“What’s the big deal?” I asked, rubbing my forehead with the knuckle of my right thumb, something new I had started doing recently. “It’s just a dumb old lighter. I forgot I even had it.”

  My father had finally managed to convince my mother to take off her coat, and the two of them were sitting next to each other on the living room couch. I sat across from them in a wooden chair, wearing the same nightgown I’d had on the night before, when the fire started. One of the boys, Joe or Jack, wandered out of his room bleary-eyed, in flip-flops and a pair of giant basketball shorts. He disappeared into the bathroom, and a minute later we heard the shower running.

  “Where did it come from?” my mother asked.

  “I found it in the grass by the mailbox.”

  “When?” she asked.

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I’m just trying to understand,” she said.

  “Understand what?”

  “Why did you hide the lighter under your mattress?” my father asked. “Why didn’t you tell us about it? It’s not like you to keep secrets.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me there was something wrong with your heart?” I shot back.

  “Because a murmur isn’t a big deal,” my father said.

  “Neither is the lighter,” I insisted.

  “Then why did you hide it?” my mother asked.

  “Because I knew you guys wouldn’t let me keep it. Especially you, Mom. Everybody knows what a worrywart you are.”

  “A worrywart?” my mother said.

  “That’s what Uncle James called you.”

  “Well, Uncle James should mind his own business,” my mother snapped, color rising in her cheeks. “He doesn’t know the first thing about raising a child.”

  “Do you?” I asked.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” my mother said, and I could tell I’d hurt her feelings.

  “I’m sure Rory didn’t mean it the way it sounded,” my father said.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d meant or why I’d said it. It just came out. Ever since I’d seen that photograph I’d felt confused, tangled up inside like the necklaces in my mother’s jewelry box. I couldn’t think straight, and it wasn’t helping that my parents kept peppering me with questions about the lighter.

  “What in the world would you even want with an old lighter like that?” my father asked.

  “Didn’t you ever find something cool when you were a kid and want to keep it?” I asked back.

  He nodded. “Arrowheads and bottle caps.”

  “This is not the same,” my mother said, the color in her cheeks rising even higher. “Roy, tell her it’s not the same thing.”

  “Why are you making such a stink, Mom? It’s just a dumb old lighter. (A) It doesn’t even work, and (B) try it for yourself, if you don’t believe me.”

  Without a word, my mother flipped open the top, svvvit! Then she pressed her thumb against the little wheel and pushed down. There was a click, followed by a spark. A yellow flame rose up.

  “Give her a chance to explain, Rube.”

  “Explain what?” I asked. I felt my own cheeks growing hot.

  “Let’s everybody calm down,” my father said.

  “I am calm,” I told him. “You guys are the ones who are acting weird.”

  “Were you upset about the chest?” my mother asked. “Is that what it was?”

  “Why would I be upset about the chest, Mom? I helped Dad keep the secret, remember?”

  “You said you wished it was yours. You said you wanted to use it for your summer clothes in the winter and your winter clothes in the—”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I interrupted.

  My mother looked at my father.

  “Roy?” she pleaded as the first tear rolled down her cheek. “I need your help.”

  My father stood up and cleared his throat. Something was coming.

  “When your mother found the lighter, she was afraid—we were both afraid that you might have …”

  “What?” I asked, alarmed.

  “Sometimes when people are very upset or their feelings are hurt they do things they regret later on,” my mother explained. “Bad things.”

  What was she talking about? What bad thing did she think I had done?

  Suddenly it dawned on me.

  “You think I set the fire,” I said.

  “Did you?” my mother asked softly.

  I felt like my head was about to explode.

  “Are you crazy?” I cried, jumping out of my chair so fast it fell back with a clatter. “Do you think I wanted Duck to run away too?”

  “Of course not,” my mother said. “We’re just trying to understand.”

  “Understand what? Why I would set the house on fire and scare away the only friend I’ve ever had?”

  “Let’s everybody calm down,” my father said again.

  “No!” I yelled at him. “I don’t want to calm down!”

  “Get ahold of yourself, Aurora,” he said.

  “Get ahold of your own self,” I told him. “She’s accusing me of setting the fire, Dad.”

  “It’s not just me,” my mother said quietly.

  I turned and looked at my father.

  “You don’t really think I would do that, do you, Dad?”

  He looked down at his shoes.

  “I don’t know what to think,” he said.

  “Great. Well then, the two of you can stay here and think horrible things about me. I’m going home to look for Duck, and don’t you dare try to stop me.”

  I snatched my father’s yellow slicker off the hook in the hall and bolted out the front door, into the pouring rain. I wasn’t sure which way to go, so I just started running. I didn’t get very far before my father pulled up beside me in the car and rolled down the window.

  “Hop in,” he called out.

  I was barefoot, and the slicker was way too big for me. The rain was coming down in sheets now, hitting my face at an angle, the way Lindsey’s hand had smacked the rubber ball on the playground.

  “Please, Rory,” my father begged. “Get in the car.”

