Chrissy in at age five. It looked unbelievably sexy on Shelby, and heads swiveled to watch her as she navigated the restaurant in her long-legged stride.

  Leigh stood up to hug her, and Shelby held her back and looked her over, up and down. “You look wonderful,” she decided. “You’re practica
lly glowing.”

  “I believe that’s called sweat,” Leigh said as they took their seats.

  Shelby ignored the deflection. “Does this mean you’re feeling better?”

  “A little. Being back to work helps. I might have a new custody case that looks interesting. And I’ll tell you what else—promise you won’t laugh?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “I’ve been meeting with a minister.”

  “How nice.” Shelby opened her menu and let her lips curve behind it. She had the usual sophisticate’s disdain for religion.

  Leigh laughed. “I saw that.”

  “Oh, whatever works, darling. Just promise me you won’t start selling flowers in the airport. Or wear homespun dresses, God forbid.”

  Their server arrived, and after they put in their orders, Shelby picked up her water glass and said, “So tell me about this minister of yours.”

  “Well, he’s really more a professor than a minister, at the moment, at least. He teaches Ethics at George Washington, and he’s written some interesting books—”

  “Wait.” Shelby slammed the glass to the table. “Are you talking about Stephen Kendall?”

  “You’ve heard of him?”

  “Of course. The gun control guy. I don’t agree with a thing he says, but, honey”—she affected a southern-belle drawl—“ah do declare ah admire the way he looks while he says it.”

  “I know.” Leigh was a little sheepish. “I used to think of him as Reverend Brooks Brothers.”

  “No, that’s not right.” Shelby tapped her chin. “Let me think. Not Clooney. We need to go back to the golden age of Hollywood. Gregory Peck? No, your reverend has more of a twinkle in his eye. I know! Cary Grant! But without the transatlantic accent.”