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

They sat together in the hot grass, considering the trees clustered around them. “It would be different,” she said after a bit, “if you had expected to gain something by giving Holly your father’s money. But you yourself told me that what you did was one of the few unselfish acts of your life. The first in a very long time. It was a risky thing to do. You didn’t do it for profit.”

“Of course not. What difference does that make?”

Rachel plucked a brittle frond from a dead fern and began to crumble it between her hands. She thought of Joe lying with her in the woods behind her house, leading her to the huge walnut tree where he had already begun to build Rusty’s house. “I’m sure it made a lot of difference to Holly. She probably valued your motives far more than she valued the money itself.”

“That may be true,” he said impatiently, “but my sister is still dead. And I am responsible.”

“You had no way of knowing what would happen.” She cast the broken frond away from her. “Just as I had no way of knowing that my love for apple cider would get my parents killed.”

They sat together for a while longer, matching Holly’s gaze.

“Where is she buried, Joe?”

This startled him. It was a question he had asked himself more than once, but he had always imagined Holly lying next to their mother, safe again. Whatever else their father had done, however righteous he might have felt when his children had fled, surely he would have brought Holly’s body home.

“I don’t know,” Joe said. “But we had a family plot. It’s where all of us were meant to be buried. Holly must be there.” He watched a hunting spider lurch along his bootlace and disappear into the grass. “Why do you ask?”

Rachel chose her words. She wanted nothing less than to feed his guilty assumptions. “Did you ever look for anything about the accident in the paper? Was there a death announcement?”

Joe looked into Rachel’s face. He became completely still. “No, I didn’t look. Why would I look?”

Rachel shrugged. She laced her fingers. Waggled her head. “She was your sister, Joe. Didn’t you feel horribly … removed from what was happening?”

“Removed? That’s not how I felt. I didn’t feel removed. I felt as if I had exploded into a million parts. Even so, I would have done more than I did, if I could have. But she had already been buried by the time I found out. Everything was over and done with and there was nothing I could do about any of it. And a death announcement would not have put me back together again.”

“But didn’t you want to know for sure what happened?”

“Know for sure?”

She looked back at him. Saw how pale he had become. She realized that some small part of him had already faced the possibility that his father was not to be trusted. But she knew as well that it was unnatural to assume the worst of a parent … or a child.

“Jesus Christ, Rachel, he’s not a monster. You think he killed my sister?”

And then she knew for sure that she should let this go. It would be cruel to speculate about things he had laid to rest. Joe had shouldered all the hurt he could. He couldn’t take on any more. Not right now. And she also knew that as much as Joe might seem to be defending his father, he was in equal parts protecting himself.

“Of course not,” she said. “The thought never entered my mind.”

She watched Joe’s body relax. She watched his chest expand.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand, though,” Rachel said. “I thought you were bringing me out here to explain why you’ve stayed in Belle Haven.”

“That’s right.”

“But you decided to stay over a year ago, Joe, long before you started carving like this. And a minute ago you said that it was that phone call you made to your father—learning about Holly’s death—that made you stay. So why bring me out here? Out of the blue? As if this”—she gestured again toward the blackened grove—“as if this is your explanation?”

“Because it is. The best one I can give you. Of course Holly’s death changed things. Of course I found it impossible to go home after … after the things my father said to me that night. But there’s more to it than that.” He took a deep breath. “Almost from my first day in Belle Haven, I’ve felt like a changeling. Things have been cooking inside me all along. It’s hard to be sure about the reasons I’ve felt this way, but I have. And I have the feeling that there’s more to come.”

Joe took one of Rachel’s hands in his. He felt that her arrival had extracted from this place a portion of its magic. But her presence and her admiration had also affirmed what he had done. If it was less magical, it was also more real. Something he could count on. Something he had not imagined.

“I want to do this for the rest of my life,” he said, kissing her palm.

She was not certain, as she brought her other hand up to cradle his face, what it was that he meant.

Chapter 22

        When Angela saw the package Joe had brought Rusty on his eleventh birthday, she nudged it with a knuckle and leaned close for a better look.

“Ask a man to fix a carburetor, barbecue a steak, mow a lawn,” she said, “and he breaks out all over in Y chromosomes, his biceps swell, pecker perks up, grunts like a caveman. But ask him to preheat an oven, buy a box of tampons, wrap a birthday present … his eyes glaze over, his palms sweat, ‘I don’t know how,’ he says. Which he’d never dream of saying if you asked him to build a rocket ship. The stronger sex. The world’s rulers. I give you”—here she bowed to Joe, who sat scowling