  I probably wouldn’t have made it home on my own anyway, especially without shoes on, but I wasn’t about to give up without a fight.

  “I’m only getting in if you take me back to the house to look for Duck.”

  He reached across the seat and unlatched the door for me.

  “Promise?” I said.

  “Promise.”

  I climbed in, and my father turned the heater on full blast. Even so, it took a while before my teeth stopped chattering. I started to rub my forehead with my knuckle, but I had done it so many times already that morning that it was sore. I tapped the edge of the seat instead.

  “Your mom picked up some clothes and a pair of shoes for you earlier, when we were over at the house,” my father said, pushing a plastic bag across the seat toward me. “They might smell a little smoky, but at least they’re dry.”

  I wasn’t about to change in front of my father. Besides, anything I put on was only going to get wet anyway. I was grateful for the shoes and socks though. My feet felt like a couple of Popsicles.

  “Rory,” my father began, “about what just happened back there—”

  I cut him off before he could go any further.

  “(A) I don’t want to talk about what just happened, and (B) if you try to make me talk about it, I’m going to jump out of this car right now. Got it?”

  “Got it,” my father said. “Okay if I turn the radio on?”

  I shrugged.

  We didn’t sing along this time. As far as I was concerned, until we found Duck there wouldn’t be anything worth singing about.

  The house looked like a giant loaf of bread wrapped in a plastic bag. The middle of the roof was caved in, half the windows were busted out, and the yard looked like a herd of buffalo had stampeded through it.

  “Duck!” I called, hopping out of the car before my father had even turned the engine off. “Here, boy!”

  My mother’s gardening hat lay upside down in a muddy puddle now, and the reindeer ornament had come unglued and fallen completely to pieces, the little red pom-pom I’d used for the nose squashed flat and blackened with soot.

  “Duck!” I called again.

  My father joined me, and together we walked around the yard and through the field behind the house, whistling and calling Duck’s name until our throats were raw. After about an hour of searching we circled back.

  “We need to get going, Rory,” my father said. “Your mother will be worried.”

  I didn’t care if she was worried … and I was still a little mad at my father too, for that matter. He should have stuck up for me.

  “I’m not going back,” I said. “Not until we find Duck.”

  We must have walked up and down our road ten times, flagging down every passing car to ask if they had seen a black dog with a red collar. I can only imagine what people thought when they saw me in that giant yellow slicker, my muddy nightgown hanging out the bottom, shouting and waving my arms. Everybody stopped, a few even offered to help search, but nobody had seen Duck.

  Cold, wet, and discouraged, we finally climbed back into the car without him.

  By that time I was finding it hard to stay mad at my father.

  “What if we never find him?” I asked as we started back down the driveway.

  “That would be very sad,” he answered. “But we could get another dog.”

  “I don’t want another dog!” I said, fighting back tears. “I want Duck!”

  He reached over and patted my knee.

  “I know, honey,” he said. “But sometimes no matter how much you want something, it isn’t meant to be.”

  “He has to be out there somewhere,” I said.

  “It’s possible someone has found him. If so, I’m sure they’re taking good care of him. We’ll keep looking and calling the shelter, but there isn’t much more we can do here, baby girl. Not right now.”

  I pushed his hand away and leaned my head against the window. There was something I wanted to ask him, something that had been bothering me since I’d found the photograph in my mother’s jewelry box.

  “Do you feel the same way about Heidi as Mom does?”

  There was a clap of thunder, and a bright yellow zipper of lightning split the sky. The windshield started fogging up, and my father used his hand to wipe it off.

  “Your mom and Heidi are very close,” he said. “They have a special kind of bond.”

  “Do you?”

  “What’s this all about, kiddo?” my father asked.

  “Can you please just answer the question?” I asked him.

  He paused for a moment. The rain beating on the roof of the car sounded like applause.

  “Heidi was a sweet young girl when she came here,” he said finally, “but to be honest, I don’t know her very well now. Your mother is the one who’s kept in touch.”

  “Did you want Heidi to stay and live with you as much as Mom did?”

  “Sure,” he said. “We thought maybe she would have a better life with us here.”

  “But she wanted to go home and live with Bernadette instead, right?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” My father nodded. “Your mother took it pretty hard when things didn’t work out, but then you came along and we lived happily every after.”

  Suddenly I was so mad I could spit.

  “Blah, blah, blah!” I said, kicking the dashboard with my muddy shoes.

  “Hey!” my father said. “You’re not a baby. Use words.”

  “Blah is a word,” I said.

  “Well, find some better ones to tell me why you’re so upset, and put your feet down on the floor where they belong—you know better than that.”

  I did as he told me and took my feet off the dashboard. But I was still mad.

  “How can you say that we lived happily ever after when Duck is still missing and you and Mom think I set the house on fire?” I said. “Some fairy tale.”

  He turned and looked me straight in the eye.

  “Were you telling the truth when you said you thought the lighter didn’t work?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “You don’t need to say that,” he told me.

  “I didn’t set the fire, Dad. I swear. It must have been a mouse chewing through a wire or something. Like Chief Strauss said. I didn’t do it, Dad. You have to believe me.”

