Amanda leaned against the railing of the indoor tree house Neil had made, looking up at the nine-year-old in the far corner who held a copy of The Incredible Journey in his hands. The boy’s lips moved as he formed the sentences with his mouth. The afternoon bell had rung. All but one other student had already left the classroom.
From her vantage point she could see Gary huddled in his Thinking Corner with a curly-haired girl and a math book. The girl was frowning. Gary said something that made her smile.
Amanda turned her attention back to the boy in the tree house. “Time to go, James,” she said softly. “You don’t want to miss your bus.”
The boy looked up at her and then snapped the book shut. He clambered halfway down the five-rung ladder and jumped to the floor. “I’m taking it home with me.”
“That’s great.” Amanda watched him as he grabbed his book bag off his desk, shoving the novel inside. He yelled goodbye as he sprinted out of the room.
A few feet away Gary got to his feet. “You’ll get this, Madison. You’re already getting it. Don’t give up, okay?”
“All right,” the girl muttered.
The girl sauntered out, and Gary turned to face Amanda. “Man, the natives were restless today,” he quipped.
“Yeah. I guess.”
Gary studied her for a moment. “How’s it going?”
Amanda lifted and lowered her shoulders. “Good.”
Gary began to put workbooks away in the cabinet behind his desk. “You seemed kind of far away today.”
She thought she’d put up a fairly good front. Amanda opened her mouth to deliver a witty comeback, but no words came out. She closed her mouth.
He took a step toward her. “What’s up? Is it about Chase?”
Amanda opened her mouth again to answer him, but a wave of frustration crested in her chest.
Gary moved in closer and leaned against her desk. “Do you want to talk about this?”
She blinked back hot wetness from her eyes and cleared her throat. “No,” she said, and her voice sounded funny in her ears. She slid into her desk chair.
“Sure.” Gary pulled a tissue from a box on his desk, and it made a soft sneezing sound as it came away in his hand. He handed it to her and then started to move away. She reached out and stopped him.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m really sorry. I can’t believe I’m acting this way.” Amanda dabbed at her eyes with her other hand.
“Hey, it’s not a sign of failure to admit how you really feel. If I learned anything from my divorce, it’s that.”
She pressed her lips together and shook her head, folding the tissue into a neat square. “I don’t know how I really feel,” she said.
“About what? Did you guys go see that psychologist? Did he tell you something you weren’t ready to hear?”
Amanda leaned forward on her elbows and rested her head in upturned hands. Her arms were just inches from Gary’s waist. She could smell his cologne. “No. A psychologist didn’t tell me anything. Neil did.”
Gary bent to make eye contact with her. A warm flutter coursed through her. “What did Neil tell you?” His voice was as gentle as summer cotton.
Amanda bolted from her chair and began to pace the carpet behind her desk. “I just hate this. I hate guessing. I want to know the truth. Neil says I don’t. But I do. I’m not like him. I can’t hide behind a pile of lumber and be content to only wonder what really happened!”
“What do you mean, what really happened? Are we still talking about the fire? about Chase?”
Amanda massaged her forehead and continued to walk the patch of carpet. “Yes. It’s about the fire.”
“What about it?”
“Neil says… Neil… He said the baby-sitter’s son told the police he caught Chase in his room handling the lighter just minutes before he lit the cigarette.”
Gary waited a second. “So?”
“So then Keith shooed Chase back to the bedroom next door where he was supposed to be napping.”
“Okay.”
Amanda sighed and stopped pacing. She stood a foot away from where Gary stood, still leaning on her desk. “Keith told the police he lit the cigarette in his room, but then he tossed the lighter on his bed and went onto his second-story balcony to smoke it so his room wouldn’t smell like cigarette smoke.”
Gary blinked. His eyes widened just a tad.
“He said he was outside on the balcony when the fire started. He said he had closed the sliding door and had his back to it. When he smelled smoke, he turned around and saw that his curtains on the sliding door were on fire. If he’s telling the truth, then…” Her voice fell away.
“Then someone else started the fire.”
“And killed that little baby.” Amanda’s voice broke, and ready tears spilled from her eyes. Gary moved away from the desk and closed their classroom door. Then he walked over to her, gently took her arm, and led her back to her chair.
“Let’s just think about this for a minute,” he said as she sat back down.
“Neil thinks Chase did it,” she murmured. “That he went back into Keith’s room and saw the lighter on the bed… that he started playing with it. The fire marshal said the fire began on the bed. I’d always thought Keith had fallen asleep on the bed with the cigarette burning. Neil never told me what Keith told the police. The cops didn’t believe Keith because he lied to them about so many other things about that day, like where he had been before and during the fire. But Neil does believe him! He says he doesn’t, but he wonders if Keith was telling the truth. And that’s the same thing!”
“Hold on,” Gary soothed. But Amanda continued.
“Neil thinks that’s why Chase never talked about the fire after we moved here. He never mentioned the fire again. Not once! Neil thinks it’s because his subconscious knew he couldn’t handle the memory of it and blocked it out.”
“Amanda, you’re both making assumptions about things you simply can’t know,” Gary said softly.
“Neil says if we drag this out into the open and make Chase deal with it, the horror of what really happened will all come back to him. If Chase remembers he started the fire, he’ll know that baby died because of what he did!”
Amanda leaned forward on her desk, wishing she had said nothing. Wishing she knew nothing.
“Amanda, listen to me.” Gary’s soft voice was close. He was leaning over her. “Are you listening?”
She nodded her head.
“Even if your son started the fire, it was an accident. Think of all the things that contributed to his touching that lighter, if he even did it. He was supposed to be napping, but he was awake. Upstairs and unsupervised. Where was the baby-sitter when all this was happening?”
“Outside in the front yard with the other kids.”
“And how did Chase get the lighter, assuming—only for a moment—that he did start the fire. How did he get it?”
“Keith left it on his bed.”
“And why didn’t the smoke alarm go off?”
Amanda swallowed a sob. “Dead battery,” she whispered.
Gary reached out and rubbed her shoulder in a gentle caress with his thumb. “So who’s really responsible for what happened to that baby girl?” His touch sent a shiver down her spine.
“But… but we told Chase never ever to play with matches,” she stammered. “He knew fire was dangerous…”
“But what did you tell him about lighters? You and Neil don’t smoke, right? Do you really think he’d ever seen fire come out of a tiny box before? Amanda, he was only four.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Amanda muttered.
Gary caressed her shoulder in consolation. “That’s right. You don’t know. You don’t know what happened. So it doesn’t do any good to speculate. You start saying, ‘What if?’ and you can imagine just about anything.”
“What should I do?” Amanda lifted her head. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, if it was me, I’d get professional advice from someone I trust. If you trust Penny, and it seems like you do, you’d probably be wise to do whatever she suggests.”
“I don’t want Chase to remember it. I want to know what really happened. But I don’t want him to.”
“And he’s the only one who can give you what you want, is that it?”
She nodded.
“Amanda?”
“What?”
“It was an accident. It wasn’t his fault that baby died. Even if he held the flame to the bedspread himself, it wasn’t his fault. He was a toddler left unsupervised in a house without a working smoke alarm and with access to fire. Your baby-sitter is the one who bears the responsibility for this tragedy. Not your four-year-old child. No matter what really happened.”
A second round of tears began to fall. “I just don’t want it to be true.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” Gary said, and on her shoulder his hand lingered.