But Stella Miller knew the truth. You have to play your cards right in this world. I didn’t play my cards right.

When the kitchen phone rang, she was closest.

“Mace,” said Austin.

“Hi.” She was completely surprised. She had nothing to say. She might go and cry, right here in the kitchen in front of Nana and Papa.

“I called those other people,” he said.

Other people?

“The ones that still live in town even though they don’t live on Shell Road anymore. Remember there were a bunch more we never got to?”

They were back at Mr. Sibley. Macey didn’t want to be in 1959. She wanted to be in Austin’s hug.

Aus said, “I called the first person. No recollection. I called the second person. No recollection. I called the third person. They have photographs.”

“Photographs?” repeated Macey.

“Of the fire. They were there, they brought their camera, they still have the photographs.”

10

There were seven photographs.

Black and white.

The first photograph showed flames shooting up beyond the top of the picture. Macey would not have known there was a building. It was all fire.

The second was not centered. Winter-bare branches were silhouetted against a moonlit sky, and off to the side blazed a roof of fire.

The third and fourth photographs were fire trucks and firemen, aiming a hose so large that several men grappled to control it.

The fifth was strangely beautiful: from a distant, invisible hose came a silver waterfall arching over smoking ruins.

In the sixth, the fire had burned out, but barn timber still stood. A single window frame still hung in position. A side wall had burned irregularly, turning into a charred picket fence. Within this skeleton, a car was a coagulated knot of melted metal.

That was the photograph that left no doubt. It had been a fire planned to kill.

Macey touched her short hair and remembered the taste of fire. She turned the album page to the seventh photograph. It showed neighbors standing in a row, arms folded, watching.

Macey could tell from a single white pillar and the edge of a porch rail that they were lined up in front of her grandparents’ house. Her grandfather and grandmother; Austin’s grandfather; three men she could not identify; and one woman.

Macey had not just been reading about 1959. She had also read about arson. People who purposely set fires came back to admire their work. So this row of people—were they admiring their work?

Austin had said that the men at the beach bonfire were like ancient priests setting a sacrificial fire. Had this row of people chosen the victim for 1959?

Austin said, “I’m really interested, sir, that you saved the photographs.”