How to Start a Fire (43 page)

Abe say, “What?”

God say, “You can do what you want, Abe, but

The next time you see me comin’ you better run.”

“Sweetie, what are you singing?” Colin asked Zooey while staring directly at Kate.

Zooey answered by singing the next verse.

Abe says, “Where you want this killin’ done?”

God say, “Out on Highway 61.”

“Kate, you have to stop playing music like this in the car,” Colin said.

“You said you wanted her to learn the Bible,” Kate said.

Anna said to Zooey, “Why don’t you go help Hudson do whatever he’s doing.”

“He’s foraging for snails,” George said. “Do you know if your mother used pesticides on this lawn?”

Carter surfaced from his tent briefly and handed his mother his Game Boy.

“Battery is dead. I need your phone.”

“How about you get some fresh air. Go play with Miller. Where is he?”

“Up there,” Carter said.

Miller was twenty feet in the air, straddling a long branch on a hundred-year-old oak tree.

“Miller, it’s time to come down,” George said.

Zooey ran inside the house and returned wearing last month’s Halloween costume. She wore a black cape and hood and was carrying a cardboard scythe.

Colin gaped at his daughter. “On the day of my mother’s funeral. This is so inappropriate.”

“It’s just a costume,” said Kate.

“That’s what you always say,” said Colin.

“It’s just a job; it’s just a house,” Kate had said when Colin lost his job and the house. He found a new job and a smaller house. It was still too big for Kate.

“It’s just a piece of paper,” Kate had said when he’d asked her to marry him.

Colin was ashamed to admit this, but it wasn’t until Kate turned him down that he knew what it felt like to be in love.

“It’s not just a piece of paper to me,” he’d said.

“Courthouse,” Kate said, bargaining for the smallest nuptials.

“Backyard,” Colin countered, and won.

The wedding was too simple for Lena, but since she didn’t approve of the bride, she could hardly complain about the lack of fanfare over the ceremony.

When Colin phoned Anna to tell her the news about his relationship, Anna first thought he was joking. Then, after he convinced her otherwise, she hung up on him and called Kate to remind her of his two failed marriages. It never occurred to Anna that Colin would be different because Kate wasn’t like the others.

“He could break your heart,” Anna said.

“Or I could break his,” said Kate.

“I prefer that scenario,” Anna said.

Anna phoned her brother after she ended the call with Kate.

“Try not to fuck this one up,” she said.

Two months later, Anna received an invitation to the wedding. Anna thought it was the kind of wedding that you had when you had nothing to prove, and this time she believed her brother when he said, “Until death do us part.” Kate had tried ardently to get that bit excised from the ceremony, but the preacher was old and forgetful and ignored the red line Kate sliced across the vows.

In the Fury backyard, after the funeral, Colin kissed Kate on the lips in front of all the company. Sensing Kate’s discomfort with the public display of affection, he pulled her into a full embrace and then dipped her in a movie-star smooch.

“I’m going to bed. Inside. Like normal people,” Colin said, shaking his head at the collection of tents in his mother’s backyard. Lena would have been furious.

“That’s nothing to be proud of,” Kate said.

Colin returned to the house but didn’t go to bed. He started his own fire in the civilized living-room hearth. Kate had finally taught him how to build a fire, and he’d gotten pretty good at it. After twenty minutes it was a beautiful blaze. Colin sat down on the couch and opened up a biography of a now-deceased movie star that Kate had recommended after noting he only read books on business or politics.

Hudson found eight snails in the grass and proudly delivered them to his mother. George asked for butter and a skillet so she could fry them up over the fire.

“Are you going to eat those snails?” Anna asked.

“We eat them at home,” George said, “once I stopped the gardener from using pesticides. They’re the same kinds you get in a French restaurant.”

“I’m sure my mother used pesticides.”

“Sorry, Hudson,” George said. “These are poisonous snails. I’ll fry you up a batch as soon as we get home.”

Hudson shoved his hands in his pockets and bowed his head in disappointment, like a child actor playing sad. He snapped out of it when Kate fetched a bag of marshmallows from the pantry.

Zooey showed Miller the two bears in the sky and told him not to look for a third while Anna stabbed marshmallows on chopstick stakes.

The group held their wands over the flames.

“Not as good as snails,” Hudson declared.

“Better than snails,” Zooey countered.

The conversation repeated seven times until Kate interrupted: “Zooey prefers marshmallows; Hudson prefers snails. There is no universal truth.”

After the children were tucked into sleeping bags in their tents, Anna, Kate, and George returned to the fire, fueling it with another log.

The women regarded one another silently.

Is this as good as it gets?
George thought.

Nothing is better than this
, Kate thought.

And Anna thought how peaceful it was to think about nothing at all, to simply sit by the fire and enjoy the snaps and cracks and the smell of burned wood and the ghostly swirls of smoke dissipating into the cold night air.

When the fire died, the women crawled into a two-man tent, knowing that only one of them would sleep well that night.

Kate woke shortly after 2:00 a.m. when George kneed her in the ribs. She curled into a ball in the corner and tried to go back to sleep. The smell of burned embers lingered in the air. She’d been sure the campfire was dead when they went to sleep, but she crawled out of the tent to check again. The bonfire was indeed a cold, damp pile of charred wood.

The Fury mansion, however, was alight with flames, the entire bottom floor engulfed. Kate rushed to the back door as the kitchen window burst out. She raced back to the campsite and found George’s coat in the mouth of the tent. She rifled through her pockets, picked up her cell, and dialed.

“Wake up, wake up, wake up,” she repeated.

He woke up and answered.

“What?” Colin said groggily.

“The house is on fire. Climb out of the bedroom window and onto the trellis.”

