HF01 - Almost Forever Page 18

  She shook her head. “It was more than that. The dream just brought the memories back—real memories. I’m not imagining them.”

  “Did you purchase the candle?” Meyer asked, seemingly giving up on his former line of questioning.

  “No.”

  “Are you the one who brought it in to the shelter?”

  “No.”

  “Who did?”

  “Susan Marlowe, the director.”

  “The director of the homeless shelter? You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  He scribbled furiously on the legal pad in front of him. When he looked up, his expression was almost gleeful. “Even if you did leave that candle burning—and I’m not convinced that’s the case—but even if you did, the candle should not have been at that shelter in the first place. And Ms. Marlowe no doubt knows that.”

  Bryn started shaking her head. “No. Susan had nothing to do with this. She made it very clear that it was just for the smell, to freshen the air. We weren’t supposed to light it,” she added quickly.

  “You weren’t supposed to? Were there regulations posted somewhere stating that?”

  Bryn thought for a moment. “Not that I can remember. But there may have been. They had a training manual. It was probably in there.” Her pulse stuttered. Had she said something that implicated Susan?

  “Did Ms. Marlowe ever light that candle herself? Or any other candle at the shelter?”

  Her breath caught. Could they arrest Susan for merely bringing the candles in? “I . . . have no idea.” Let him take that however he would.

  “Even if Ms. Marlowe didn’t light the candle on occasion herself, it was completely irresponsible for her to allow it on the premises. Or, for that matter, for her to allow matches or other lighting devices on the premises. They served as a temptation. I’m surprised they got away with only having those cheapo smoke alarms.”

  Bryn didn’t point out that they hadn’t “gotten away” with it.

  “Most of the clients smoked. Outside . . . well, once in a while when it was really cold out, they’d smoke just inside the entry . . . but still, there’s no way we could have policed all the cigarette lighters and matchbooks. We had enough trouble keeping the booze and drugs out.”

  Mr. Meyer jotted something else on the legal pad. Bryn had given up trying to read his scribblings upside down—or any other direction.

  “There’s another angle we need to look at. According to the fire inspector’s report, there were beds and mattresses stored on the second floor that were highly combustible. Either Ms. Marlowe, or a building inspector—somebody along the way—should have made sure those were removed from the premises. They constituted a grave threat in the event of fire.”

  She forced out a heavy breath. “Mr. Meyer, you’re trying to pin this on everyone except me. That’s exactly why I didn’t want a lawyer.” She glanced at Dad, not wanting to hurt him but feeling she had to put her foot down. “I am the one who did this. I’m the one who should be punished. I’m not trying to get out of it. I’m not afraid of—whatever they decide to do to me. It’s bad enough that I made such a terrible mistake, but if I tried to pin the blame on someone else, I might as well . . .” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

  Meyer cocked his head and studied her. “Ms. Hennesey, the DA has not garnered favor with the public recently, and he’d love a sensational case to hang his hat on. Do you want to be the sacrificial lamb?”

  “I just want to tell the truth.”

  “The truth may well be that others are as much to blame as you are.”

  “No. They’re not. I’m the one—the only one—who left that candle burning. Who tampered with that smoke detector. And I’ll accept whatever consequences the law requires.”

  “If you plead guilty, you’ll most likely go to jail.”

  She nodded. “I understand that.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not sure you do understand. I’m not sure you get how the legal system works. What happened is not entirely your fault. Not by any stretch of the imagination. There is no reason for the full penalty for what happened to fall on you. It is only right that others whose negligence contributed to this tragedy shoulder their deserved share of the burden.”

  Bryn thought about that. If none of them took full blame, if they each admitted that they had contributed in some small way, maybe none of them would be convicted.

  Or maybe they would all be punished to the full extent of the law. She’d looked it up on the Internet. In Missouri the maximum sentence for involuntary manslaughter was twenty-two years. She’d done the math, and it took her breath away. Life would pass her by while she served her sentence. She could kiss marriage and babies good-bye. Or having a career. She would be in her fifties in twenty-two years. Older than Mom had been when she died.

