Late One Night

18

That night, Pat came home and said to Missy, “Do you think Shooter told the fire marshal what he knows?”

“Maybe, maybe not. You know how people like to talk.”

Pat nodded. “You can bet they’ll run with it now. Maybe it’s only right. The truth has to come out one way or the other.”

It was the dead of winter, and people spent the cold, snowy nights at home, too much time on their hands — enough time to allow for gossip. This neighbor called that one up and down the streets of Goldengate, out the blacktop to Bethlehem, and all through Phillipsport, and before the month was out, while everyone waited for the fire marshal’s report, there was more than one person who believed that Ronnie Black had tried to kill his wife and kids.

What could be the reason?

Speculation was he wanted a clean break and a new life with Brandi Tate that wouldn’t carry with it the burden of supporting his family.

Well, look what he had now: four of those kids to raise.

That is, if he didn’t end up in prison.

The good will that some had built up for Ronnie at the funeral proved to be brittle. Now that the funeral was done and the grave covered over at the Bethlehem Church Cemetery, it was simple for some to believe that the man they’d first held responsible merely due to his absence from the family might turn out to be more villain than they’d first had cause to know.

He’d been there. At the trailer.

The night it burned?

That’s right. Ronnie Black.

People started wondering what they might say if asked. If the sheriff, Biggs, came wanting to know something about Ronnie and the months leading up to that fire, what would they recall that might be of use? They thought on the matter over lunch at the Real McCoy Café, getting their hair set at the Looking Glass, picking up a gallon of milk at the IGA, working their shifts at the oil refinery in Phillipsport, drinking shots and beers at Fat Daddy’s.

Tweezer Gray, who tended bar there, remembered one night close to Christmas when Ronnie stayed until last call, and then said to Tweezer, “You know how much this divorce is going to cost me? Plenty, I can tell you that. A wife and seven kids. Jesus, what was I thinking?”

Willie Wheeler, who lived next door to Brandi, said he saw Ronnie come out the door the afternoon of the fire and take up the street in his Firebird like there was no tomorrow. “He was steamed about something,” Willie told anyone who’d listen. “I’ll tell you that much for sure.”

“He’s got a temper,” Alvin Higgins said. “I was uptown at the hardware store one day back in the fall — this must have been around the time he moved out on Della and took up living with Brandi — and he wanted to buy a snow blower on time, and Jingle Johnstone told him his credit was no good. ‘I can give you fifty dollars right now,’ Ronnie said, ‘and twenty a week until I pay it off.’ Jingle wasn’t going for it. ‘Nah, Ronnie,’ he said. ‘The word’s out around town. You’re a bad risk.’ Well, that set Ronnie off. ‘Goddamn you,’ he said. ‘Goddamn you and everyone else like you.’ There was a box of two-inch flat washers on the counter. Ronnie picked it up and slung it down the aisle, scattered those washers all the way to kingdom come. Then he just walked out, pretty as you please. I heard he came back later and apologized to Jingle, said he was just going through too much and sometimes he felt like he was going to bust, but still, there’s no call for an outburst like that.”

Anna Spillman from over at the Real McCoy Café said Ronnie used to come in winter days when he hadn’t been able to scare up work, and he’d sit in a booth way back in the corner like he didn’t want anyone to see him. “He’d order coffee, and sometimes, if Pastor Quick wasn’t around, I’d let Ronnie have a piece of pie on the house because I felt sorry for him. I knew what he’d done to Della, but it was hard for me to think bad of him. He looked like he didn’t have a friend in the world, and one day I told him that. ‘Della’s out to get me,’ he said. ‘She’s going to make sure I pay for a good long while. She better be careful. Paybacks are hell.’ I thought he was just talking big, but now I’m not so sure, particularly after what I heard from Taylor Jack.”

Taylor worked down the street at the Casey’s convenience store, and he saw Ronnie at the pumps the morning of the fire, filling a five-gallon gas can. He’d come back that night and bought five gallons more. That was the most damaging story of all. Two cans of gas in the dead of winter. What would a man who hadn’t been able to buy a snow blower, and who didn’t own a generator that anyone knew of, need with that gas?

And there was everyone who’d seen Ronnie come up the blacktop the afternoon of the fire, gunning that Firebird, not even stopping for the school bus. The driver, Lucy Tutor, reported it to the principal. “Ronnie came up that blacktop just a-hellin’,” Lucy said. “Like if he killed someone he wouldn’t care.” She’d picked up all the latest lingo from the kids. “Trust me, that boy needed to slow his roll.”

_________

That’s what Ronnie was trying to do in those days after the funeral. He was trying to get his life back on an even keel. He had the girls, and he and Brandi were determined to make them a home, even if Angel wasn’t sure she was ready to accept it. The other girls were coming along just fine. Hannah, true to her good nature, accepted Brandi right away, weaving her a friendship bracelet from green and orange threads. She put it around Brandi’s wrist and fastened it by looping one end around the green button sewn to the other end.

“You’re supposed to wish for something now,” Hannah said.

“Like money?” Brandi asked. “Is that what I should wish for?”

Hannah shrugged. “Something you really, really want,” she said. “Keep this bracelet on until the yarn wears out and it falls off your wrist. Then your wish will come true.”

