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I had no idea at the time that my boyfriend and my brother had suspicions about the fire, ones they didn't share with me.
At least not until they'd figured out a way to handle it.
Chapter Seventeen
Malcolm
"Something feels off about it," I said as my mom followed me up the driveway toward Shep and Holly's house.
"The fire alarm part is suspicious," she agreed as we approached the torched house.
The area near where the kitchen had been was almost completely gone. The living room, too, was pretty gutted. The bedrooms likely would have been gone too if something hadn't woken Holly up.
"Yeah. There are just several things not adding up for me. The fire alarms, the fact that Shep's door was locked, and, honestly, even the overdose. Shep seemed genuinely confused when Holly told him about it. I mean, I don't know him well. But I figure if it was the case, he would have been more defensive, not shocked."
When I'd looked in on him while Holly got some last advice from the nurse, he'd been staring off into space like he didn't understand what the doctor had just told him.
"You think he was drugged?" she asked, stepping fearlessly into a very unstable house.
My mom was a lot of things. Fearless was pretty close to the top of the list. I didn't take much after her in the looks department. She was short, slight, and covered in ink, where I was tall and wide like my father. I'd gotten some better communication skills from her than my father had, and a bit of her short temper. And, I liked to think, even a pinch of her badassness.
"I don't know. I want to talk to him."
"Without your girl there," she specified. "And we're not going to get into the fact that you have a girl. And, apparently, that I am the last person in the world to know about it. I mean Luna knew, Malc. Luna. She's barely back in town from college and she knew before I did."
"But we're not gonna talk about it, right?" I shot back, smirking at the eye roll she shot in my direction.
"This is where it started, obviously," she said, waving around the all but destroyed kitchen. "Which isn't abnormal. A lot of fires are going to start here."
"But?" I asked.
"But, look at the damage all through here," she said, walking us through the house, waving at the damage. "It just seemed to burn hotter and hotter. This almost looks like a pour pattern" she said, touching the wall.
She moved further down near the rooms, stopping at Shep's, moving inside where the damage wasn't as bad since the fire department got there just after Holly got him out.
"Hm," she said, moving over toward the bed, leaning down to sniff along the bed, the nightstand, the floor.
I would question her using her nose. I mean, they had machines and dogs that sniff for accelerants. But no one knew fire shit as well as my mother. So I had to go with it.
"You getting something?"
"All that water," she said, grumbling. "It's hard to be sure, but this here," she said, pointing toward the wall near the closet where there was minimal damage. "This smells a bit like acetone to me."
"Acetone? Nail polish remover?" I clarified.
"It's a very distinct smell. Being at Kennedy's salon enough with the girls has made it so I can smell even the smallest traces of it. And I'm getting it here. The fire department will have picked up on this too," she said, giving me a shrug. "Look," she added, pointing up at the ceiling above my head.
Curious, I angled my head back.
And there on the ceiling was the bracket for a smoke detector.
Without the actual detector part attached.
"I mean, they might have just been careless."
"No," I said, shaking my head. "No way. Holly was insistent that she was really paranoid about fires. She put new ones up when she moved in to help Shep after his accident."
"That's another thing," my mom said, walking back out of Shep's room.
"What is?"
"Doesn't it seem like there's been a whole lot of accidents with them?" she asked. "I mean, all of it individually, fine. But a nearly fatal car accident, then a nasty assault, and then a fire that could have easily killed them? Doesn't that all just seem far too coincidental?"
She was right.
I'd had a weird feeling as I held Holly once we got back to the clubhouse.
It did all seem like a lot.
And, sure, some people had to endure truly random strings of bad luck in their lives.
But this seemed very specific, and in such a short time period.
"You're not wrong," I agreed.
"Do you think Holly might know something?" she asked.
"Honestly, even if I brought it up, I don't know if she would be able to see anyone in their lives as a suspect. She tends to think the best of people."
