So Mr. Sibley had been upstairs in his own home, while downstairs some person slipped inside with a can of gasoline or kerosene and sloshed fuel on the very car that took Mr. Sibley back and forth to school, and then lit a match.

It’s hate, that’s what it is.

Oh, yes, it was hate.

Nothing else could make you do such a thing, especially knowing that the torch of the car would become the torch for the barn, and upstairs—standing on an old wooden floor, a floor that could not be saved, a floor the firemen would not even try to save—was the man who would be trapped by that fire.

And you were glad; you hated him; he was colored.

“What happened to the teacher?” said Macey. She was shaking. She could hardly hold the telephone. An emotion that was neither hate nor fear, but something equally strong, something she could not identify, because she had never felt it before, had sloshed over her, as if she too were waiting to be lit by a match. “Where did the teacher go?”

June said, “Let me think on this, because I used to know. I remember the house.”

“Did I do their plumbing?” said Mike.

“Yes, you did, dear. It was that house … oh, you know, somebody else owns it now, that red one on the side of the hill, the one that looks down on the baseball diamond.”

“Oh, right! That was—Beedon,” said Mike.

“Yes,” June told her, “a family named Beedon took the teacher to live with them.”

Macey flipped through the phone book as they talked, but there was no Beedon listed. She tried spelling it Beadon and Biedon. Nobody was listed.

“Swordfish,” Mr. Macey told Austin when he walked in from the back porch. Mr. Macey always outlined the menu for a guest. “You’re a lucky man that your grandparents chose tonight for committee meetings.”

Macey had drained the potatoes. She waved at Austin and then dumped in butter and milk heated in the microwave while Nana cut in chunks of cream cheese to make it extra perfect. Macey beat it a few times with the hand masher and then whipped it with the mixer. She was as intent over the mashed potatoes as if she were taking finals.

Her cap of hair had softer edges now, and her eyes were like stars beneath her hair’s dark circle.

Then Austin remembered important things. “I’m starving,” he said. “Let’s pick up the pace.”

“Just for that,” said Nana, “I shall waste valuable time cutting lemon slices with serrated tops like castle turrets, twisting them delicately to lie on top of the swordfish, and arranging long thin green beans as neatly as books on a shelf.” Which she did.