Chapter 4 - The Night of the Fire
Three years earlier, Sarah had smelled smoke before she heard the alarm.
It was a humid July evening. Daniel was fixing a shelf in the garage while twelve-year-old Ethan had his best friend, Mason Reed, over. Sarah was upstairs bathing three-year-old Lily when a crash sounded outside, followed by Daniel shouting, "Get away from the door!"
Smoke rolled beneath the eaves. Ethan stumbled into the yard coughing, his eyebrows singed. Mason was nowhere in sight.
"Where's Mason?" Sarah screamed.
Ethan pointed at the flames. "He's still in there!"
Daniel ran back toward the garage. Sarah grabbed Ethan's shirt when he tried to follow. He fought her, sobbing and calling for his father. A window blew outward. Fire climbed the wall. Neighbors dragged Sarah and the children toward the street as sirens wailed.
Daniel never came back out. A firefighter pulled Mason through a side door, but Daniel died at the hospital that night from smoke inhalation and internal injuries.
In the emergency room, Ethan sat under a blanket, staring at his burned fingertips.
"I lit it," he whispered. "The firework. I told Mason it was safe. I thought I could stop it. Dad went in because of me."
Sarah had lost her husband and nearly lost both children in one hour. When the fire investigator asked what had been stored in the garage, she mentioned paint, tools, and old boxes. When he asked whether the boys had handled fireworks, she said no.
She told herself Ethan was twelve, already drowning in grief. One more truth might destroy him. She told him the wiring had failed and left out the part about the boys. The official report later listed the cause as undetermined, but Sarah let the family believe the wiring was to blame.
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She had thought she was protecting her son. She had not understood that a lie could become a room he would live inside.
Now someone had dragged that night back into the light. Sarah looked at the note again and wondered what waited for them at the old firehouse.
