He had held her so easily in the van, when he didn’t even own a shirt anymore and she reeked of smoke. He’d wrapped his arms around her, comforted her with the warmth of his hands, rested his face against her head. But tonight was not rescue. It was not comfort. He didn’t know what it was. The strength that had enabled him to hold her against the wall while he roughed out the flames was present now, when he didn’t want it, when Macey certainly would not want it. He felt like a monster truck when the situation called for a Jaguar and leather seats.

“Oh, Aus,” she said, almost in tears, and he was horrified that he had brought on tears, “I would have said I could ignite the sand, the way I feel about you, and I can’t even touch you.”

He put one hand on her short silky hair and the other against her cold silky cheek, and then it was okay between them. When she tucked herself against him, he felt like sea meeting shore.

And then somehow it seemed time to speak, and he could think of nothing affectionate and just right, so like a jerk, he blurted out the sentence his grandfather had dictated.

Macey could not believe what Austin had just said to her.

His grandfather had asked Aus to stop her from talking about the barn fire? Stop her from what? What was out there?

The wind brushed salty mist across her face.

She turned her back on Aus. High above was the searing path of the comet. Nobody knew exactly what was out there. But somebody, somewhere, knew all about the fire.

The lancing emotion that had struck when she was on the phone with Mike and June almost lifted her off the sand.

“Remember how Nana talked about cooking, Aus? All the lovely waiting, she said. But it isn’t lovely to wait for your fair share. And that’s what they had to do, the Negro children in Little Rock, they had to stand and wait. See if anybody would let them near a fair share. And here on Shell Road in 1959, Mr. Sibley got his fair share, but they wouldn’t let him keep it. They burned him out of it and waited for him to run.”

Her voice whispered softer than the waves.

“Mr. Sibley went to school one day and made science so real and exciting that one girl became a chemistry teacher in his honor, and the next day somebody tried to kill him. Because that’s what this is, Aus. Fire is not a conversation. It’s not a way to ask somebody to leave. It’s a way to kill.”