Chapter 4 - What started the fire
The church doors closed behind the last guest Margaret asked to leave.
Only family remained.
Me.
Emily.
Daniel.
Margaret.
Mom and Dad.
The photographer quietly packed his equipment until Margaret told him to leave too.
Dad sat in the first pew.
He suddenly looked seventy.
“The investigators found damaged wiring in Emily's bedroom,” he said.
“I know.”
“That wasn't what started it.”
Mom covered her face.
Emily whispered, “Dad, stop.”
He looked at her.
“You're asking everyone else to carry this again.”
Again.
That word mattered.
My pulse accelerated.
Dad turned to me.
“The fire started with a candle.”
I remembered Emily's bedroom.
She loved scented candles because Mom did.
But she wasn't allowed to light them alone.
“She was ten.”
Dad nodded.
“She lit one.”
Emily began crying.
“She knocked it over while trying to hide it. The curtain caught.”
I stared at her.
“You remembered?”
She nodded.
All these years, she'd remembered.
I had spent seven years telling her the fire wasn't her fault.
She had listened.
Accepted my comfort.
And never once told me the truth.
“The investigator knew?”
Dad's silence answered.
“You changed the report?”
“Not exactly.”
Mom spoke through tears.
“The electrical system was old. The insurance investigator agreed wiring could be listed as the primary cause.”
“Why?”
“To protect Emily.”
From what?
She was ten.
No prosecutor was coming for her.
No one would have hated a terrified child for making a terrible mistake.
But my parents had panicked.
They had decided truth itself was dangerous.
“We didn't want her growing up believing she'd done that to you,” Dad said.
I looked down at my useless legs.
“So instead you let me believe nobody was responsible.”
Emily suddenly shouted.
“You think knowing was easy for me?”
I looked up.
She was shaking.
“Every time I saw you learning to walk again, I knew. Every surgery. Every time someone stared at your face, I knew.”
For the first time, I saw the frightened ten-year-old beneath the bride.
Then she said the sentence that destroyed my sympathy.
“I spent seven years being punished by looking at you.”
Silence.
Daniel stared at her as though seeing a stranger.
I felt strangely calm.
“You weren't being punished, Emily.”
I removed one ivory glove.
The scars across my hand gleamed beneath the church lights.
“I was.”
Emily looked away.
Then Margaret's phone vibrated.
She checked it.
Her expression changed.
“What?”
Daniel asked.
Margaret looked at my parents.
“The person who mailed me those photographs just sent another message.”
She turned the phone around.
There was a single sentence.
Ask Linda what she took from Claire after the fire.
Mom sat down.
May you like
And Dad whispered:
“Oh God.”
