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

Rachel looked away from him. “Well, there’s the strange part,” she muttered. “His house wasn’t actually close to a tunnel at all. They’re all west of his hollow. He must have been sitting above a long coal vein, a big one that went right up to the surface, which is very unlucky, of course. I’m sure the chances of the fire coming up directly underneath a house are pretty slim. It’s never come near us before.”

“Who’s us?” Joe snapped. “Obviously not Ross. Sophia? What about Sophia? Or Bill Hutter? Or the Saders?”

“You don’t know why Sophia’s house burned down, Joe, or why there was ice on Bill’s lawn, or why Becca Sader’s goddamned shower was too hot.”

“That’s right. I don’t. You don’t. Nobody does.”

“Look, I’m sorry for Sophia, and I’m sick about Ross, but the fact remains that the fire is nowhere close to most of this town. You look at the maps of the tunnels, and you’ll agree. They’re not a threat to most people.”

“Most people?” Joe pulled his chair up closer to Rachel’s so he could see her face more clearly, and she his. Pal, awakened, took up a fresh post at his side. “What about the ones who are at risk? A minority you’re prepared to sacrifice, I take it.” As she opened her mouth to speak he rose to his feet. “And what about all that coal down there?” he demanded. “You’re sitting up here on your hill, safe and sound, telling people to wait until their shoes start smoking before they run. Looking down your nose at anybody who’s got the good sense to be worried. While Angela and Rusty and all the rest of your pals down there walk around on top of a time bomb.” He glared at her. “Goddamn it, Rachel, grow up.”

She watched, speechless, as he stalked off the porch and into the Schooner, held the door for Pal and then shut it sharply behind them. He did not reappear for as long as she sat there alone in the darkness, stunned, furious, and for the first time sorry that he had come back to her changed.

Chapter 35

        Rachel slept little that night. Her belly gurgled with acid, and her eyelids seemed to repel each other like mismatched magnets. Around midnight she heard Joe start up the Schooner and drive away. He drove out of town the way he had come in. She imagined that San Francisco had recalibrated Joe’s vision, had cast Belle Haven and all of its citizens—including Rachel herself—in a new, unfavorable light. She imagined that he was, at this moment, bound away, across the farmland, toward the nearest city.

The Schooner was the first thing Angela saw the next morning when she came down from her apartment above the coffee shop. She unlocked the front door and walked straight across the sidewalk to Joe’s door. She knocked, waited, knocked again.

“How do you want your eggs?” she asked when he opened the door.

“Good morning, Angela,” Joe said, knuckling his eyes. “Some law against sleeping past the crack of dawn?”

“Yep,” she said. “Never park your disreputable caravan outside my front door after a month’s absence unless you mean business. I’ve been itchin’ to talk to you, boy, and I hate to be kept waiting.”

“Don’t you want to know why my lovely caravan is parked outside your disreputable hash house?”

“All in good time,” she said, smiling. “Eggs?”

“Scrambled,” he said. “With cheese on top.”

“Ten minutes.” She turned on her heel and disappeared inside the coffee shop.

By the time Angela had fixed his breakfast—eggs with cheese, fried tomatoes, toast, coffee, and cranberry juice—Joe had showered, dressed, fed Pal, bought a paper.

“I know all about Holly,” she said, bringing him pepper. “And I know all about Mendelson moving into Ian’s place,” she said, back at the grill, busy with bacon. “But I don’t know why you’re here eating my eggs instead of up with Rachel where you belong.”

“We had a fight,” he said, drinking the cold juice. It was like liquid rubies. “I take it I’m the first to tell her how stupid she’s being about this fire business.”

“I don’t know as how I’d call her stupid.” Angela began to brew a second pot of coffee as a couple of farmers came in, corn silk on their sleeves. She took the first pot to their table, said hi, filled their mugs, put menus in their hands.

“You got to understand something about Rachel,” she told Joe. “And it’s not something I’ve ever said to her, because I think in time she’ll work everything out for herself and rushing her won’t help. But it’s my opinion that the way Rachel is acting about this fire has a lot to do with the way her parents died. Actually, more to do with when they died. She was beginning to outgrow this long habit she had of always doing the right thing, being so reliable it about made you sick.” She glanced over at the farmers, who were waving their menus at her. “Keep your shirts on, I’ll just be a sec,” she called. “But she was on her way, starting to outgrow all that, when bang. Her parents got killed in a pretty horrible way. Right on the heels of a miserable time at school. And right before my eyes she did this incredible flipflop. Instantly. All of a sudden she’s stubborn as a mule. Pigheaded. Absolutely set on doing things her own way.” Angela waggled her head. “All in all, a pretty reasonable reaction, wouldn’t you say?”

Joe shrugged.

“Besides,” she said, poking a stray wisp of hair back into place. “She’s not the only one dragging her feet. We all are. Some people can’t see that there’s any problem at all. Some are bent on looking the other way. Some see it all right, but it’s like they’re looking through binoculars from the wrong end. Some see a problem like this and they get their backs up. Rachel’s one sort