Chapter 3
Three
Tarryn
The fire is finally out, and Chief Walker has released the cottage.
Marshal Reynolds is to begin his investigation and promises to keep us posted.
We now can go into what’s left of the cottage.
The walk down the hill feels longer than it should.
The vineyard rows that line the road stretch in neat lines, steady and familiar, yet they give me no comfort.
The air still carries the sour tang of smoke, a smell that clings to my skin no matter how I try to shake it.
Elise walks beside me. She hasn’t said much since we left the barn, her mouth pressed into a line that looks carved into stone.
We’ve both ended up back at our parents’ place—me in the main house, her in a small place in town. Twenty-nine years old, and somehow, we’re both living at home again. Life has a twisted sense of humor. “I don’t think I’m ready for this,” she whispers.
Neither am I. “We have to go. If there’s anything left, I don’t want to leave it behind.” The bulldozer will be here in a few days to clear the land, and I don’t want them to take anything that could have survived the fire, even if it’s a fork or a picture of my grandparents.
She nods, her chin quivering before she locks it in place.
Elise is usually the calm in any storm, the one who steadies me when I can’t find my footing.
Watching her break shakes something loose inside me.
This isn’t just about the house. She lost the things that still smelled faintly of her mother, the woman we buried when we were eleven.
The cottage is nothing but a blackened shell. Beams jut against the pale sky like broken ribs. The roof has caved in, the walls blistered and warped. The windows gape wide, jagged teeth of glass clinging to the frames. We walk around the back, and it’s almost all gone. The front is only a facade.
The silence presses in, the only sound the wind whispering across the frozen rows of vines. This place once meant safety. Now, it looks like a muddy battlefield.
Elise exhales shakily. “God.”
I can’t answer. My throat has closed tight.
We hold hands tightly for a moment longer before I force myself to walk in gravel that crackles under my boots, louder than it should. Elise joins me, pulling her sweater close. The morning is cool, but it isn’t the air that makes me shiver.
Smoke stains crawl upward, and the porch has collapsed halfway. The doorframe stands alone, blackened and fragile, like a skeleton trying to hold itself upright.
I stop just short of it. “You ready?”
“No.” She swallows, then steps forward anyway. “But let’s do it.”
I follow, chest tight. Every step feels like walking into a grave.
Ash and rubble crunch beneath our boots as we move inside, rising in faint clouds that sting my throat. Each breath tastes of soot. The familiar creak of the wooden floor is gone. All that remains are black rubble and debris.
Elise crouches near what used to be the kitchen, brushing at something buried in gray powder. She lifts a bent fork, the tines curled like claws.
“Remember when we thought mismatched silverware made us quirky?” Her voice is brittle, almost breaking on the word.
I force a shaky breath. “That was your excuse for never buying a matching set.”
A flicker of warmth touches her eyes. “And you loved it.”
I don’t answer because she’s right. I did. Her quirks. This place. Everything that made it ours. Now, the fork looks like it belongs in a nightmare.
I crouch near the living room and brush soot aside.
My fingers close on the spine of a book, the paper edges crumbling.
My grandmother’s copy of Andersen’s Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen is mostly a binding now.
She used to read it aloud when I was a girl, her voice steady and warm.
I kept it close because it made me feel like she was still here.
Now, the pages fall apart in my hands, turning to ash.
Elise drops something unrecognizable, melted into a lump. “Everything is destroyed.”
Her voice cracks, and the sound cuts me open.
The hearth is split down the middle. Glass from the windows lies dulled with soot. Metal pots have twisted into grotesque shapes.
Everywhere I look, I see ghosts. The couch where we stayed up drinking wine. The kitchen counter where I rolled Christmas cookies. The stairs I used to climb half-asleep and safe. All gone.
“This doesn’t even look like home,” I whisper. “The second floor is completely gone.”
Elise doesn’t answer. She’s staring at the wreck of her bedroom door fallen to the old kitchen floor, the handle a lump of melted brass. Her face tightens. “I don’t want to look.”
“Then don’t.”
But she does anyway. Her hand hovers in the air as if she could still feel the door beneath her palm.
The breeze picks up, whistling through broken beams, stirring a fresh cloud of ash that stings my eyes. I blink hard, but my vision blurs anyway.
Elise straightens and smears soot across her jeans. “It’s worse in daylight.”
She’s right. Last night, the chaos of flashing lights and firefighters masked the details. Now, I see what’s left, and it feels like the fire never ended.
Her eyes are red, but her chin is steady. “We’ll get through this.”
