Saturday, 1:10 p.m.
As they went about securing the house and gathering the items they would take with them, it was Olivia who became the watcher: Was Richard holding tension in his temples as he did when he was angry? Was he speaking in a monotone, suggesting indifference toward her? When he helped pack their things, did he take less care with hers? But he gave nothing away.
Olivia wondered if she hid her emotions as well as he did.
Though the evacuation was still classified as voluntary for their area, the Kims had gone half an hour earlier. In the short time the Durans had spent packing, the Silvestris had left too, and Rocky, after helping Richard secure the house, headed back to his place to grab his things with a promise to return so they could follow him out. Rocky knew the area better than any of them. If the smoke grew too thick to see, he would be able to lead them to safety. Of that, at least, Olivia was certain.
Only two families remained in the neighborhood: the Durans and the Clarkes.
In the kitchen, Richard grabbed his keys from the dish and stashed his laptop in his overnight bag.
“I think we’re good to go with the house,” he said. She knew why he was worried—once the evacuation was mandatory, the authorities were responsible for protecting the neighborhood from looters. Until then, the responsibility was theirs.
“You ready?” he asked. When she nodded, he squeezed her shoulder. “I’ve got a few last things to grab, and then I’ll get Thea. We’ll be on the highway in five minutes.”
She nodded again, pulling away from him. After fighting him all day on leaving, five minutes seemed suddenly too long to stay in that house. She took her bag and waited on the porch with Goose next to the open front door.
A moment later, Dominic joined her.
Olivia could always tell when her elder son was troubled by the deepening grooves in his forehead and the way his eyes seemed to shutter. When he thrust his hands in his pockets, his body curled in on itself as if in protection.
“Where’s Leyna?” she asked, and she saw from his expression that something had gone wrong there. She tried not to take joy in that.
He ignored the question. “Is everything okay with you and Dad?”
She winced. “Why would you ask that?”
“So—no.”
Apparently, he could read her as easily as she read him. “Dominic—”
“It’s fine, Mom. Everyone is entitled to their secrets.”
“Oh, really? You have secrets?”
“A few.” Dominic pulled his hands from his pockets and straightened his shoulders. He was nearly as tall as Rocky, though with his frequent slouch and leaner build, Olivia sometimes forgot that. She had the sudden urge to hug him as she had when he’d been younger, back when the top of his head grazed her nose. How old had he been then? Nine? No older than ten. Even though that was decades in the past, Olivia could still feel the weight of him as he’d jumped into her arms, no embarrassment in it, the force nearly knocking her off her feet.
Now, there was a reserve in him. He squinted into the distance. “Do you remember when Adam was five and he decided to build a campfire in the backyard?”
She nodded. “He lit a paper towel on fire on the stove, but it burned too quickly. He dropped it on the rug by the door in the kitchen.”
“It’s my fault that rug was ruined.”
That couldn’t be true. Even as a child, Dominic hadn’t lied—at least, not well. His inability to maintain eye contact when he wasn’t telling the truth always betrayed him.
“I found Adam foraging through the kitchen drawers looking for matches.” He looked at her again, his lips curling in a half smile. “He’d already assembled all the ingredients for s’mores. Marshmallows. Chocolate. Only instead of graham crackers, he’d gotten out a box of those flat multigrain crackers, the baked kind with the flaxseeds.” The smile widened. “We spent ten minutes looking for a lighter or a pack of matches, and Adam got that look on his face. Like he was about to cry. He wanted that campfire so badly. So I grabbed a paper towel and turned on the burner.”
She laughed. “Not your best idea.”
“Unfortunately, not my worst either.”
“So you’re the one who dropped the paper towel?”
He shook his head. “It was Adam. But the idea was mine, and when he insisted on carrying it, I should’ve told him no.” The smile faded. “But he insisted—he wanted to be the torchbearer.”
“The torch… oh. That was during the Summer Olympics.” Adam had been obsessed with the opening ceremonies, and the archery, of course. Tennis, too, for some reason, though he’d never shown an interest in the sport.
“When the paper towel got close to his fingers, he let out this little yelp and dropped it,” Dominic said. “Right on that ugly rug.”
“It was attractive enough until someone dropped a burning paper towel on it.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “It looked like it had been woven from barfed unicorn fur,” he said.
A pastel shag, the rug had been a chore to keep clean. In hindsight, she realized Dominic wasn’t wrong. It really had been an ugly rug.
His gaze drifted again, deeper into his memory. “I should’ve kept him safe.”
“You were seven,” she said. “But, again, it was a really stupid idea.”
Goose wheezed at the thickening smoke, and Olivia cast a worried glance toward the door. She would give Richard another minute. No more.
Dominic exhaled so sharply, at first she mistook the sound for the wind. When he looked at her, his eyes had grown troubled again.
“Adam liked to shoot birds out of trees with his bow and arrow.”
“I remember. He brought home a pheasant and insisted I cook it for dinner.” She’d had no idea how to prepare a wild bird, so she’d thrown it away and cubed and heavily seasoned some chicken. “He said he didn’t want it to have died for no reason.”
“A year before he disappeared, he spent half the spring out in the woods.” Dominic hesitated as if reluctant to finish his story. Inside, Olivia heard Richard calling for their daughter.
She’d taken a reflexive step toward the door when Dominic said, “I caught him shooting at a nest in the woods. When it fell from the tree, he picked up one of the baby birds and held it in his palm. Watched until it stopped breathing.”
Adam was likely saddened that the bird had gotten hurt or angry at himself that his aim had been off. He’d no doubt been shooting for a larger bird, though if Richard had caught him, Adam would have been grounded, his bow taken. He wasn’t practiced enough to take such reckless shots.
“When he noticed me watching, he made this show of burying it,” Dominic said. “I asked him about it, and he said it was no big deal. Most birds don’t make it to adulthood anyway, he said, what with predators and the weather and parasites.”
Olivia shook her head. “It was obviously a mistake. Your brother was gentle and kind.”
“He was, sometimes. But people are more than one thing.”
She stiffened. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Don’t say it.”
“I’m not saying Leyna is right,” Dominic said. “Adam would never hurt anyone, especially Grace. Not on purpose, anyway.”
“He wouldn’t hurt anyone period.”
But even as she said it, she thought of how she’d silently defended him a moment earlier—in her mind, the shooting down of the nest had been a mistake. The ruined rug too.
“What if he did something stupid?” Dominic asked. “Not out of malice but out of curiosity or because he was upset. Adam could be impulsive.”
Inside, Richard called again for their daughter. She cut the conversation short by opening the front door and yelling inside that they needed to get going.
“Is your stuff in the car?” she asked Dominic, swiveling back.
“I’ll follow you out.”
“You’re coming with us.”
“I’ll be right behind you,” he said, “after I make sure the Clarkes get out too.”
“You mean Leyna.”
“I mean the Clarkes.”
Olivia tried not to think about what might happen to those left behind. Richard had once made her watch a documentary on Pompeii, and she could still picture the remains, bodies flexed and preserved in ash. It wouldn’t be like that for the victims of this wildfire. Most likely, it would be the smoke that got them. As the fire consumed much of the oxygen around them, they would grow disoriented. Lose consciousness. Die.
But such thoughts weren’t healthy.
Where was Richard?
As if on cue, her husband called their daughter’s name again. And again.
By the fifth time he called, Olivia was in the house too, no longer preoccupied by thoughts of ruined rugs or dead birds or even the wildfire to the north. She was focused wholly on why their daughter wasn’t responding.