  Dad would probably die while she was in prison. Could his heart stand up under the strain if she was convicted, if she went to jail? She’d read that few people served such a lengthy sentence. Still, even if she only got half of the maximum sentence, it was a very real possibility that Dad would not be around when she was released. She shuddered. That thought was too much to bear. She erased it from her mind.

  She didn’t want to go to prison. But Susan couldn’t go. She had two sons who needed her. Right now. Not ten, or even five years from now. Davy, especially, was fragile right now. He might completely crack if something happened to his mother.

  She didn’t know about the building inspector Meyer wanted to implicate. Maybe Meyer didn’t even know who that inspector was. But whoever it was, he or she no doubt had a spouse and children who depended on them. She had no one.

  She straightened in her chair, took her father’s hand. “Mr. Meyer, I wish to plead guilty. Like I said in the letters—” Her voice broke. “If there was any way in the world I could go back and undo this terrible—”

  “Wait a minute.” Meyer glared at her. “Letters?”

  “The letters I wrote to the families. To apologize, to ask their forgiveness.”

  Meyer scraped back his chair and rose, towering over her. “Whatever you do—” He leaned across the table toward her, emphasizing every word—“do not send those letters.”

  Bryn glanced at her father, then up at the attorney. “I . . . already did.”

  Judson Meyer’s eyes grew wide. His face crumpled, and he tugged at the knot of his tie and sagged into the chair behind him. “Do you have a death wish, Ms. Hennesey?” He turned to Bryn’s father and threw up his hands, seemingly at a loss for words.

  But words came for Bryn.

  You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

  The words—God’s words that had echoed through her mind since she’d awakened from the dream—came to her again.

  But what did they mean for her? What was the truth?

  Why hadn’t Bryn

  returned his calls?

  He racked his brain to think

  if she’d told him she was

  going somewhere . . .

  25

  Monday, January 21

  Did you hear a word I just said?” Kathy Beckwith stood in the doorway of the teacher’s workroom, arms akimbo, grinning at Garrett.

  “I’m sorry . . . what?” Garrett shook off the mental cobwebs and forced his attention back to the fourth-grade teacher.

  Kathy laughed. “You’ve got it bad, buddy.”

  He gave her a guilty grin and rubbed at the worn linoleum with the toe of his shoe. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She affected a huff that said, “Yeah, right.” What she actually said was “I said, can I borrow your fraction dice this afternoon? We’ll need them for a couple of days, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure. No problem. Just send one of your students for them any time.”

  “Thanks.” Kathy tilted her chin and studied him, motherly concern clouding her pretty face. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Women
problems?”

  Any other time, he might have made a joke about women definitely being problems, or he might have fed her some tidbit about his and Bryn’s growing friendship, knowing she would encourage him, make him feel better about how quickly his relationship with Bryn had turned into something more—even if he hadn’t revealed that to his fellow teachers yet.

  But today he was in no mood. He was growing genuinely concerned about Bryn. Why hadn’t she returned his calls? He racked his brain to remember if she’d told him she was going somewhere over the weekend, and came up blank. Not that she owed him a minute-by-minute schedule of where she would be. The thing was, for the past few weeks, between texting, email, and actually talking, he’d pretty much been able to account for her whereabouts at any given time.

  Now, with no idea where she was and why she was ignoring him, he was growing more worried by the hour. After the romantic day they’d spent together at Ferris Park, the least she could do was tell him she was having second thoughts.

  “Sorry, but I’ve got to run.” He threw Kathy a wave as he left the workroom and headed back down to his classroom. His students would be back from PE in a few minutes, and he still had to set up a science experiment.