They were in the living room on the couch, and Ronnie was eavesdropping on them. He lay on the bed in his and Brandi’s room and listened to the sounds of the house after supper was done and the girls were chattering. Sarah was learning her part for a class play. She was the voice of the bridge in The Three Billy Goats Gruff. She kept saying, “Trip, trap, trip, trap, trip, trap.” And Ronnie thought it was wonderful to hear those words again and again, to know they came from his daughter. Even the angry bounce of a basketball in the bedroom that Angel shared with Hannah was a sound that pleased him. Emma passed by in the hallway, singing the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” song, only she was trying to sing the special verse that Della always sang to her, and she kept stumbling over the first line about a sweetie-weetie butterfly. Ronnie sang the verse in his head:

A sweetie-weetie butterfly

Flew around and ‘round;

A strong wind came along and blew it to the ground.

Out came its Daddy and gave it a kiss and hug,

And the sweetie-weetie butterfly was as happy as a bug.

Ronnie couldn’t say he was happy — no, not exactly that. It hadn’t been smooth sailing. Angel was still sullen and hateful sometimes. “Patience,” Brandi told him. “It hasn’t been easy for her. It hasn’t been easy for any of them.”

Sarah woke some nights, screaming from nightmares about the fire. Hannah sometimes went quiet in the midst of playing a game or watching TV and tears filled her eyes. Nights, when Ronnie was tucking Emma into bed, she might claim she’d seen Emily somewhere in the house — Emily skipping rope in the living room, Emily hiding in the closet, Emily in the kitchen eating Oreos. Little bumps, Brandi told him. Little by little, they’d smooth out. Only Hannah — dependable, level-headed Hannah — seemed beyond ruin.

If he wasn’t happy, then at least he was thankful. He had his girls, and Brandi had opened her heart to them. They were back in school, and each day brought them closer to retrieving at least some of the life he’d taken from them when he’d left Della back in the fall.

A few days after he’d gone to the bank and tried to withdraw some of the money from the account set up for his girls, Missy paid him a visit.

She had a check she’d written out for him. Three hundred dollars for him to spend on the girls however he saw fit.

It was midmorning and the girls were in school. Brandi was in Phillipsport at work at the Savings and Loan.

Ronnie had just got home from the Real McCoy Café, where he’d sat drinking coffee and talking to the waitress, Anna Spillman. He’d just kicked off his boots when he heard the knock on the door.

He stood in the open doorway, studying that check.

“Missy?” he said.

She looked down at his feet and then over to the side of the porch. “You should know I’m the one who holds that account at the bank.” She had her head turned toward Willie Wheeler’s house, a squat bungalow with brown asphalt shingle siding. The curtains were open at all the windows. She was having a hard time facing Ronnie. She wondered whether he’d heard the gossip and whether he could guess that she’d helped start it. She wanted to be done with her chore and on her way. “I’d like to see that money build up interest and be there for the girls when they get out of high school,” she said. “They might need it to help with college, or just to start their own families. I don’t know. I just don’t want to spend it down just for the sake of spending it.” She turned her head and looked him in the eye for the first time. “If they ever need anything between now and then, something you can’t afford, you let me know. How’s that?”

“Is that the way you’ve decided it should be?”

She gave him a stiff nod. “I won’t let those girls want for anything. You can count on that.”

Ronnie heard what wasn’t being said: that she didn’t trust him to do right with that money, and for an instant he was tempted to tear that check up and throw the pieces into her face. But when would he ever have his hands on three hundred dollars again? It was true that he could put it to good use for groceries and the like.

He opened the door wider. “You want to come in?”

Missy shook her head. “I’ve done what I came for.”

“All right then.” He folded that check up in his hand. “Angel’s been crying for a new iPod, but I won’t throw this away on that. It’s hard enough to keep them all fed and in decent clothes. I’d say thank you, but something tells me it’s not thanks you want. I figure you aim to hold me accountable until the day I die.”

Then he stepped back into the house and closed the door.

_________

At first, he was unaware of the talk swirling around the county — the talk of him being at the trailer the night it burned. He thought that was his secret. Even Brandi was in the dark, and, as for the girls, they were busy being kids, busy trying to get on with their lives.

Then Brandi came home from work one evening and told them she’d been hearing gossip.

“About me?” he asked. “About the fire?”

Brandi studied him awhile. “Then you’ve heard it too,” she finally said. “It’s just talk. That’s what it is. Just crazy talk from stupid people.”

“Still, I don’t want the girls to hear it.”

“We can only hope.”

One day at school — this was at the end of January — Tommy Stout, who’d been on Lucy Tutor’s bus the afternoon of the fire when Ronnie went tearing by in his Firebird, said to Angel in the hallway at lunchtime, “Jeez, did your dad try to kill you all?”

At first, Angel couldn’t decide whether she’d heard him right. There was all the noise of the crowded hallway — lockers slamming, people talking, someone shouting, “Oh, baby!”—and she thought she must have misheard. Then it slowly came to her that Tommy had said exactly what she’d first thought, and she said to him, “Where’d you hear that?”

“My dad. He was talking about it at supper last night. It’s all over the county. Folks say your dad was out behind your trailer right before it caught on fire. Shooter Rowe saw him.”

She’d never cared for Mr. Rowe. He was too grumpy, and he’d taken her to task more than once on account of those goats, but he’d been there the night of the fire. He’d been there when they’d needed him.

“If my dad was out there, how come I didn’t see him?”

“Maybe he didn’t want you to see him. Maybe that’s why.”

“That’s just stupid, Tommy.” Angel swatted him on the arm with a notebook. “That’s almost as stupid as you.”

