Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
FLETCHER
They were able to salvage more from the fire than any of us expected. Pretty much nothing from downstairs, but a lot of Chris’s and Casey’s personal belongings from their bedrooms survived, which I think is what they cared about the most anyway.
We set Casey up in the guest room. Luckily my parents chipped in and helped gut it so I didn’t have to—disposing of every personal touch we’d made for Jacks.
Even thinking her name hits like a punch to the gut.
Everything about this house now feels tainted with memories of her. Mom and Dad have been trying to get me to take on another house project for months, and now maybe it’s time. I could find something bigger, something Chris and Casey like too. Then we could sell this place and have a fresh start.
I know Chris thinks this is a temporary solution while the two of them get back on their feet.
But I plan to spend every moment they’re here proving her wrong.
Maybe it’s fast and impulsive and immature.
But I’ve always been a man who knows what he wants.
Instead of scaring me off, the situation with Jacks only made it that much clearer. Life is unpredictable. And I don’t know how much time I’ll get with them, so I’m not planning on taking a single moment for granted.
Chris is quiet when I enter the kitchen, sitting in the same chair at the table as she has been all morning, eyes glued to her laptop screen. At first I thought she was just processing Casey starting school again today, but that deep line etched between her eyebrows makes me pause.
I circle the table and place a hand on the back of her chair as I peer over her shoulder.
I suck in a sharp breath as I take in what’s on her screen. She has a million tabs open and pulled up side by side—news articles about the fires, research about serial arsonists, psychology journals. There’s enough of a backlog that it’s clear she didn’t get started on this today.
She swallows hard and closes the laptop. “It looks like she’ll probably get a minimum of thirty years,” she says quietly. “Potentially a life sentence. Especially with Pennsylvania’s laws, how bad the property damage was, and how many deaths there were—those are first-degree felonies. They might try her as an adult for those too.”
I sink into the chair next to her, my mouth suddenly dry. We haven’t really talked about Jacks since the fire a few weeks ago. The only time she’s come up is when we’ve been dealing with the insurance company or the cops. They held off arresting her until the hospital cleared her medically, and they’ve been holding her without bail due to the judge considering her a danger to society with her repeat offenses.
I try to gauge Chris’s expression, but I can’t. I feel like this should be good news for her—make her feel a little safer if she knows Jacks will be locked away for so long. But her face as she looks at her hands…she looks gutted .
“I don’t know how to feel about this,” she whispers.
I sigh and pull her chair closer to mine. “I know. I don’t either.”
“She—she had her whole life ahead of her.” Finally, she peers up at me and searches my face. “How are you doing?”
I shake my head and run a hand under my jaw. “I haven’t let myself think about it much.”
It sounds like a lame blow-off, but it’s the truth. And it’s been all too easy to distract myself with all of the logistical nightmares we’ve been wading through—moving Chris and Casey in, salvaging what we could from the house, the insurance, the cops, Casey’s address changing right before he started school.
Because if I do, if I start thinking about her, then I start to wonder.
What would have happened if I hadn’t left. If I hadn’t left her behind. If she’d had someone there for her after the first fire. Maybe I could’ve…I don’t know. Guided her in a different direction. The guilt from accidentally killing Lucy—and at eight years old—that alone… And then to tack on everything else she endured, God, she didn’t stand a chance.
And I did that. I left her there.
“I want you to know that it’s okay if you need to talk about her.”
I blink back to the table to find Christine’s wide blue eyes peering up at me, her eyebrows pinched together in concern as she searches my face.
“I know this is…complicated,” she adds.
I don’t respond at first and focus on the table in front of me. Talking it out has never been my way of processing things—much to the dismay of the many therapists my parents got for me as a teen. But my usual methods haven’t been doing me much good these past few weeks either. There were only so many odd jobs around the house to fix.
Maybe doing things with my hands has never been about helping me process things though. Maybe it’s always just been a distraction.
“You know what the really fucked-up part is?” I whisper.
She rests a hand on my leg and waits for me to continue.
“The part I keep getting hung up on is she went after you and Casey. And I can never forgive her for that. But if she hadn’t… If we hadn’t fought that night, if she hadn’t lashed out, and I’d found out about the other fires some other way… I think that I…I think maybe?—”
“You would have been able to forgive her.”
“Maybe,” I whisper, but I shake my head at myself the moment the word is out there. “Four people. She’s killed four people . She’s only eighteen years old, and she’s already killed four people.”
