Those Who Favor Fire by Lauren Wolk (easy readers .TXT) 📕

“I know you well enough,” Joe said. When he took Mrs. Sapinsley by the arm and led her toward the house, she went with him willingly, beginning to be convinced that there was a way to leave Belle Haven without leaving her heart behind.

“I’ll be along in a while to collect you,” Joe said to her as they reached the porch. When he turned back toward the lane, Frank, Angela, Dolly, Rusty, and Rachel all stared at him in complete silence. But he could tell from the looks on their faces that for each of them the silence meant something different.

“Frank,” he said, as he walked up to them. “If you could design your own house, what kind of house would it be?”

Frank, whose hands were still mapped with black from his long association with oil and old metal, grimaced as if he had a bad tooth. “That’s like asking me what I plan to wear to the ball,” he said. “Not something I figured I’d ever be called upon to do.”

“Consider yourself called upon,” Joe said. He wasn’t smiling either.

After a long pause Frank said, “No, I don’t think I can. I’ve lived in the same house all my life. And I do mean all my life, birth on up. I don’t know anything else, and I don’t really want to.”

Which took Joe somewhat aback. Despite everything he’d seen and heard in Belle Haven, he had become convinced that everyone would eventually go their ways. In their shoes, which he in fact was, he would have spent time imagining his departure, planning the next part of his life, trying it on, making adjustments, aiming for the best possible fit.

“You don’t mean you’re going to stay in Belle Haven?”

“Yes,” Frank said. “That’s what I mean.”

Rachel looked as if she wanted to move closer to Frank, take his arm.

“And do what?” Joe tried to sound simply curious, but this came out sounding like the challenge it was.

Frank gave him a sharp look and reset his cap. “You’ve done a nice thing here, Joe,” he said, gesturing all around him as if Joe had been the one to plant these trees, sculpt this earth, brew this air. “But it’s not what I’m after. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised you’d think of me. Do I really strike you as a man who needs minding?”

When Joe had imagined his plans going wrong, he had imagined something much like this, words of this sort, but spoken by someone else altogether.

“No, no, I never meant to imply you needed looking after, Frank. You or anyone else.”

“Then how come I’m here?”

Joe had thought he knew the answer to this one but called upon to give it found himself at a loss.

“I don’t have a lot of friends in this world,” he eventually said. “But you’re one of them.”

Frank nodded, pleased with this answer, willing to accept it but not to be bound by it. “That’s fine,” he said. “And I thank you for the offer. But I’ll be staying in Belle Haven for now. Maybe for good. I won’t know till I’m dead or on my way, I expect.”

And with that he headed back down the lane toward the waiting van, leaving Joe with a good deal of the wind knocked out of him, Rachel looking smug, Angela and Dolly and Rusty somewhat removed, as if they were waiting for their turn to make a decision but not entirely certain what it would be.

Now, with only four following him but they the four people he counted as family, Joe walked on down the lane. When they reached the next house, he lifted an elbow toward it but kept on going. “That would have been Frank’s house,” he said. Glimpsed through the trees, it seemed quite modest, as Frank was. Simple and straightforward.

Rachel, watching it as she passed, had to admit that Joe had a knack for summing people up. He seemed able to see to the core of a person, and he usually had no trouble accepting people for what they were. And yet for months now she had felt as if he was sitting in judgment of her, whether he had any right to or not. Frank, it seemed, could flat out say he’d be staying in Belle Haven and Joe did nothing, said not a syllable, did not protest at all. To Rachel, who had also been born and raised in one house, one town, one world, Joe had made a thousand arguments, all meant to speed her on her way. She did not consider this a sign of love for her. If he truly loved her, he would respect her as well. Accept her for what she was. Accept her reasons for doing what she did.

By the time they reached the next house, Rachel was preparing to do as Frank had done: say thanks, and mean it, but go her own way, which was back home. She had not imagined how it would feel to see Angela, and Dolly, and Rusty, who were her family, too, choose a different direction.

Joe stopped. The others stopped with him. He turned to Angela, who was clutching Rachel’s hand like a child. “Hang on,” Joe said, grabbing Rusty’s sleeve as the boy lunged forward toward the house he could see among the trees. “Wait for your mother. And your grandmother,” he added, beckoning Dolly forward. “Angela,” he said, turning back to her and for the first time truly smiling, “I know you may not want this place. I know that already, so you won’t kill me by saying no. But I loved building it for you. I really did.” He took another key off the big ring in his hand and gave it to Rusty. “Now you can go,” he said, and Rusty sprinted down the laneway toward the most beautiful cottage Rachel had ever seen.

It was all shingled in cedar that would weather