THE ARSONIST'S WIFE

Read the beginning free

There is a thing they teach you in your first week as a fire investigator, and it is this: fire does not lie.

People lie. Witnesses lie. Owners lie, insurance adjusters lie, the man who swears he unplugged the space heater before he left for work lies. But fire is honest. Fire goes up, and it goes out, and it eats what it can reach, and it leaves a record of every single thing it did. All you have to do is learn to read it.

I have been reading fire for eleven years.

I can look at a scorched wall and tell you where the flames started. I can look at a melted light bulb and tell you which way the heat came from. I can kneel in a room that is nothing but black water and ash and tell you, within a few feet, where somebody stood and poured.

So when I tell you that the fire on Cedar Hollow Lane was set on purpose, you should believe me.

And when I tell you that I knew who set it before the smoke had even cleared, you should believe that too.

The only thing I got wrong was the name.

Chapter 1

The phone goes at 2:04 a.m.

I am awake before the second ring. I always am. Eleven years of night calls have rewired something in me, and now my body treats sleep like a waiting room. I am sitting up, feet on the cold floor, phone at my ear, and I haven't even opened my eyes.

"Bell," I say.

"Nora. It's Walt." My boss. His voice is gravel and coffee, even at two in the morning. "Working fire on Cedar Hollow Lane. Number fourteen. Fully involved when the first engine got there. They've got one inside."

One inside. He means a person. He means a body.

"I'm on my way."

I hang up and reach for the lamp, then stop, because I don't want to wake Daniel. I've done this a thousand times. My feet are freezing, much colder than they should be after a few hours under a comforter, and there's grit on the soles. I brush it off without thinking. I dress in the dark: jeans, the navy fleece with FIRE MARSHAL on the back, the boots I leave by the closet door. I know where everything is by feel.

That's when I bend down to find my phone charger and catch the smell of my own pillow.

Smoke.

Not much. A trace. The heavy, sour smell that follows me home from fires and gets into my hair and my clothes and the car. But I haven't been to a fire since Saturday's training burn, and I've washed my hair twice since then. I sniff the pillow again. It's there, faint, unmistakable.

I tell myself it's the fleece. I tell myself it's the jacket hanging on the back of the door. I'm a fire investigator. Everything I own smells of smoke if you look for it.

Daniel is a long, warm shape under the comforter, his dark hair on the pillow, his breathing slow and heavy. He doesn't stir. He never does. He sleeps like a man with nothing on his mind.

I slip out into the hall. Lily's door is open a crack, the way she likes it, and the nightlight throws stars across her ceiling. She is asleep on her stomach with one arm hanging off the bed, still holding a purple crayon. I ease the crayon out of her fingers and put it on the nightstand. She doesn't stir.

Downstairs, the kitchen smells of the apple pie my mother brought over after dinner. There's half of it left on the counter under a dish towel. Mom lives in the apartment over our garage, and she has never once in four years come over empty-handed.

I grab my keys from the hook by the back door.

Daniel's keys are on the hook next to mine. That's normal. What isn't normal is the little puddle on the mat underneath them. His shoes are there, his old gray running shoes, and the toes are dark and wet.

It hasn't rained in a week.

I stand there for maybe three seconds. Then I step over the shoes, go out through the garage, and get into my car.

* * *

You can smell a big house fire from a mile away if the wind is right. Tonight the wind is right. I smell it before I even turn off Route 9, a thick, sour smell that gets into the car through the vents and sits at the back of my throat. Burning wood. Burning plastic. Burning everything.

Cedar Hollow Lane is one of the nicer streets in Millbrook. Big trees, wide lawns, the kind of houses that have names for their paint colors. Tonight it looks like a war zone. Two engines, a ladder truck, an ambulance, three police cars. Red and white lights bounce off every window on the street. Neighbours stand on their lawns in bathrobes and parkas with their arms wrapped around themselves, faces orange in the glow.

Number fourteen is nearly gone.

The roof over the left side has collapsed. Flames are still pushing out of two upstairs windows, but the crews have the upper hand now. Water arcs from the ladder truck, catching the light. Steam rolls up into the black sky. The whole street hisses.

I park behind the ambulance and walk up. Walt Brennan is standing by the command post, a big man in a white helmet, talking into a radio. He sees me and lifts his chin.

"Nora."

"Who's inside?"

"Homeowner, we think. Neighbours say a woman lives alone. Thirties. Nurse at Millbrook General." He looks at his notepad. "Name's Gwen Harper."

Gwen Harper.

The name doesn't mean anything to me. I'm almost sure of it. And yet something shifts in my chest when he says it, like a key turning in a lock I didn't know I had.

"Where was she found?"

"Back bedroom, ground floor. Crew went in through the window. Door to the bedroom was shut." Walt shakes his head. "She was on the floor next to the bed. They pulled her out but…" He lets it go.

"Who called it in?"

"Neighbour across the street. Old fella named Pruitt. Said he got up to use the bathroom and saw the glow." Walt points across the road, to a white colonial with a big porch. A man in a plaid bathrobe is standing on the steps, talking to a police officer. "Called it in at one fifty-eight."

One fifty-eight. I write it down.

"And the fire load?"

"Front of the house went up fast. Too fast, if you ask me." He gives me a look. Walt has been doing this for thirty years. He doesn't say things like too fast by accident. "Crew captain said it was rolling across the ceiling when they got here. Living room and hallway both."

"Two separate areas?"

"That's how it looked."

Two separate areas of fire. In a fire that starts by accident, there's usually one point of origin. One spot where the heat met the fuel and got going. Fires don't usually start in two places at once.

People start them in two places at once.

"I'll wait for the crews to knock it down," I say. "Then I'll go in at first light."

Walt nods. He's already back on the radio.

I walk to the edge of the lawn and stand there, watching number fourteen burn itself out. The heat on my face is so strong that I have to squint. Embers drift past like slow orange snow. Somewhere behind me a woman is crying.

And I think about the wet shoes on the mat. Daniel's shoes, soaked through, on a night when it hasn't rained in a week.

I'm being ridiculous. Daniel teaches chemistry to sixteen-year-olds. He coaches the science bowl team. He cries at dog-food commercials. He is the gentlest man I have ever met.

He was asleep. He was right there, asleep, when I left.

I take out my phone and look at the time. 2:41 a.m.

Then, without really deciding to, I open the app that shows where our family's phones are.

Mine is here. Mom's is at home. Lily doesn't have one.

Daniel's shows at home, too. Of course it does.

But the little gray text under his name says Location updated 2 hours ago.

His phone has been off. Or somewhere it couldn't connect. For two hours. On the night a woman burned to death on Cedar Hollow Lane.

I put the phone back in my pocket, and I keep watching the fire, and I don't let my face change at all.