Chris scoots her chair closer and runs her hands up and down my arms, but I can barely feel her. I blink rapidly, but the tears build in my eyes just the same. I can barely see the kitchen, the house. I could be anywhere. Any time. Even back when?—
“I used to make her mac and cheese for dinner,” I breathe, and I can practically smell it in the air. Usually burnt and dry—at least the first few times I tried. “I’d help her braid her hair before bed. It always got tangled if I didn’t—then we’d be late trying to brush it out the next day. And she hated being late. We’d sit at the kitchen table doing her math homework in the afternoon. I always had to pack her lunch directly into her backpack, otherwise she’d forget it.”
I shake my head, coming back to the room. I can’t look at Chris. I can’t see her face without being back in that house, the air unbearably hot, the ceiling collapsed on top of her and blood seeping from her hairline.
She keeps her hands on my arms, but it feels numb, distant.
“I thought I would regret leaving her behind my whole life. That I’d done something selfish and unforgivable. Then she showed up here, and I—” I practically choke on the words trying to get them out. “I started to picture—I started to picture the future. And I could see her at my wedding. Could picture her being an aunt to my kids.” My voice breaks, but now that I’ve started, I can’t stop. “I could picture her as a part of my life again. But now…” Silence falls between us, heavy and thick. When I manage to speak, the words are barely audible. “I just wish this didn’t happen.”
Her hands find the sides of my face. “I know.”
“I know I shouldn’t, but I miss her. And seeing how good you were with her—seeing her with Casey—I guess I just really believed it was all gonna work out.”
I squint, trying in vain to stop the tears, and Chris wipes them away for me. “So did I,” she whispers. “Fletcher, I need you to hear me when I tell you this. You are allowed to miss her. You are allowed to be heartbroken over this— devastated over this. Please don’t think you’re not allowed to feel however you feel for our sake.”
I let out a shuddering breath, and my eyes fall closed like they’re suddenly too heavy to keep open.
“Do you…do you want me to try to find her a lawyer? I don’t know how much of a difference it’ll make, but I doubt a public defender is going to do her any favors.”
My eyes snap to her face. Find her a lawyer? Jacks could have killed her, could have killed Casey, and still, she’s trying to help. “I would never ask you to do that,” I whisper.
She sighs and wraps her hand around my wrist. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m angry, Fletch. And I don’t know if I would ever be willing to let her around Casey again.” She presses her lips into a hard line and shakes her head. “But…she showed remorse. She almost killed herself trying to stop it. Cold-blooded killers don’t do that. That’s not what a lost cause looks like. I don’t…I don’t think she’s a bad kid. I think life dealt her a real fucked-up hand and she never learned how to deal with it. And no one ever helped her learn. And she’s important to you. And you are important to me. So I’m asking you, how do you want to handle this? Because I will help you however you need.”
That feels like the most fucked-up part of it all. I wish I could be consumed with this rage. But the lingering empathy I have for her, it feels like it’s eating me alive.
I lean forward, take Chris’s head between my hands, and bring our faces a few inches away. “You are too good for me.”
She lays her hands over mine as more tears threaten.
My throat thickens as I say, “And I would protect you and Casey with my life. I need you to know that.”
“Fletch.” She gives me a small smile and wipes the tears from my face with her thumbs again. “You ran into a burning building for us. I know.”
I clear my throat, scrub a hand across my cheeks, and lean back in my chair. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive her for this.”
She lays her hand on my arm.
My breath leaves me all at once as I hang my head between my shoulders. “But.”
She squeezes my wrist. “But you don’t know if you’d be able to forgive yourself later if you do nothing now.”
I nod.
She takes a deep breath, squeezes my arm once more, then opens her laptop. “Okay. So we’ll see what we can do for her. That doesn’t mean you have to forgive her, or go see her, or ever speak to her again. But we’ll give her her best shot. And then what she does from there will be up to her. Okay?”
“Chris?”
She hums, eyes glued to the screen as her fingers fly across the keyboard. When I say nothing else, she glances at me.
And with that one look, all of the chaos vibrating inside of me goes still. Calm. This woman who has been tossed around by life more than anyone I’ve ever met—who’s gotten so much worse than she deserves. But she hasn’t let it harden her. Not even close. She has more compassion and understanding than anyone I’ve ever met. Even for people who might not deserve it. “I love you.”
She smiles, just a soft, small turn of her lips. The kind I usually only see her give Casey. “I love you too.”