  I rubbed my forehead with my knuckle, even though it hurt.

  “Stop,” he said, grabbing my hand and squeezing it tight. “I believe you.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Well, Mom still thinks I did it,” I said.

  “I’ll talk to your mother,” he told me. “Don’t worry—she’ll come around.”

  We stopped at McDonald’s on the way home, but my father swore me to secrecy.

  “You know how your mother feels about fast food,” he said as he dipped a french fry into a puddle of ketchup and wolfed it down.

  I locked my lips and threw away the imaginary key.

  When we got back to Scott and Julie’s house, my mother met us at the door.

  “Any luck?” she asked. “And please tell me that’s not ketchup I see on your cuff, Roy Franklin.”

  He gave her a lopsided grin.

  “Sorry, Rube,” he told her. “We were hungry, and no, we didn’t find Duck.”

  My mother tried to get me to sit down with her. She wanted to talk about what had happened, but I was all talked out.

  “Let her be,” my father said, putting his arm around Mom. “She’s had a long day. How about you put on a pot of coffee and I’ll fill you in?”

  “How about you make the coffee?” she said. “I’ve had a long day too.”

  I went straight to my room to change out of my wet things. My mother had been busy. The bed was made, and there was a pile of freshly laundered clothes sitting on the sewing table. As usual my mother had turned all the shirts inside out for me before she’d folded them. After changing into a T-shirt and a pair of flannel pajama pants, I lay down on the soggy air mattress and crawled under the covers. It was still light out, too early to go to bed, but I was exhausted. Every time I started drifting off, though, the image of that photograph of my mother with her arms around Heidi came back to me. What was it I had seen in her eyes? The rain had finally stopped and the wind picked up, rattling the windows and blowing through the branches of the trees outside my window.

  Soof, they whispered. Soof.

  I must have slept for a long time, because when I woke up it was dark out and the whole house was quiet. I felt a little hungry and went out to the kitchen to get a snack. When I opened the fridge a wedge of cold yellow light spilled across the counter, catching in the clasp of my mother’s jewelry box. It was exactly where I’d left it. My stomach rumbled like a train in a tunnel, but I ignored it. Leaving the refrigerator door ajar so I could see, I opened the lid and took out the photograph.

  Everyone was asleep. I had all the time in the world, but it didn’t take long for me to figure it out. The trees outside my window had been trying to tell me. They knew the truth, and now so did I.

  There was no doubt about it. The look in my mother’s eyes was definitely soof.

  The sun was shining brightly the next morning when I woke up, but the weather didn’t match my dark mood. All night long I had tossed and turned, thinking about the photograph. How could my mother have told me that story about Heidi passing her luck along when she knew that it wasn’t true? Luck had nothing to do with my being born. Heidi was the child she’d been waiting for all her life, not me.

  I propped myself up on my elbows and stared out the window. The trees were quiet now, having passed their message along. Duck wasn’t getting rained on wherever he was, so at least there was that to be grateful for. I glanced at the clock. It was seven thirty. Hopefully someone would be answering at the animal shelter in Rock Hill. We’d had Duck microchipped when we got him, but the phone number on his collar was the landline at our house, and who knew if the answering machine was even working anymore?

  The nearest phone was in the living room. When I got there I found my mother and Julie sitting on the couch together. Julie was knitting and my mother was working on the baby quilt for Heidi, which she must have brought back with her from the house. I felt a flash of anger. No wonder she’d saved the curtains from the room where Heidi had slept; everything that had anything to do with her was special.

  “Good morning, Aurora,” my mother said. “Did you sleep well, sweetie?”

  “Why do you care?” I muttered. Then I headed for the kitchen, where I knew there was another phone. I got the number for the shelter from information, but nobody picked up, so I couldn’t even leave a message. Having slept through dinner, I was starved. I poured myself a big bowl of cereal—Lucky Charms this time—and carried it back to my room. The air mattress must have had a slow leak, because it looked like an ice-cream sandwich that had been left out in the sun. I ate the cereal standing up, taking a certain amount of pleasure in knowing that my mother would disapprove. We didn’t have junk like Froot Loops or Lucky Charms at our house. Instead my mother would make granola from scratch, chopping up all kinds of nuts and dried fruit and mixing them together in a big bowl of rolled oats along with some coconut oil and honey. I scooped up the last bite of cereal and drank the sugary pink milk from the bottom of the bowl.

  So there, I thought.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Leave me alone,” I grumbled.

  “It’s Julie, hon. I need to get some yarn.”

  “Sorry about that,” I said, hurrying to open the door for her. “I thought you were somebody else.”

  “Oh my goodness,” she said when she saw the deflated air mattress. “We can’t have you sleeping on that. I’ll have Scott patch it up as soon as he gets home.” She paused for a second and looked around the room. “Did you reorganize these shelves or something? Everything looks so … tidy.”

  “I hope you don’t mind,” I told her. “I evened things up a little and switched out some of the tops so there would be the same number of each color on every shelf.”

 

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