She thought about it all afternoon, the chance that her dad might have been so mad at her mom that he’d gone off the deep end and lit the trailer on fire. He had a temper. No doubt about that. Look what he’d done to her mom’s hair. How could Angel ever forgive him for that? And there were times, even though they were few, when one of them misbehaved and he lost his temper. Angel tried to forget those times when he let his anger get the best of him. In those days leading up to him finally walking out, he’d filled the trailer with his loud voice and his sharp words, but when Angel thought of him now and the way he was back through the years, she preferred to remember him as gentle and kind, which he was sometimes. He had a game he played with her before she got too old for it. Each evening, before her mother tucked her into bed, her father held his closed hands in front of him and told her to tap one. To her surprise, each time she did, he opened that hand and there on his palm was something just for her: an Indian bead fossil found in the gravel, a bird’s feather, a locust’s shell. Always something from an animal or a plant, something that had once been alive. She saved everything in a Buster Brown shoebox. Her treasures. Each time she tapped her father’s hand and he opened it to reveal what he’d been hiding, he opened his eyes wide in surprise and he said in a hushed voice, “You’ve done it again, Miss Angel of my heart. Amazing. You’ve won the prize.”

It took her a while to figure out that he had something in both hands. It didn’t matter which one she tapped. She’d always be the winner. When she knew that, she felt a little squiggle inside, and she knew that squiggle was love. Her father loved her enough to make sure she was never disappointed.

All through her afternoon classes, she thought about how close they’d once been. As she got older, he took her with him when he went into the woods each spring to look for morel mushrooms or in the summer to pick wild blackberries. He taught her how to swim in the pond at Grandpa Wayne’s. He gave her piggyback rides, taught her the names of the shapes the stars made in the night sky, pointed out the calls that bobwhites made and whippoorwills and mourning doves. In the winter, he pulled her on her sled and helped her make snowmen. Together, they’d lie on their backs in the snow and move their arms and legs to make angels. “There you are,” he’d say, pointing at the shape she’d left in the snow. “My angel.”

She wanted all of that back, but she didn’t know how to say as much. She’d lost it, the closeness they’d once shared, when something went wrong between him and her mother, and suddenly nothing was right in their family. Angel couldn’t say what had gone wrong. She only knew that her father, who had always been so tender with her, suddenly had no patience. He snapped at Emma and Emily for being chatterboxes, told Sarah to shut up when she whined that all her friends had this and that and she didn’t, yelled at Gracie to pick up the toys she often left wherever they fell. He even had a sharp word for Hannah from time to time — kind, good Hannah, who did nothing to deserve his anger. The brunt of his disapproval, though, fell upon Angel, who didn’t make Hannah’s good grades in school, and dressed, he told her once, in jeans that were too tight and tops that were too revealing. “I know what’s on boys’ minds,” he said. “Especially if you go around looking like that.”

It embarrassed her and made her mad to hear her father talk to her like that, her father who’d always spoken to her as if she hung the moon, as if she could never do anything to disappoint him. One night, when she came back from a football game, he said her skirt was too short, that she looked like a whore, and that hurt her more than anything, to hear him say that, as if she weren’t his daughter at all but just some girl he’d seen on the street. She didn’t know if she’d ever be able to forgive him for that, and when he finally walked out, she thought, good riddance.

_________

The bus went from the high school in Phillipsport to Goldengate, where they let the students off at the junior high. Then the country kids got on other buses to take them home. Hannah and Angel had been those kids just a few weeks back, but now Hannah waited in front of the junior high for Angel to get off the bus, and then they walked to Brandi’s house, where they were trying to be a family. In the old days, the days Hannah had come to think of as “Before the Fire,” she’d waited for the high school bus from Phillipsport, and then they’d climbed onto Lucy Tutor’s bus and made their way out the blacktop.

On this particular day, though, the high school bus came and let everyone off, and Hannah saw Angel walking toward the bus parked near the front of the line, the bus she and Angel used to ride. Lucy Tutor opened the pneumatic doors, and they hissed and squealed.

By this time, nearly four o’clock, the moon was already rising — Hannah could see it low in the sky just above the treetops along Locust Street — and the temperature was dropping. She could feel the cold’s bite on her face and through the fingers of her woolen gloves. She stamped her feet, and her toes tingled inside her boots.

She called Angel’s name, and Angel stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and turned back to see who had called out and why. Two boys wearing Phillipsport letterman jackets split apart to move past her. Hannah knew the boys were football players. She could see the gold helmets they’d won for good plays pinned to the red wool of the jackets. Beefy, bareheaded boys laughing about something before they got onto the bus.

“Go home,” Angel told Hannah.

“Where are you going?” Hannah ran down the sidewalk to where she was standing. “We’re supposed to go right home. You know Dad wants us to watch Sarah and Emma.” He’d said as much that morning. He’d pick up Sarah and Emma at their school and drop them off at Brandi’s for Hannah and Angel to take care of until Brandi got home from work. He had to drive over the river to Brick Chapel to see a man about a job. “We have to go,” Hannah said, and she took Angel by the sleeve of her coat. “We have to go right now.”

“You can babysit.” Angel jerked her arm free from Hannah’s grasp. “You’re the one Dad really trusts anyway. Not me.”

In the days since the fire, Hannah had delighted in the fact that she and Angel were growing closer. They’d put away their argument about who’d been supposed to feed the goats the night the trailer burned and who’d neglected that chore and who’d failed to carry out the ashes from the Franklin stove. That had just been sniping between two sisters who didn’t know what else to do in the aftershock of their disaster. It didn’t take long for them to find comfort in each other’s company. Nights, Angel often whispered to Hannah, who was in the bed across from her in the room they shared, and said, “You okay?” Sometimes Hannah nodded her head and said, yes, she was, and sometimes she said she didn’t think she’d be able to go to sleep because every time she closed her eyes, she saw the flames and smoke of that night. Angel got into bed with her then. She crawled in under the covers, and she let Hannah lie close to her and they held hands and finally drifted off to sleep.

