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The fire inspector was an older man with hair that was grey, but still vibrantly thick. He wore a matching grey mustache, and had eyebrows that were like bushy caterpillars.
“Ms. Ford, we’ve taken every precaution in this case. Besides, your sister confessed.”
I gave a start. “She what?”
“Once we confronted her with our evidence, she confessed to the whole thing. Smart of her to do that. She’ll get a reduced sentence for cooperating.”
I stared through the glass at my sister. My twin. For most of my life, she had been like another half of myself. I couldn’t imagine her doing something like this, because her guilt felt like my guilt.
“What evidence?” Jack demanded. He had come with me to discuss the whole thing.
The fire inspector glanced at him, then back at me. “I’m not really at liberty to say. We’re waiting on her lawyer to arrive before she signs a confession. But we have the verbal confession, and if you want to speak with your sister, she can catch you up.”
“I would like to speak to her, yes,” I said firmly.
Jack gave me a reassuring pat on the arm, then I was escorted by a uniformed police officer into the interrogation room. It smelled like rust and mildew. The door closed behind me with an ominous clang.
“Alyssa!” Brandi jumped up and hugged me. She wasn’t cuffed. That felt like a good sign.
“They said you confessed!” I told her. “They said you did this, Brandi!”
She sat back down and resumed that defensive posture. “Alyssa. I did do it.”
“Brandi…” I glanced at the window. From this side, it was a mirrored surface, but I imagined everyone watching from the other side. “We aren’t alone right now. They can hear everything you say.”
“I’ve already confessed it. I don’t want to deny it anymore,” Brandi insisted. “These lies, and the burden of them, have worn me down for the past two weeks. I’m glad everyone knows. I just want it to be over.”
“I don’t understand. Brandi, how did you do this? Why did you do this?”
Brandi spent the next few minutes telling me everything, from the beginning. Receiving the call that our mother had passed. Coming down here to identify the body, then immediately driving three hours back home to her husband, Kyle. She had feared returning to Clearwater to handle all of our mother’s affairs. Knowing I was coming helped, but it still filled her with immense dread.
Wanting a way out of her own responsibilities for our mother, and also trying to protect me from having to deal with our painful memories in that house, Brandi decided to remove it from the equation. If the house was gone, all we would need to worry about was her upholstery store. It would only take a few days to settle, and then we could both return to our lives and never think about our mother again.
With that in mind, she drove down to Clearwater a day early. She was here mere hours before I landed. Nobody knew she was here; she’d told Kyle and me that she was stuck at a conference until the next day. She unboxed some of our mother’s old power tools and spent an hour in the garage creating sawdust and scraps. Small pieces that would catch fire easily, especially given the state of the fuse box nearby. She drove back home with the knowledge that the house would catch fire and burn down before I ever got there, or while I was staying at a hotel.
Except the fire didn’t start immediately, and I didn’t stay at a hotel. The spark that ignited the sawdust and scrap wood didn’t happen until the middle of the night, while I was sound asleep in our childhood bedroom.
“The next door neighbor confirmed that he heard an electric saw running in our garage that morning, a few hours before your plane landed,” Brandi continued numbly. “That led them to request footage from the neighbor’s doorbell camera. The three houses across the street all recorded me pulling up to the house, staying for half an hour, then driving away. You can’t get away with anything these days thanks to technology.”
“Wow,” I said in a daze. “I can’t believe you would do this, Brandi.”
She shook her head, eyes flaring with bitterness. “I hated that house, Alyssa. I detested it. All that wood and brick and glass… it represented her. Our mother. Even though she was finally gone, I needed to purge that house. It was the only way to get a clean slate. Burning it away and starting new.”
“Oh, Brandi…”
“I was worried about you, too. You’d just told me how you were struggling up in New York, and could barely afford the plane ticket. I didn’t want you to have to be here in Florida longer than you needed. I thought if the house was gone, we could cash the insurance check and focus on the upholstery store. We would have it all done quicker, and then we could both return to our lives.”
I went around to the other side of the table and hugged Brandi. “I wish you didn’t feel the need to do that for me.”
“I would do anything for you, Alyssa.”
“I know you would. But I don’t want you to have to.”
“Too late now.” She gave another mocking chuckle. “And to think it’s all because of Jack Franco.”
I flinched. “Huh?”
“The thing that originally made them suspicious of me was the Airbnb booking.”
