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

people who are being burned out of their town.’ So they helped him. Makes them look good, he figured. Makes Belle Haven an easier problem. Gets a few people out of town faster. That’s what Joe figured, anyway. He didn’t really care why they were so helpful, though. As long as they didn’t try to stop him.” Rusty sat down, looking pleased with himself, expecting the women to smile and fan themselves with their hands, relieved to hear that everything was taken care of all right. Rachel surprised him.

“He’s not just an opportunist,” she said quietly. “That was bad enough. Now he’s a traitor, too. I feel sick.”

“Oh, come on now, Rachel. I know you’re angry with Joe,” Angela said tiredly. “I know you want to hang on to this town as long as you can. But it’s not Joe’s fault we’re in trouble. And you of all people ought to know he’d never do anything to hurt you.”

Rachel smacked the top of her thigh. “But he has, hasn’t he? You don’t understand, Angela. He thinks he knows what’s best for me. Goddamnit, I’m not a child. And he’s not my father.” Rusty remembered telling Joe the same thing. He felt awful.

Angela wanted to say, “If your father were here, he’d be on Joe’s side.” But she knew better than to say such a thing.

“I know what’s best for me,” Rachel said. “I always have.” She walked off toward the kitchen.

Angela remembered how much Rachel had changed when her parents died. But in some ways she seemed exactly the same as she’d always been. For the first time, Angela wondered if Rachel was clinging to Belle Haven because it was a part of something else that she did not know how to give up.

If that was the case, no one, not even Joe, could loosen her grip until she was ready to let go.

Angela held her hand out to Rusty, who walked over to sit on the arm of her chair. “I don’t think we’d better stay here too much longer,” she said, running her hand slowly over the hair at the nape of his neck. “Everything’s going wrong, and I don’t think there’s anything we can do to set it right.”

“Will Joe come with us?” Rusty asked.

“I don’t know,” his mother replied. “But I don’t think there’s anything he can do, either.”

Chapter 47

        In the morning, Rachel drove her truck to Randall. Succinctly, she told Mr. Murdock to keep her money where it was.

“I’ve decided not to buy any land just now,” she said, to his immense relief. “You were right. Owning a few acres here and there isn’t going to change things.” She had chosen to stand, had kept her coat. “I’m going to follow your advice, wait and see what happens, but perhaps for longer than you intended. The fire’s coming faster and faster now. Who knows—maybe it won’t hang around for very long. Or maybe it will change direction. The government’s moving quickly now, too, buying up everything in sight. But maybe, when everyone who’s going to leave has left, the government will start to wonder what it has gotten itself into. Maybe the fire will force them out, too, eat up all the coal they hope to mine, leave them holding the bag. It may take years, but when the fire and the government have both finished with Belle Haven, if there’s anything left worth buying, I may well want to buy it.”

“Fair enough,” Mr. Murdock said. Once again, looking at her, he felt that what Rachel really needed was time. He was pleased that she had chosen to grant herself some.

On her way out of Randall, Rachel saw the road to Spence and took it. She wanted, unexpectedly, to see the government’s development where some of the Belle Haven condemnees now lived. But as she approached the grid of cheap new houses, the sight of endless mud, the absence of even a single tree, the streets named by someone who had never walked them, all of this sent her racing away in another direction, the radio turned up too high, the windows open to the wind, an unwelcome memory of Joe’s beautiful houses made more alluring by the place she had just seen.

When she got home, she found Mendelson sitting on her front porch.

“Good morning, Miss Hearn,” he said, rising.

“Morning,” she replied. “What can I do for you, Mendelson?”

“I know it’s a long shot,” he said, smiling. “But I just had to come up here myself to see if maybe you’d decided to sell your house.”

“Sell my house?”

“Uh-huh. I know you got a written offer, same as everyone else, but I’d like to make an offer of my own, ten grand more than before, maybe move the house somewhere safer.” He looked around him, stomped his boot on the floorboards of the old porch. “It’s a good house.”

Rachel stared at him. “This house is not for sale,” she said. “Not now or ever.”

“Well, I know we’re not talking about that much money here—not by your standards anyway—but it’s better than nothing, which is what you’re going to end up with if you keep this place.”

Rachel waved him up out of the chair. “Why are you still here?” she said. “I told you, it’s not for sale. Didn’t you hear me?”

“I did. I did. Can’t blame a man for trying.”

As he turned to go, Rachel said, “No one’s ever blamed you for that,”

Mendelson stopped with his boot on the top step. “Now, what the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that all you’ve ever tried to do around here is screw things up for the rest of us.”

“I’ve screwed things up?”

“That’s what I said.”

In all the years since she had first laid eyes on Mendelson, Rachel had known him to be rude, hard, disturbing, but she had never seen him lose control.

“Why, you selfish, spoiled, stupid little bitch,” he said, stepping back up onto her porch and only now, incongruously, removing his hat. “One of