Now Angel was turning her away.

“I’ll go with you,” Hannah said even though she knew she had to go to Brandi’s. “Are you going to Missy’s?”

“I’m just going,” Angel said. “Never you mind where.”

The sidewalk was almost empty now. Some of the buses had already pulled out. The last of the stragglers were getting onto Lucy Tutor’s bus.

And with that, Angel was gone. Hannah took a few steps after her, but she knew it was all for show. She knew she’d go to Brandi’s like she was supposed to and she’d take care of Sarah and Emma. The only thing she didn’t know was what she’d tell her dad when he’d ask her, as she knew he would, Where is she? Where’s your sister?

The only seat left on the bus was the one behind Lucy Tutor — the loser seat, the one for dweebs and ’tards. Angel didn’t care. She let her book bag slide off her shoulder as she dropped down onto the seat.

“That you, Angel?” Lucy wore a pair of glasses she kept on a chain around her neck. She lifted the glasses to her face. She tipped back her head and crinkled up her nose. “Honey, you know you don’t ride this bus anymore.”

“Are you saying I can’t?”

“You live in town now.”

“I know where I live.” Angel let her voice get all sweetie-sweet. She leaned forward and whispered to Lucy, “I’ve been invited.”

“Invited,” said Lucy. “Invited to what?”

“It’s very important that I be there.”

“Oh, I’m sure it is.” Lucy let the glasses drop onto her chest. “Is it Missy Wade? Is that who you’re going to see?”

Angel smiled, and there was something in that smile that was enough for Lucy. She said, “Missy sure does love on you girls.”

Then she put the bus into gear and slowly pulled away from the curb.

What was left of the trailer after the fire was still there. The furnace and the hot water heater rose up from the ruin. Angel turned her head as the bus went by. She saw the head of a wire coat hanger poking up along the trailer’s underskirting, a litter of baking pans rusting in the weather, scraps of this and that turned black with char. She remembered in flashes of light and sound the bits and pieces of that night once she understood that the trailer was on fire. Her mother shook her awake. She could smell smoke, could hear the crackle of flames. Her mother said that word, Fire. She told her to help get the others out. She was coughing, and she made sure Hannah was awake. Then she turned and went on down the hall. Something exploded, and Angel heard a whoosh of fire the way she did each time the furnace kicked on. That’s when she got more scared than she’d ever been in her life. She grabbed Hannah’s hand. “C’mon,” she said. “Run!”

That was the moment that Angel thought about some nights now as she lay in bed with Hannah. Angel wanted to tell her what her mother had told her to do — save the others — but Angel couldn’t bear the thought of confessing that. She couldn’t bring herself to say that she’d been too scared to try to save the others. She couldn’t say that. Hannah, she was sure, would have been braver.

Just maybe, Angel wished it true — what Tommy claimed Shooter Rowe said. If her father had something to do with the fire, she’d have reason enough to put aside how much she hated herself for running out of the trailer that night and leaving her sisters and brother and mother behind, how much she regretted not taking the ash box to the compost as she was told to do. If her father was guilty, then how could she be too?

She realized how quiet the bus had become. The kids who’d been chattering had fallen silent. They were all looking back at the trailer’s heap of ruin. Angel thought of all the people who’d given her hugs once she returned to school after the funeral. Kids and teachers crying with her, telling her to know that they were there to help her through, encouraging her to be strong. They’d given her cards — some of them were about their prayers being with her; others featured doves, roses, oceans, sunsets. Someone stretched a banner above the stairwell leading to the second-floor classrooms: We ♥ You, Angel! Every time she went up the stairs, she saw it. For a while, people left things at her locker — teddy bears, flowers, and, of course, angel figurines — but after a while that stopped, and she was secretly glad because deep down she didn’t believe she deserved any of this kindness.

She was embarrassed that the burnt debris was still there for all the kids on the bus to look at. It was a sign of everything that had gone wrong for her family.

The bus was slowing in front of Missy’s house, and for a few seconds Angel didn’t understand that Lucy was stopping on account of her.

“Here you are, honey,” Lucy said. The doors of the bus opened with a hiss. “You have a good visit.”

Tommy’s voice rang out from the back of the bus. “Why we stopping here, Lucy? Missy doesn’t have any kids.”

Angel gathered up her book bag and hurried down the steps of the bus before Tommy could spot her. She stood off the side of the blacktop and watched the bus go on. She stood there until she could no longer see it. Then she turned back to the south, back toward where she and her sisters and brother and mother and father had once had a home.

Captain was at the mailbox in front of his house when the bus went by. He didn’t ride that same bus home from school. He got out of school a little earlier in the afternoon and rode a different bus — the short bus, all the kids called it — the one meant for people like him.

Angel called out to him. “Captain.” She waved her arm back and forth over her head. “Captain, wait.”