I nod, though inside I feel scraped hollow.
I step around a collapsed beam and stop where the Christmas tree used to stand. Nothing is left but scorched floorboards. Yet I see it anyway. Elise and I stringing lights that refused to work, both of us swearing until we gave up and laughed. The smell of pine and cinnamon filling the air.
Elise picks up a melted mug, the handle warped. “You made me swear I wouldn’t use this one for wine.”
I let out a sound that is half laugh, half sob. “That’s because you tried to pour an entire bottle into it.”
“It would have saved time.” She sets it down carefully, as if it deserves a funeral.
My foot nudges a broken ceramic piece. I lift it, soot streaking my palm.
The popcorn bowl I made years ago, lopsided and ugly.
Elise always insisted we use it on movie nights.
In my mind, I see her hogging the remote, me curled under her blanket, both of us arguing over thrillers or rom-coms. The memory squeezes my chest so tight I press my fist against it.
“Find something?” she asks.
“The popcorn bowl.”
Her mouth trembles. She nods, lips pressed tight.
A melted lamp lies near the back wall. My reading lamp. I remember curling in bed with a book, safe under its glow. Now, it’s only a lump of glass and metal.
This house wasn’t just walls. It was where I stopped running. Where I told myself I could belong. Now, it looks like someone decided I didn’t deserve that.
More memories crowd in. Soup simmering while rain hammered the roof. Elise dancing barefoot in the kitchen. The cottage smelling of pine in winter and lavender in summer. Each one slices me open.
When I open my eyes, all of it’s gone.
A glint catches my eye under a fallen beam.
I crouch, digging through soot until my hands close on a photo frame.
The wood is charred, the glass shattered, but inside I can still make out the curled edges of the picture.
Me and Elise on the deck last summer, raising glasses as the sun melted into the horizon.
My throat tightens. I clutch it to my chest, trembling. Tears blur everything.
Elise kneels beside me, her hand warm on my shoulder.
“We’re never getting this back,” I whisper.
Her face crumples. She pulls me into her arms, and I bury myself there, shaking, my tears soaking her sweater.
“We’re safe,” she murmurs. “That’s what matters. We still have each other.”
I nod, but the word safe feels like a lie. The fire stole that from me.
I tighten my grip on the frame, afraid it will crumble too.
Elise rubs my back, her voice steady even though I feel her shaking. “We’ll build again. Together. No one can take that from us.”
I want to believe her. I want to let her strength hold me. But all I feel is the hollow space where safety used to live.
She pulls back, wiping her cheeks quickly, as if she doesn’t want me to see. For a moment, I glimpse her grief, raw and sharp, before she sets her jaw again.
She moves toward the kitchen window, crouching low. “Wait. Look at this.”
I kneel beside her. At first, all I see is scorched dirt and ash. Then I notice indentations in the soil. Not paw prints. Not random. Heavy, deliberate steps pressed right beneath the window.
“Probably one of the firefighters,” I say, my voice too quick. “One of the crew.”
Her eyes lift to mine. “Before the fire started? At that hour?”
My stomach clenches. I search for words, but none come.
She brushes aside ash and uncovers a half-melted plastic cap, edges scorched. She holds it up between her fingers.
“What is that?” I ask.
“It doesn’t belong here.”
The thought slams into me. Someone stood outside my home. Someone left something behind.
“Maybe it’s nothing,” I whisper, though my voice shakes.
“Or maybe it isn’t.”
The photo frame digs into my palm, sharp and unforgiving. The ruins around us no longer look like an accident. They look like a warning.
“We’ll tell the marshal,” Elise says. “Let them decide.”
I nod, but fear prickles across my skin. If someone watched from that window, if they chose this fire, then it wasn’t fate. It was a message.
We leave in silence, our boots crunching over gravel. I grip the frame so tightly it hurts, terrified of letting go of the last proof this place held joy.
The cottage looms behind us, a black skeleton against the winter sun. A warning.
Elise stares out across the vineyard rows that stretch so neatly they almost look untouched. But the bitter taste of smoke in the air will not let me pretend.
I grip the wheel, my knuckles white. “We’ll tell them what you found. Maybe it’s nothing.”
Her voice is low. “And if it isn’t?”
I don’t answer. The truth already sits heavy in me. If someone stood outside that window before the fire, then this wasn’t an accident.
It was a choice.
And if it was a choice, it means someone wanted us gone. We’ve had a string of bad luck, but the fire is taking it a step much further.
The thought twists my stomach. I glance at Elise, her face pale but determined. We need to find out how the fire started.