House on Fire

by Bonnie Kistler

  “There’s nothing to forgive. It wasn’t your fault.”

  He bit his lip. “It was, though. It never would have happened if I hadn’t gone out that night.”

  “Oh, Kip.” She put her hand on his arm. “It never would have happened if your dad and I stayed home that week. Or if we never got married, or if I never hired him to build the kitchen. We can play what-ifs till the end of time.”

  Peter opened the truck door to eject Shepherd, and he threw Leigh a what’s-the-hold-up look. She raised a finger behind Kip’s back. One minute. “Don’t do this to yourself,” she said. “You’re starting college this week. You need to get past this.”

  He looked up at her, his eyes brimming. “How?”

  “You make her proud, that’s how.” She put her arms around him and whispered the rest. “You study hard and do your best and be the kind of man she’d brag about. The kind she’d cheer for and stand up in the audience and holler That’s my brother.”

  He choked a laugh.

  She kissed his cheek. “Make us all proud, Kip.”

  He got in the truck, and she held Mia by the hand and Shep by the collar and waved them off.

  They decided to bake cookies. Leigh found one of Chrissy’s old aprons and set Mia to work blending butter and sugar. The morning had started out sunny, but now some clouds were blowing in, and she had to switch on the lights in the kitchen. She turned on some music, too, a playlist of Disney songs she hoped Mia would enjoy. Chrissy knew them all by heart, and even after her tastes graduated to Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus, she still loved those old favorites.

  So did Mia, it turned out, and she sang along to the music in her little piping soprano. They got the first batch of cookies in the oven and Leigh was scooping out the second when Mia looked up from the spoon she was licking and said: “I like coming here. I can remember Chrissy better when I’m here. Sometimes at home I forget to remember her.”

  Leigh’s hand froze midscoop. The sea of her grief began to swell, the wind whipped in to billow it, and she could tell it was going to crash hard this time. “You do the next batch, honey,” she said thickly. “I need to run upstairs and get Kip’s sheets in the wash.”

  She did run upstairs but only to her own room. She knew the day would come when nobody on earth remembered who Chrissy was, and here it was, starting already. It was up to Leigh to tell the stories that would keep her memory alive, but how could she when she couldn’t even talk about her?

  People died, but grief never did, Stephen said. It could be buried and forgotten but it was still there, and it could rise up when she least expected it, on a happy day full of happy memories. And here it was.

  For the first time she understood exactly what she mourned. Not the Chrissy she knew and loved. She’d already had that Chrissy. It was the Chrissy she was meant to become—that was the one she’d lost.

  “Leigh?” Mia called from the bottom of the stairs.

  Leigh scrambled to her feet. She couldn’t let her see her like this. She locked the bedroom door and went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She could hear Mia knocking, and Shepherd barking frantically, but she couldn’t go out there, not yet.

  She curled up on the bathroom floor and when she squeezed her eyes shut, Chrissy’s face glimmered into view. It was a familiar image—Chrissy hanging over Romeo’s neck as they cleared a jump. She was weightless, suspended in the air with a look of such piercing joy on her face that Leigh nearly gasped to see it again. She was such a good rider, better than Leigh ever was. Next year she would almost certainly have qualified for the junior hunter events at Devon. They would have gotten her a new hacking jacket for the occasion and new riding boots, too. They would have made a big family vacation out of the trip. The boys would all come along, and Mia, too, and they’d all be there, hanging on the rail to cheer her on. Maybe they’d bring that boy from school along, too—David. Chrissy didn’t know she liked him yet, but Leigh knew, and by next year Chrissy would know it, too. They’d be going steady by then and David would cheer louder than anybody. Chrissy’s face would turn red when she heard his voice in the crowd, but she was secretly thrilled. Leigh could see it in her eyes.

  She could see it all then, Chrissy’s life unspooling ahead of her through other horse shows and new boyfriends, through high school and on to college and beyond. She’d get a master’s degree, probably, then work a few years for Teach for America. Leigh and Peter would worry because her school was in a terrible neighborhood in the District, but Chrissy loved her work and loved her kids and came home every weekend to visit them and to see Romeo. He was too old for competitive riding by then and she’d moved on to other interests, too, but she came out every weekend anyway just to stroke his neck and walk him slowly around the pasture.

  The reel played on in Leigh’s mind. She saw dreams she never knew she had for her daughter. Career, husband, children. A house and garden. Hobbies and vacations. Touring the Louvre. Skiing the Rockies and sailing the Caribbean. A life rich with friends and adventure and contentment. She saw Chrissy standing at a lectern with a PowerPoint on the screen behind her and a rapt audience in front of her. She saw her bathing her newborn while her husband hovered with his eyes full of wonder. And there she was many years later, her copper curls turned to silver, holding Leigh’s liver-spotted hand at the end. She was weeping but she was smiling, too, for the lifetime of love they’d shared.

