It's Never too Late

“It’s the time it takes from the moment a fire starts until the premises is engulfed in flames.

“The home your parents lived in, the materials it was made out of...” He could go into all of that later. Because he knew Addy well enough to know she’d want the answers. But she wasn’t hearing him now. So he went back to the important stuff. “We now have tests that prove that the flashover of the fire that night would have been less than five minutes.”

The street was rough. She remembered it being smooth. She’d learned to ride her bike here. Her father had helped her. Over and over again, catching her every time she’d been about to fall. Don’t look down, he’d said. Look up. You won’t fall if you look up.

“The fire marshal back then had determined flashover to be twenty minutes,” Mark said. “It was the only thing that made sense, the only thing that would have allowed your father to get from the origin of the fire, a common household chemical spill, to the spot next to your mother where his body was found. He didn’t say anything specific about your father, only the flashover rate because it had to be in the report. I surmised how he reached that rate based on what you told me. I’m guessing he found your father’s prints on the household chemical container and drew his conclusions from that.”

Her father had wanted to be with her mother when she went. That’s what Gran had told her. Or had it been a counselor? Someone had told her that.

“We also know that because of the saturation point of your father’s lungs, based on medical evidence when he was found, there’s no way he could have been at the origin of the fire. He’d have died instantly. And he didn’t.”

“H-h-h...” She tried to speak. Her throat was dry. “H-how?” Her throat stung so much it brought tears to her eyes. “How do you know this?” She finally forced the words out because she had to.

“I spent the night studying the police report,” he told her. “And then running some experiments. I might be a freshman in the safety engineering program, but I’ve been working with fire since I was sixteen years old. I made certain, before I allowed anyone to put their safety in my hands, that I knew everything there was to know about the beast.”

She believed him.

Because he was Mark.

She didn’t trust love. She didn’t trust men. But she trusted Mark.

“Daddy didn’t kill us,” she said, feeling like she was strangling, in the dark, alone.

“No, Adrianna, he didn’t. The evidence suggests that he was trying to save your mother, not die with her.”

She couldn’t stand any longer. She was going to fall. Lightheaded, Addy expected to feel the hard ground beneath her body.

Instead, she was wrapped in a pair of strong arms that cradled her until she found the strength to stand again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

MUCH OF FRIDAY was a blur to Addy. She didn’t start to feel human again until dinnertime when Mark suggested that they pick up Chinese.

“I’d rather make soup,” she said, out of the blue. “Nonnie likes my potato soup. It was my mother’s recipe. They found her recipe box in the fire. It was metal and the cards inside weren’t damaged. Gran gave it to me when I was in high school.”

They were in his truck, having spent much of the afternoon driving around Shelter Valley and then sitting out at the state park. She’d remembered so many things. Talked until her throat hurt.

And he’d talked, too. About trust. The lack of it. About a father who really did let him down.

And he’d called in to work to let them know he wouldn’t be coming in that evening.

“We’re close to the grocery store,” he said now. “Do we need to stop for anything?”

“No.” Shaking her head, she could clearly picture everything in her kitchen. In the entire duplex. She could clearly picture everything in her home in Colorado, too.

And where she’d stored the file of her most important papers, like her birth certificate.

She was back.

“I have everything I need.”

“I don’t.” Mark looked over at her, but he drove right past the grocery store.

“What do you need? Maybe I have it?”

Was he going to sleep with her that night? She’d probably ask him to if he didn’t offer. He didn’t have to do anything, just lie there next to her.

“Oh, you have it,” he said, and there was no mistaking the double edge in his tone.