He saw her, then. Angel. She was back. Angel, so blond and so fair. Angel, who’d always been good to him. Angel with the silky hair. If he got close enough, he could smell her shampoo and it smelled nice the way Christmas trees smelled nice. Angel, the girl he dreamed about sometimes. Just last night, in a dream, she took his hand and they walked together down a grassy lane into the shade of a deep woods. It was summer, but the trees blotted out the sun. Overhead, squirrels chattered and leaped from limb to limb. Ahead, a red-winged blackbird took flight. He saw it all in his dream, and when it was done and he was awake, he thought for a moment that it was true. It was summer and Angel still lived across the road, and they walked down that lane into the woods. Then little by little he realized that it was winter — he could hear the wind outside, could feel the chill of the house — and the trailer across the road had burned, and Angel lived in town now with Ronnie, and the dream he’d just had was nothing he could hold onto.

“I’m here.” He waved his own arm above his head and answered Angel. “I’m right here.”

Then he ran down the blacktop toward her, and he couldn’t help himself. He threw his arms around her, knocking her book bag off her shoulder and into the snow.

Over the past few weeks, Angel had gotten used to people hugging her. It seemed like wherever she went — to church, 4-H, school, Read’s IGA — there was always someone who wanted to wrap her up in their arms and rock her from side to side. Honey, oh honey. So when Captain pressed her to him, she didn’t find it odd at all, nor unwelcome. He lifted her from the ground, and she clung to him, this tall, strong boy who had yet to realize how easily he could hurt someone. She knew his gentle spirit wouldn’t allow it, not even a thought of lashing out at someone like Tommy Stout, who sometimes teased him. Not really in a mean way. All in good fun, Tommy and the others like him would insist. Little jokes about the Captain. Snapping off salutes in front of him. Calling out, aye, aye. And maybe there was nothing wrong with that — after all, Captain enjoyed playing the role, saluting in response. She used to wonder whether, deep down, Captain knew it was all a joke at his expense and a way of pointing out that he was different from the “normal” boys.

Angel pressed her face into Captain’s chest. She breathed in the smells from his wool coat — wood smoke and dried weeds, gasoline and hot cooking grease, snow and gravel — and to her it was the smell of home.

“You’re back,” he said.

Then before she could ask where his father was, Captain set her on the ground, grabbed her hand, and started running back up the blacktop. “C’mon, c’mon,” he said, and she had no choice but to go with him.

He ran across the road, and finally they were turning up the short lane to the trailer’s ruins.

She saw a purple knit glove on the ground, one with a silver star on its back. That glove had belonged to Gracie. Just a little glove for her little hand. It was enough to sting Angel’s eyes. Gracie, who’d always been crazy about stars. And Emily, who for months when she was four insisted that she was a fairy princess. And Junior, who’d been Angel’s to hold so many times when her mother was cooking or washing or cleaning. Junior with his silly grin and his bobbing head that made him look a little drunk. Angel could still remember the weight of him in her arms.

“C’mon,” Captain said again, and he tugged her along to the ruined trailer.

She hadn’t planned on this. She didn’t want to be there and to look at what was left after the fire, but Captain wouldn’t let go of her hand. He wanted to show her what all could be seen in the charred mess.

He pointed out the few items that were distinguishable in the rubble: a frying pan; a toaster oven; a door knob; the warped frame of Junior’s stroller; the silver-plated lid, blackened now, from the heart-shaped jewelry box her mother had kept on her dresser; a metal hoop earring from a pair their father had given Hannah on her last birthday; a Slinky the twins had loved to play with; a buckle from the OshKosh B’Gosh overalls Gracie often wore; a rhinestone hair barrette that had belonged to Sarah; a 4-H pin Angel had stuck into the bulletin board in her room. She remembered the green shamrock on the pin, a white “H” on each leaf—Head, Heart, Hands, Health.

Captain said, “I wanted to save it all for you, but my dad wouldn’t let me.” He got a very serious look on his face, and he nodded his head. “So I’ve been keeping watch.”

There it was — what remained of a life lived in that trailer. It hit Angel hard, how little was left, and she had to turn away and look off across the barren fields, corn stubble poking up through the snow, and tell herself not to cry. They were standing along what had once been the backside of the trailer. Captain had led her around the perimeter, pointing out the items, and now they were stopped at where the living room had been.

Angel took a step, and she felt through the thin soles of her Converse tennis shoes — Brandi had told her to wear her snow boots that morning, but she’d refused — something hard. She looked down and saw a pocketknife. It was pressed into the snow, and Angel knew it might have stayed there until the spring thaw when the meltdown began if she hadn’t stepped on it just right so the butt of the handle dug into the ball of her foot. If she’d been wearing her snow boots, she might not have felt it, this sharp pain that made her hop to the side and then look down at the knife.

She recognized it right away: a Case Hammerhead lockback knife with black and cream handles. She knew that if she were to pick it up and nick out the blade, she’d find a hammerhead shark engraved on it. She knew the knife belonged to her father. He kept the blade honed and the handles polished. When she was a little girl, she’d asked him over and over to show her the fish on the blade, and he’d always obliged, opening the knife, telling her to be careful, holding her finger and tracing it over the etching of the shark. He loved that knife.

She said to Captain, “Is your dad home?”

“We’ve got your goats,” Captain said. “C’mon.”

This time he didn’t grab her hand. He turned and started hurrying toward his house. Before following him, Angel stooped and plucked the knife from the snow. She closed her hand around it and stuck her fists into her jacket pockets.

“C’mon,” Captain said again. He turned around and waved for her to hurry, and she caught up to him in the road.

Shooter was in the barn behind the house. He had the goats penned in the stable that had been empty since he gave up his cattle, sold the last of the Red Angus and the Herefords. He and Captain had cared for the goats since the night of the fire. Shooter showed Captain how to milk the nannies, wrapping his forefinger and thumb around the base of the teat to keep the milk from going back into the udder when he squeezed with middle finger and ring finger and pinky, one after another, in a smooth motion, the milk spurting out into the galvanized bucket.

