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“This used to be my dad’s favorite thing,” Brandon confided. “He’d bring me every year, tell me the story about how Sweet Bloom’s first Christmas tree blew over in a windstorm, and they just left it on the ground, decorated, until New Year’s. Said it was a metaphor for small towns.”
His story made her smile. “Did you believe him?”
He looked at her, his green eyes soft in the lamplight. “I wanted to.”
The choir started up, a verse of “O Holy Night” that was more enthusiastic than on key. People inched closer to the gazebo, shuffling on their feet to keep warm. Desiree sipped her cocoa, the paper cup hot against her palms.
They stood side by side, not quite touching, the crowd pressing in around them. She watched the line of fire trucks parked along the circle, their chrome polished for the night. Brandon followed her glance.
“We’ve always had at least one truck on display to show our support,” he explained. “Tradition. Dad said it was a way of promising nothing bad would happen to the town.”
She leaned a little closer, so her voice wouldn’t carry. “You think the arsonist is here?”
He frowned. “Wouldn’t be surprised. Probably wants to see if people are talking about it.”
The mayor took the stage, reciting a speech about community and resilience. Desiree tuned it out. She kept watching, looking for a limp in the crowd, a nervous energy, someone who didn’t fit. She let herself relax a little, breathing in the scent of pine and cocoa, the hum of conversation.
Brandon shifted closer, his jacket brushing her shoulder. She felt the pressure, solid and steady, and didn’t move away.
When the mayor called the countdown, the whole crowd joined in: “Ten, nine, eight…”
Brandon bent his head, voice just for her. “My dad used to insist that I hold my cocoa with both hands. Said it was the only way to make sure I didn’t spill it.”
She glanced up at him. “He sounds like a good dad.”
Brandon didn’t say anything for a long second. Then he nodded, looking at the giant tree. “He was.”
The switch flipped, and the twenty-foot cedar exploded in white and gold. The crowd went up with it, a collective “ooh,” applause rippling out in waves. Desiree looked at the tree, then at Brandon. She could see a flurry of mixed emotions drift across his face. “Are you okay? Is this too much with everything going on with your dad’s case?”
Brandon kept staring at the lights. His jaw was set, the muscle jumping as he flexed it. “The more I think about it, the more I’m certain someone’s finishing something they started a long time ago.”
She looked at his hands, saw how the cup was crushed a little at the rim where he held it. She reached over, put her hand over his, a firm press of palm to knuckle.
“We’ll find them,” she assured him, not letting go.
He looked down at her hand, then at her, and there was something like relief in his eyes.
The choir launched into the next song, filling the air with “Silent Night.” Desiree stood with him, the press of her hand still on his, the tree glowing above them. And just for a moment, everything was perfect.
CHAPTER 7
Brandon eased around the kitchen island and padded down the hall, the old familiarity of his family’s ranch house pressing in from every direction—wallpaper, carpet, even the burned-toast scent lingering from a breakfast made hurriedly years ago. He hesitated at the sliding wood door to his father’s study, closed tight since his father’s death, then nudged it open. The room looked exactly as it had the afternoon his father walked out and never returned.
Awards and framed certificates, yellowed beneath glass, stood in militant formation above the brown wainscoting. Books—fire science, Texas fire code, biographies, and, inexplicably, a shelf devoted entirely to birdwatching—leaned in drunken angles on cedar planks. The air was thick with the scent of old paper, whatever was left of his father’s cologne, and the ghost of pipe tobacco. The rug still bore the faint scorch mark from where Brandon, aged nine, had tried to make a s’more using his father’s lighter.
He had noticed, after the funeral, that his mother never set foot in here. It had become almost sacred, a monument for the version of his father nobody else got to see. Brandon’s own visits were rare and always brief—open the door, breathe it in, then retreat. But tonight, with Desiree behind him, the nostalgia felt less like a wound and more like a curiosity—an exhibit in a museum of the man who inspired him to follow in his footsteps.
His mother couldn’t bear to pack up his belongings after his sudden death. The desk was old oak, the top a landfill of case files—manila folders, incident reports so brittle their edges left paper cuts, crime scene photographs from two decades’ worth of Sweet Bloom’s misfortunes, and, right in the center, the thick blue binder labeled HOLLOWAY, FATAL, 2016.
Brandon stood behind the desk with his arms crossed, back straight, shoulders flexed like he was bracing for a first-alarm call. His eyes kept flicking from the binder to the wall behind Desiree’s head, where a photo hung: Brandon at twenty-three, full turnout gear, helmet slung in the crook of his arm, standing beside his dad. Both of them grinning wide, neither having any idea how that year would end.
Desiree sat in the battered desk chair, feet flat, hands folded over a stapled witness list. The room was already warm, but she kept her parka zipped. She scanned the line of names, then the margin notes in the chief’s hand, quick and slanted, and a blank expression on her face.
“Chain of custody on this accelerant sample is a disaster,” she observed, finger stabbing the page. “You know a defense lawyer would shred this if the arsonist was ever found and was prosecuted?”
Brandon’s mouth twitched. “It was Sweet Bloom a decade ago. Back then, chain of custody meant the rookie drove it to the lab in his pickup and left it on the receptionist’s desk.” He kept his tone easy, but his jaw set. “Doesn’t mean it was wrong.”
She looked up at him, not quite a challenge. “It means your father never had a shot at prosecution, even if he’d found a suspect.”
