Chapter 16 - The Fire on the Porch
We called Deputy Cole instead of answering Clara. Dad and I met him at Foxglove Point, where smoke curled above the porch railing.
Clara stood beside a metal bucket, feeding torn photographs into a small fire. A picture of Mom holding me as a baby was already black around the edges.
"Stop," Dad said.
She didn't look at him. "Nina filled this house with things that made you forget your own mother."
"Put it down."
Clara held another photograph over the flames. Dad stepped forward, but this time he didn't grab anyone. He looked at the deputy. "Please keep her away from the fire. Those things aren't hers."
Cole separated them and had the flames extinguished. The surviving photographs went into a clean evidence bag after he documented the scene. I stood near the steps with my hands clenched until my fingernails hurt.
"Why do you hate pictures of us?" I asked Clara.
"I don't hate you, Emily. I hate what Nina did to my son."
"She gave him a home."
"She made him a guest in it!"
Dad shook his head. "I agreed to the trust, Mom. Nina explained it. You told me later she'd tricked me, and I let myself believe you. But I signed because I wanted Emily protected."
I looked at him. He'd known more than he'd admitted at the dock. Not every detail, perhaps, but enough to know the house wasn't his to sell. The truth was uglier than a simple misunderstanding.
Clara turned on him. "You'd destroy your business to please a girl who can't forgive her own grandmother?"
"My business was my responsibility," he said. "I tried to make Emily pay for it."
May you like
Clara's face crumpled. She reached into her cardigan and pulled out a sealed envelope with Nina's handwriting on it.
"Then she can have this too," Clara said. "The letter your wife begged me never to show you."