“Just like that,” Shooter said as he stood behind the stool where Captain sat. “One, two, three.” He laid his hand on Captain’s back and let his fingers tap out the rhythm. “Don’t pull. Just squeeze. One, two, three.”

They milked the goats in the cold barn while dusk fell. The milk made a pinging sound when it hit the side of the bucket. Shooter broke open some bales of alfalfa hay, and the air was sweet with its dust. It was all right there in the barn with the fading light and the steady rhythm of the milk and the smell of the hay, and Shooter touching Captain with assurance, letting him know that despite what had happened with Della’s trailer, there still could be the grace of these small things.

“It’s okay, isn’t it?” Shooter said. “Just the two of us right here, right now. Yes sir, don’t you worry. Everything’s going to be all right.”

Captain stopped milking for a moment, and he looked up at Shooter with eyes that seemed to be lost. Then Shooter patted him on the back. “One, two, three,” he said again, and Captain smiled and went back to his work.

They’d kept the goats because Shooter told Wayne Best he would, until Wayne decided if he wanted them for his own.

“I don’t mind,” he said. “I’ve got room in my barn.”

“Lois says she wouldn’t be able to stand having those goats around,” said Wayne. “They’d make her think of Gracie and Emily and Junior.”

So it was decided that Shooter would keep the goats for a time. The days stretched on into weeks, and he wasn’t even tempted to bring the subject up again. As much as Shooter had always cursed those goats and the way they always got out of Della’s pen and ran wild, he took to them now, helping Captain with the milking and the feeding and the mucking out the stalls. For the first time, it felt like the two of them were sharing something that brought them closer.

They sampled some of the milk themselves and Shooter sold what was left to mothers with babies who couldn’t tolerate cow’s milk or to elderly folks who swore that goat’s milk helped their digestion, eased their arthritis, lowered their cholesterol.

Shooter was just about ready to step outside the barn and call for Captain to come help him with the feeding when he heard the door creak open. The light from outside swept into the stall, and when Shooter turned to look he saw Captain and the girl, the oldest one, Angel.

“Honey,” he said, “what are you doing way out here?”

She took a step forward, coming up around Captain, her feet tamping down on the packed dirt floor of the feedway. Shooter watched her through the gaps between the wood-slat stanchions above the manger. Just a slip of a thing, her face all lips and eyes. Her cheeks were red from the cold, and her hands were in the pockets of her coat.

Captain was behind her, and, excited, he said, “Dad, Dad. Look who it is.”

Angel kept walking until she was level with Shooter. If he chose, he could reach through the stanchions and touch her just like he’d held out his arms to take Emma from Della on the night of the fire.

“Mr. Rowe, I’ve come to ask you—” She stopped then, looked down at her feet, lost whatever nerve she’d been able to muster. “What I mean is, I got to know. I came all this way. Surely you’ll tell me the truth.”

He couldn’t bear to see her stumble around, especially since he feared he knew exactly what she’d come to ask him. Word had finally gotten around to finding her.

“Your daddy?” he said, and she nodded.

He looked around her to Captain, who was reaching through the stanchions to pet the head of one of the goats, the billy that Della and the girls had always called Methuselah. Captain was saying something to Methuselah in a low voice that Shooter couldn’t make out. The other goats bleated as if they recognized Angel and were asking her where she’d been.

“Captain,” Shooter said, “run on up to the house and fetch my cell phone off the charger. It’s on the kitchen counter, right where I always keep it.”

“I’ll hurry,” Captain said and started running down the feedway to the barn door.

“Slow down,” Shooter called after him, and he stopped, his hand on the door. “Take it easy. Nothing’s on fire.”

As soon as he said it, he was sorry. That word, fire. Would that ever be a word that anyone could say in the presence of Angel or any of her sisters?

“Did you see him?” she asked once Captain was gone. “Did you see my dad at our trailer that night?”

“That’s nothing for you to worry about, honey.”

“I need to know.”

Shooter kept his voice even. “Some things aren’t meant for kids.”

“Did he set the fire?” She wouldn’t back down. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“If you’ve got something you want to know, go ask your daddy. It’s not for me to talk about.”

“But you’ve been talking about it. Tommy Stout said—”

Shooter reached through the stanchions and placed his finger on her lips, silencing her. “I guess you’ve already got your answer, don’t you?” He could see that Angel was scared. She bowed her head. He took his finger away from her lips. He touched the underside of her chin and nudged it up so she’d look at him. “Listen to me now. You came asking, so I’m giving you what you want. Yes, your daddy was out there that night.”

Captain was back with Shooter’s cell phone. He was panting, having run to and from the house even though his father had told him not to.

“It was on the counter,” he said. “Just like you told me.”

“Good job, Captain.” Shooter took the phone from him and then handed it to Angel. “Call your daddy,” he said. “Tell him where you are. Tell him I’m going to drive you home.”

_________

Ronnie was furious. He’d dropped off Sarah and Emma at Brandi’s and found only Hannah there to take care of them.

“You were supposed to be here,” he said over the phone. “But, no, you had something more important to do, something all about Angel. Where in the world are you, anyway? We’ve been worried sick.”