  He checked his watch. If he hadn’t heard from Bryn by the time he got out of school, he was going to try to contact her father. He wasn’t even sure what the man’s first name was, but he remembered Bryn joking once that her initials went from BAT to BAH when she married, and with her maiden name of Terrigan, they spelled BATH. How many Terrigans could there be in the Hanover Falls phone book?

  After school, Garrett got in on a pickup game in the gym, but only a couple of the guys showed up, so they knocked off early. Afterward, he stopped by the store to pick up a few groceries. He gassed up his pickup and grabbed a pizza to take home for dinner. As he pulled into his apartment complex, he dialed Bryn again on his cell phone, not expecting an answer by now, but wanting to try one more time before he tried to contact her father. This time he didn’t bother leaving a message.

  The evening paper was on the stoop, and he grabbed it and retrieved several days’ worth of mail from his mailbox in the foyer. He tossed everything on the kitchen counter and went to check the answering machine. Nothing.

  He flipped on the television and listened to the end of some inane episode of Oprah while he poured a Coke and ate three slices of pizza. He glanced at the clock. Almost five. Bryn’s father might be home from work by now. Wiping his fingers on a dishtowel, Garrett pulled the phonebook from a kitchen drawer. He thumbed through the white pages. Nothing for “Terrigan.” Bryn had talked about her father living in the country, but either he had an unlisted number or he lived outside the area this directory covered.

  He walked across the room and slid into his desk chair. Maybe he could find something online. He was typing “Terrigan” into Google when a blurb for the evening news grabbed him by the throat. A chirpy female newscaster was saying something about the Grove Street Inferno. He jumped up, grabbed the remote, and turned up the volume, but the station had already cut to a commercial.

  It seemed like forever before the news came back on, but the Grove Street Inferno was the lead story, complete with the same photo illustration they’d used for stories about the fire back in November.

  Garrett hurried over to the television and stood there, waiting, holding his breath. The fire investigators must have made an announcement.

  The same newscaster looked into the camera, and Garrett could almost read her intent—to look gorgeous, intelligent, and serious, all at the same time. “In a surprising turn of events, a former volunteer at the Grove Street Homeless Shelter in Hanover Falls has admitted to being responsible for a fire that killed five firefighters last November. Rudy Perlson, chief of police in this small south-central Missouri town, said the Hanover Falls woman turned herself in to authorities Friday, telling police she unintentionally started the blaze that destroyed the former hospital building that housed the facility.

  Garrett’s heart raced. A volunteer? He didn’t remember Bryn talking about anyone else being at the shelter that night besides Susan Marlowe. Why was this person just now coming forward? How could someone have let everyone think it was that homeless man—Zeke Downing—all this time? At least this might explain why he hadn’t heard from Bryn. They’d probably called her back in for interviews. Poor Bryn. He shot up a prayer that it wouldn’t be too upsetting for her, having to relive the events of that night.

  He sat on the edge of the leather sofa, his eyes glued to the television as familiar images from the fire filled the screen. TV stations in the area must have played the footage a hundred times in those days immediately following the fire. It had been shown across the country the first few days.

  The woman’s voice droned on with old details about the fire. “Stay tuned for more on this breaking story tonight at ten.”

  Garrett picked up the phone and dialed Bryn’s number again. This time, when her voice mail picked up, he left a message. “Hey, Bryn, it’s me. Wow . . . I just saw the news. I’ve tried to call several times, but I’m guessing now that you’ve been wrapped up in this whole ordeal. Did you know the woman who confessed? Hope it hasn’t been too bad for you. I guess . . . I guess it’s good we’ll finally have some answers. Anyway, I’m thinking about you and praying for you. Call me as soon as you can. I don’t care if it’s late.”

  He hung up the phone and sat with his head in his hands. Always, when he’d thought about this moment—the moment when the person responsible for Molly’s death was caught—he’d expected to feel an overwhelming sense of relief. But that didn’t happen now. He felt numb, almost disappointed.