“What?” Colin said again.

“Wake up, Colin, and get the fuck out of the house. Now,” Kate said. It was the loudest she had ever spoken to anyone.

Kate rushed toward the house and willed the bedroom window to open. Colin unhooked the latch, wondered why there needed to be a latch on the top floor, and opened the window. He fumbled with the fastener to the screen and shoved it loose. Colin straddled the window and thought that maybe he should go back and get a coat and slippers.

Kate saw him hesitate and shouted,
“Whatever you’re thinking is wrong.”

Colin climbed onto the aging trellis, feeling the sharp wood dig cornered grooves into his bare feet. He descended the lattice like a grownup on a jungle gym, the distant tactile memory returning. He jumped the last few feet to the ground and landed on a rock.

He hopped over to Kate, wincing in pain. The sole of one foot was covered in blood. “I think I need to go to the hospital,” he said.

“Better than dead,” Kate said, dialing 911. She passed the phone to Colin. “Tell them we need a fire truck.”

Anna and George, hearing Kate’s raised voice, emerged from the tent and took in the blaze. Before anyone could think unthinkable thoughts, Kate unzipped the children’s tents and made sure all four were safe. Carter was still in a dead sleep; the faint bass sounds from his earbuds could be heard as he curled into a ball. Children could sleep through
anything
, she thought. Kate breathed for the first time in hours, it seemed.

As more windows burst into the air, raining glass onto the Fury lawn, Kate realized the fire had spared her the trouble of cleaning out Lena’s home. She also realized that Colin had no idea how to properly extinguish a flame. George stared at the violent blaze and could think only of her children safely zipped up in their tent. She wished just for a brief second that Edgar’s house would burn to the ground so she and her boys could set up camp in his backyard and live under the stars.

Anna thought that she should feel more, watching her childhood home burn to the ground. The idea that all the memories the house contained would turn to dust somehow released her. Her secret room, her mother’s letters, the pink gown she wore to Colin’s wedding and the black dress from Malcolm’s funeral, all tucked away behind those doors. Soon they would be gone forever, and maybe, with the physical memory in the form of dust, her own memories would fade. And she thought the flames were breathtaking. How could nature come up with colors so fantastic, like that Montana sky Kate had once told her about. She also thought it was a miracle she hadn’t dabbled in arson as a child. Then she wondered how the fire started. And she remembered the man responsible for all fires.

“You know whose fault this is?” Anna said. “
Teddy Fucking Roosevelt.”

I wrote the first few chapters of
How to Start a Fire
at the beginning of 2006, right before I sold my first novel,
The Spellman Files.
While the Spellmans took over my universe for the next several years, I never forgot about this book. I’d revisit it in small doses until I finally had the chance to dedicate myself to it full time. I can’t claim that I spent nine years working on this book, but it’s the novel I’ve lived with the longest, and I am indescribably grateful to finally see it published. Along the way, many people read drafts, provided research, or inspired me. My goal here is to not forget anyone, but I’m sure that I will. I apologize in advance.

To begin, I must thank Andrea Schultz, my amazing editor. Your dedication, humor, and relentlessness made this novel so much better than I thought it could be. You always seemed to know which direction would get me out of the woods.

Stephanie Rostan, my agent, Madam Forewoman. I owe my career to you. There’s nothing else to say.

There are many more amazing people to thank at HMH. In no particular order: Naomi Gibbs, Lori Glazer, Carla Gray, Liz Anderson, Michelle Bonanno, Laura Giannino, Beth Burleigh Fuller, Brian Moore, Lauren Wein, and Chelsea Newbould. You have all been amazing. And thank you, Michaela Sullivan, for the phenomenal jacket design.

My wonderful agency, now Levine Greenberg Rostan: I love you all. Thank you, Melissa Rowland, Elizabeth Fisher, Monika Verma, Miek Coccia, Daniel Greenberg, Jim Levine, Tim Wojcik, Jamie Maurer, Kerry Sparks, and Shelby Boyer. Meet me at the Brigadoon bar in seven years.

A
huge
thanks to my doctor/copyeditor Tracy Roe. I cannot believe my good fortune in having you on board. Your advisement was invaluable.

There are two friends/copyeditors I must single out for the cruel number of drafts I forced them to read over the last few years. Clair Lamb and David Hayward, I am very grateful for your wise counsel and your restraint in mocking my limited grasp of the English language.

Thanks to all of the other friends who beta-tested my book: Anastasia Fuller, Julie Ulmer, Steve Kim, Morgan Dox, and Ronnie Konner.

Kate Golden, thank you for your obsessions.

Lisa Chen, thank you for your illegible letters.

No doctors were injured in the writing of this book, but several were troubled repeatedly. I would like to thank you all for generously answering my questions: Drs. Josh Bazell, Jonathan Hayes, Sarah Lewis, and Julie Jaffe.

I would like to thank my family for being awesome and present and for other things too. Especially my Aunt Beverly, but also my Uncle Mark, Uncle Jeff, Aunt Eve, and cousins Dan and Lori and Jay Fienberg.

I would also like to thank the awesome community of crime writers that I’m fortunate enough to be a part of. There are too many people to list here (and it would probably seem like name-dropping). You know who you are. I am very lucky to know you people.

Lastly, I’d like to thank all of my friends, especially the female ones, the weird friends, the ones who inspired the book by being unique and strange and completely
of themselves
. I won’t name names, but some of you are even weirder than I am, and that has always brought me great comfort.

L
ISA
L
UTZ
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of the
Spellman Files
series and
Heads You Lose
(with David Hayward). Lutz has won the Alex Award and has been nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. She lives in upstate New York.