So Hannah hadn’t told him where she’d gone. If not for the fact that she was standing there in the barn with Mr. Rowe and Captain listening, she might have told her father what she really wanted to say — that he was supposed to have been home with them the night the trailer burned, but he’d left for something that was all about him. She wanted to tell him that she had his pocketknife, was squeezing her hand around the handle in her coat pocket at that very moment and feeling the nick where, if she took a mind to, she could pry up with her thumbnail and open the blade. She wanted to say she’d found it in the snow behind what had once been their home. She wanted to tell him what she knew he’d surely find out before long: Shooter Rowe had seen him come out from behind their trailer on the night of the fire.

But all she said was, “At Mr. Rowe’s. I rode my old bus out the blacktop.” The next part, though a little bit of a lie, was true in its own way. She just hadn’t known it until now. “I wanted to be out here. I wanted to be close.”

Ronnie’s voice was a whisper when he finally answered. “To your mother?”

“Yes.” She could barely speak because of the ache in her throat. She choked back the tears. “And to Gracie and Emily and Junior. To where we all lived. I just — I don’t know.”

“Okay,” Ronnie said, and she could hear him forgiving her. “It’s getting dark. I’ll come get you.”

She couldn’t bear to think of the ride back into town, just her and her father in his Firebird.

“Mr. Rowe said he’d give me a ride.”

He held out his hand, and Angel gave him the phone. “Ronnie?” he said. “It’s Shooter. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of getting your girl back to you.” He listened for a few moments. Then he said, “Nah, it’s not. Not for me.” The light was fading and Angel thought he winked at her then, but she wasn’t sure. “Not a problem at all. I’ll take care of her.”

She sat between Mr. Rowe and Captain on the drive to town. Mr. Rowe drove an old stubby Ford Bronco the color of a yellow peach. It had a bench seat up front and that’s where Angel sat while the heater blew hot air onto her feet and the gear box pressed into her knee even though she kept her legs angled to the side. The little black steering wheel seemed so small in Mr. Rowe’s big hands. He jostled her with his shoulder whenever he made a turn.

Captain counted the cars that they met, the headlights coming out of the dark, folks on their way home. Not so long ago, Angel thought, one of those cars might have belonged to her mother, and she would have been with her.

It made her sad now to think of how stupid and blind she’d been to the love all around her. In the last months of her mother’s life, she’d been a difficult girl and for that she was sorry.

Mr. Rowe had on the radio, and because it was that time of the evening when WPLP, the voice of Phillipsport and Southeastern Illinois, broadcast the local news, they listened to the reports of a proposed increase in city water bills, a Phillips County United Fund fish fry at the American Legion, and the kickoff of this year’s Relay for Life at the Phillips County Memorial Hospital.

Then the announcer said, “The Illinois State Fire Marshal’s Office—”

But at that point, Captain reached over and punched a button that took the radio to a pop music station. Lady Gaga was singing “Bad Romance.”

Mr. Rowe jabbed a button and turned off the radio. “Who wants to listen to that junk?” he said. “Just a bunch of noise.”

Ahead, Angel could see the lights of Goldengate, few as they were. Mr. Rowe steered the Bronco through the last curve before town, and then they were passing the lit-up houses on the outskirts near the Pine Manor Nursing Home and J.D. Parker’s Body Shop. The Bronco slowed to the speed limit, and just before Main Street, the yellow sign at the Casey’s convenience store came into view. Then they were driving by the Real McCoy Café and the IGA and the time and temperature clock at the First National Bank. They bumped over the railroad tracks, and Mr. Rowe turned the Bronco onto Locust past the school where not so long ago Angel had gotten onto Lucy Tutor’s bus and set out to find out what she could. “You’ve always got your nose into something,” her mother used to tell her. “Sometimes it’s best not to know everything.”

Her mother had been right. Angel knew that now as she saw Brandi’s house lit up ahead of them at the end of Locust. You could know too much. You could know more than you could figure out what to do with.

Mr. Rowe eased the Bronco into the driveway. Angel could see her father at the living room window, peering out, his hand shading his eyes.

“I guess this is it,” Mr. Rowe said. “I guess this is where you live. Open the door, Captain, and let her out.”

Captain got out of the Bronco, and Angel started to slide across the bench seat.

That’s when Mr. Rowe took her by the arm. He leaned toward her and he whispered in her ear. “You got what you came looking for, didn’t you?”

At first, she didn’t answer. “Didn’t you?” he said again, and in a soft voice, she said, yes, yes she had.

Then he let her go.

_________

Her father met her at the front door. He said, “We were scared. We were all scared. Hannah said she didn’t know where you were.”

Angel wanted to believe that Hannah had kept quiet because they were sisters looking out for each other, but then the thought came to her that maybe Hannah hadn’t said anything out of spite, knowing that the less she said the more worried her father would be and then Angel would be in trouble.

The light was on in the kitchen, and through the archway Angel could see the table set for supper. Emma was pulling out a chair. Brandi carried a teapot to the table and poured a cup for herself. Angel knew it was ginger tea, which Brandi drank because her nose was always stuffy these days and the doctor said the tea would help. It wasn’t uncommon, she’d said one night at supper, for a woman in her second trimester, as she was, to have a stuffy nose and headaches. She didn’t mind. They’d go away eventually. The main thing was the baby was healthy. Brandi had just had her amniocentesis test, and everything, she was pleased to announce, was as good as gold.

Angel, though she’d never admit as much, was fascinated with Brandi’s pregnancy. The way she’d always been enchanted each time her mother had gone through one. Angel was careful not to let on to Brandi that she took note of anything at all, but the truth was each step along the way — the belly’s swell, the darker patches of skin on Brandi’s face, the amnio — were little thrills in what had become a long winter of loss. “You want to feel my belly?” Brandi asked her that morning when they found themselves in the bathroom at the same time, Angel brushing her teeth and Brandi in her stretch pants and a bra putting on her deodorant. Angel forced herself to put a bored look on her face. “Please,” she said. “My mother had six babies after me. It’s no biggie.”