  They’d said the woman had confessed to “accidentally” starting the fire. If that was true, why had it taken so long for her to come forward?

  There would probably be another rash of news stories and reporters calling for interviews—wanting reaction from the families of the fallen firefighters. He’d be so glad when this was all over. But maybe once the person responsible for the deaths of Adam and Molly was behind bars, it would give Bryn and him both the closure they needed. And allow them to start a new, happier chapter of their lives—together.

  Why hadn’t Bryn

  told him?

  How could she have kept

  something like this from him?

  26

  The teaser for the ten o’clock news played over the closing credits of some TV drama. Garrett had left the television on only because he didn’t want to miss the news. The nighttime anchor read the same blurb from the evening newscast and the program went to a commercial.

  Garrett had tried to reach Bryn twice since he’d heard the news and still no answer. Why isn’t she answering her phone?

  The commercial break ended, and the anchorman appeared on the screen. “Tonight we have shocking new information on the November fire that destroyed a homeless shelter and left five firefighters dead in Hanover Falls, Missouri. A woman who served as a volunteer at the Grove Street Homeless Shelter in this south-central Missouri town has admitted to being responsible for the fire.”

  So it wasn’t Zeke Downing after all. Incredible. Garrett sat forward on the couch, punching the remote to turn up the volume.

  “Hanover Falls’ police chief, Rudy Perlson, said Bryn Hennesey turned herself in to authorities on Friday morning, telling police she had accidentally left a candle burning in the second-floor office of the facility the night of the fire. Perlson says Hennesey, whose husband, Adam Hennesey, was one of the firefighters killed in the blaze, was released on her own recognizance and is awaiting arraignment on possible charges of involuntary manslaughter.”

  Garrett stared at the television.

  Bryn? Something was wrong here. The Bryn he knew wasn’t capable of what they were blaming her for. There must be some mix-up with her name. The same nausea and denial he’d felt when they’d told him that Molly was dead battered him now.

  If this was true, why ha
dn’t Bryn told him? How could she have kept something like this from him?

  The anchorman droned on, and Garrett struggled to focus on the man’s words.

  “District Attorney Gordon Arrington declined to comment on whether felony charges would be filed in the case, but Fire Chief Peter Brennan said Hennesey’s confession is consistent with findings of the state fire inspectors. That final report has not been released, and preliminary reports said the extensive damage to the facility made fire investigators’ findings inconclusive, but investigators confirmed the fire started on the second floor of the former hospital building.”

  Peter Brennan appeared on camera, and a microphone was thrust in his face. Pete was standing in the break room at the fire station. One glimpse of that room brought the memories whirling back. Evenings when he’d picked up sandwiches at the deli and taken supper to Molly and the guys. And late one night when, bored, she’d talked him into coming to the station to play Scrabble. She’d beat his socks off, too. Not that he’d cared. He’d just been happy to be with her, glad it was his company she’d craved even though she was surrounded by half a dozen beefy firemen.

  He sat, glued to the TV screen, still in shock, yet hungry for details. Not willing for what he was hearing to be true. The anchor said Bryn had been released. Why? And where was she? Probably at her father’s.

  All this time she’d pretended . . . ? At least now he knew why she hadn’t returned his calls. He struggled to piece together what he knew, but nothing made sense. Not Bryn’s confession, not the fact that the fire had been her fault, and certainly not the fact that, for weeks, she’d behaved with him as if nothing in the world were amiss.

  But if this was true, why had she bothered to get close to him? It didn’t make sense. Did she think a relationship with him could somehow offer her some sort of immunity?

  He thought, for the thousandth time, of their time together at the park. Even the weeks leading up to today. Bryn had been so open and honest with him—or at least she’d made him believe that. They’d talked about everything. She’d told him that she felt guilty about Adam being there that night because she’d talked him into pulling an extra shift so they’d have money for Christmas shopping. And Adam hadn’t known she was there. Had she only told him those things to cover up her real reason for guilt?