Macey did not believe it was possible to forget a fire. She would remember the cold filth of the cement steps they had not been able to climb. The ribbed steel of the bulkhead door under her searching fingers. The pressure of Venita’s and Austin’s bodies against hers. She would remember the shade of yellow in her Sunday school room for the sixes; she would remember Hamlet.

Suppose it was arson, she thought, that fire in 1959. Then … who set it?

“Your parents sent you to boarding school,” she repeated. Her hands were trembling. She could feel the lightness of her hair.

Mrs. Framm was smiling. “Otherwise, a Negro would have been telling me what to learn, as if he knew something, like a regular person.”

Macey’s feet kept balance, but her mind tipped. She wanted to reach out for support, but this was the kind of shop with thousands of tiny breakables, so if you backed up wrong or swung your purse too wide, some little crystal thing died. “I can’t believe you’re saying this.” She looked around to make sure there were no customers listening.

Mrs. Framm shrugged. “Mace, honey, that was four decades ago. Times change. But back then, as far as people in this town were concerned, Negroes weren’t quite people. They were not equal. And even though you sang in church about ‘O Brother Man,’ colored people came in a separate category, and they weren’t your brother, unless they were safely in Africa or some distant state like Mississippi. Then they could be your brother.”

They’re still in a separate category, thought Macey. We have books. They have photocopies. We have computers. They have toilets without lids.

Mrs. Framm nudged her glasses up her nose and examined the lamp shades around her. “But they could not be your neighbor. Absolutely, positively not your neighbor. So I got sent to boarding school, to keep me safe.”

While Mr. Sibley, not so safe, slept in a barn that burned.

The only people likely to set a fire to drive somebody out of the neighborhood were people who lived in the neighborhood. And who had lived on Shell Road in December 1959?

Macey beat this thought down as if she were putting out a fire on her head.

Two women came into the shop in search of wedding gifts, live customers ready to spend, and Macey was in the way. She walked to her parents’ house, every thought a spark. The fire was not on her head this time, but in it.

It smoldered and smoked, and whenever she tried to stop thinking of 1959, she felt herself inside Austin’s bad dream, with fire climbing into her hands.

Austin was desperately sorry they had decided to lie about the fire.

Well, not lie, really. Just not tell.