Now Brandi turned and spotted her through the kitchen archway. She came to her and wrapped her up in a hug. “Sugar, we were so worried. I came home from work and your dad was here just out of his head. He didn’t know what to do.”

Angel hated the musky perfume that Brandi wore because she used too much of it. Pressed into its heavy, animal smell now, Angel couldn’t bear it. Before she realized what she was doing, she pushed Brandi away.

It wasn’t a particularly hard push, not the kind Angel would have given Hannah if she’d been angry with her. Bat-shit-crazy mad. Just a little shove to free herself from Brandi’s hug, but it was enough to make Brandi stumble back a step. The edge of the coffee table hit her in the back of her knees. She tried to twist away from the table and lost her balance. Arms flailing, she fell so hard that Angel felt the floor shake.

Brandi lay on the floor on her side, her right arm slung across her swollen belly. Angel started to go to her. She felt horrible about what she’d caused. Then her father grabbed her by her shoulders. “Look what you did,” he said. “My god.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“You pushed her.” He spun her around so she was facing him. He gave her a shake and her head snapped back. “What are you, crazy? A woman with a baby and you push her?” His voice was getting louder. “Your mother was right. You’re out of control. You’re hateful.”

He went to tend to Brandi. His shouting had brought Hannah in from the kitchen, and she was helping Brandi sit up and get her wind back.

“I’m all right,” she said. “Just a little tumble. I’ll be fine.”

Angel tried to explain again. “I didn’t — I just — she—”

The words wouldn’t come, and finally she gave up and ran down the hallway to the bedroom she shared with Hannah. She slammed the door so hard that Brandi’s high school graduation portrait fell from its nail in the hall. Angel heard the glass in the frame shatter, and all she could do was throw herself on her bed and put the pillow over her head, trying to shut out what her father had told her, that her mother had said she was out of control, a hateful girl. Bits and pieces from their last night together flashed in and out of view — she’d argued with her mother about taking out that box of ashes; Angel had stomped off to her room and she hadn’t carried the ashes out like she was supposed to, and later, when the trailer was burning, she failed her mother again. She thought I didn’t love her. Angel couldn’t keep herself from believing that. She thought I hated her, and then she died.

Angel knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t stop herself from hating her father for having told her what her mother had said. He should have kept it to himself. It was nothing she needed to hear. He said it to hurt her, and she couldn’t forgive him. She wouldn’t, not even if he said he was sorry a million times. A billion times. Not even then.

She heard the footsteps falling hard on the floor outside, and then her door came flying open. Her father stormed in. She knew it was him without having to look — those heavy steps, the whistle of air as he breathed through his nose, the bitter smell of coffee on his breath.

“Get that pillow off your head and look at me,” he said. “You’re going to clean up that broken glass, and you’re going to apologize to Brandi. Do you hear me, Angel? I mean right now.”

She wouldn’t budge. She held tight to the pillow and said in a muffled voice, “Leave me alone.”

Apologize? No. Not now. Not after what her father had said. She heard Brandi in the living room pleading for some calm—“Ronnie, no,” she said. “Please, let’s just eat our supper.”

It was too late, Angel thought. In fact, it’d been too late for a long time, ever since her father walked out on her mother. They were playing at being a family now, but the family Angel knew was the one in the trailer out the blacktop. Sometimes she thought of them, that family, doing their best to love one another, not knowing what was coming at them from the future. She couldn’t say they were happy, but she couldn’t say they were unhappy either. They were doing the best they could, and she liked to think of them — the parts of her and Hannah and Sarah and Emma that they’d left back there — going along again with their mother and sisters and baby brother. That was their family, the ones who tried their best to love one another when their father made clear that he couldn’t love them enough.

Now he grabbed the pillow, but she wouldn’t let go of it. He tried to get a grip on her so he could lift her from the bed, but she squirmed away from him. She tried to curl into a ball, but he got an arm around her waist and another arm under her knees. She kicked her feet at him, and he said, “You stop that.”

But she wouldn’t stop, and finally he grabbed her by the arm and shook her. The pillow fell to the floor. She was screaming now. She was telling him to stop. She was saying, “No, no, no.”

“It’s time you took responsibility for your actions,” he said. “Damn it, Angel. Everyone else is trying.”

She jerked free from his grip. “Don’t talk to me about responsibility.” She went after him with her fists. He crossed his arms over his face and tried to move out of her way. She followed him across the room, hitting him again and again. She hit him on the bones of his hands and arms, hit him until her own hands were sore. “What were you doing out at the trailer?”

He was backed into the wall now. He lowered his arms and said, “When?”

“That night.”

“I was there earlier in the day before you kids got home from school. I had to talk to your mother.”

“That night,” she said again. “Tell me.”

“Angel, I wasn’t anywhere but here.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Angel.”

She took the knife from her coat pocket, the Case Hammerhead. She held it up to his face. “Say this isn’t yours.” He wouldn’t answer. She was crying now, practically pleading for him to explain that he was innocent. “Say you didn’t drop it behind the trailer that night. Say you weren’t there.”

Her father reached out his hand, and she let him take the knife.

“You know it’s mine,” he said, and that was all he said, his eyes going hard before he turned and walked away, leaving Angel trembling with the thought of what might happen next.