  It was Chrissy’s whole life spinning out in some parallel universe. The life she might have lived but better, because Leigh invented it for her, so it was a life without grief or heartache or crippling anger. It was all a fiction, but she was amazed at how much comfort it gave her. None of it had ever happened, but it was pretty to think it had, and maybe that was heaven enough.

  She sat up and wiped her eyes, and after a few minutes more she went to the window. The rain was lashing against the glass, and the wind was blowing so wildly that the bird feeder spun on its hook and spewed out its seed like a rotary spreader through the garden. It was a moment before she noticed the tiny figure outside in the storm, struggling to open the pasture gate with one hand while she clung to Romeo’s halter with the other.

  Romeo had gotten loose again, and Mia—little Mia!—was dragging him back to the pasture. Leigh raced down the back stairs and out the door and sprinted through the pelting raindrops. By the time she reached the barn, Mia was latching the door on Romeo’s stall.

  The little girl turned around, her clothes soaked through and her hair dripping wet over her face and shoulders. “He was out on the road, Leigh,” she cried. “I called you and called you, but you didn’t hear, so I had to go get him myself.”

  “Mia—you did this all by yourself?”

  Mia blinked up at Romeo’s enormous head hanging over the stall door, as if suddenly she couldn’t believe it herself. “I did!”

  Leigh hustled her inside to a hot bath and made hot chocolate for her to sip while she combed out her hair. Mia chattered excitedly while Leigh worked on the tangles. “He listened to me. I didn’t think he would, but he did. I said, Come along, Romeo, and I made that noise with my tongue, you know?” She paused to demonstrate a cluck. “And he followed along right after me.”

  Her hair was dark and long and straight, nothing at all like Chrissy’s curls, but the tangles were just as tight, and Leigh pulled the comb through carefully to clear them.

  “I think maybe I’m not afraid of horses anymore. Especially not Licorice. ’Cause he’s my size, right, Leigh?”

  “Right,” Leigh said as she pulled the comb through the last tangle.

  “You think maybe I’m ready to learn how to ride now?”

  “I think you are.” She put the comb down and plunged her fingers into the roots of Mia’s hair and pulled them through smoothly to the end. When she let go, the child’s hair floated weightless through the air until it settled like a cloud on her shoulders.

  “Let me tell you about Chrissy when she first learned to ride,” she said,
and Mia settled back against her knees to listen.

  Acknowledgments

  I spent my life as a lawyer working in a man’s world. It was their playing field, and they set the rules of the game long before I joined the team. So I had to learn to think the way they thought, to speak in sports metaphors, and to tune out the worst of the locker-room language. Which is why it’s been such a refreshing change, not to mention pure pleasure, to publish House on Fire almost entirely in the company of some extraordinary women.

  This story would have met a fiery death if not for Jennifer Weltz, who read more drafts than any agent should have to, and who carefully steered me away from a succession of crashes until I finally came in for landing. I am deeply grateful for her support and guidance. And I am eternally grateful to Jean Naggar, who plucked me out of her slush pile and changed my life forever.

  Thanks to my editor, the wondrous wunderkind Sarah Cantin, for her generosity and understanding. If Jennifer reined in the worst of my impulses, Sarah gave me latitude to indulge the better ones. My thanks also to the whole team at Atria Books, including Haley Weaver for nimbly picking up the reins from Sarah; Shelly Perron for carefully (and tactfully) copyediting the manuscript; and Lisa Sciambra for spiritedly introducing this novel to the reading world.

  I am also grateful for the work of Dr. Sissela Bok in Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (Pantheon Books, 1978), which informed much of Stephen Kendall’s lecture on the Good Lie.

  A few good men merit mention. My thanks to James Iacobelli for creating a vibrant jacket illustration, and to Will Rhino for his enthusiastic marketing of this book. And finally, love to my one and only. Always and everywhere.

  About the Author

  BONNIE KISTLER is a former trial lawyer. She spent her legal career in private practice with major law firms and successfully tried cases in federal and state courts across the country. She and her husband now live in Florida and the mountains of western North Carolina. They have two daughters.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Bonnie Kistler

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Atria Books hardcover edition March 2019

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  Interior design by Alexis Minieri

  Jacket design by Laywan Kwan

  Jacket photographs of house and trees by Getty Images; photograph of sky © Shutterstock

  Author photograph by Brittany Sisk

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: MacDougal, Bonnie, author.

  Title: House on fire : a novel / Bonnie Kistler.

  Description: First Atria Books hardcover edition. | New York : Atria Books, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018016333 (print) | LCCN 2018019931 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501198700 (eBook) | ISBN 9781501198687 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501198694 (pbk.)

  Subjects: LCSH: Domestic fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3563.A2917 (ebook) | LCC PS3563.A2917 H68 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018016333

  ISBN 978-1-5011-9868-7

  ISBN 978-1-5011-9870-0 (ebook)