Listen. This is a secret. Don’t tell anyone, okay? Dad will never leave this place, and Lazlo thinks we’re fine as long as we have this land and a roof over our heads. So I have to get rid of the cabin. I’m going to set fire to it on Monday after Dad leaves for work. Billy and I will be out of the house with our stuff, and we’ll watch it burn. It will take forever for the fire department to get here. Dad got drunk once and fell down and hit his head, and it took an hour for the ambulance to get here. No one ever believes us when we say something’s wrong here. I don’t know why.

I’m enclosing Lazlo’s address in Atlanta. Write me there, please? It’s probably big in Atlanta. I hope I don’t get lost. Maybe I will finally get a bike. Is there water there? Billy would like that.

Sincerely yours,

Wesley Patterson

P.S. DON’T TELL ANYONE!

Kate’s lips parted as she read it. She realized she’d been holding her breath and finally made herself exhale. It didn’t help. She felt light-headed.

She looked up at Wes.

“No,” he said, reading her expression. “It’s not your fault.”

“You set the fire. Because of me.” She looked around wildly, at the bare spot where his cabin had once stood.

“No,” he said again. “I did it because I wanted a new life, another life. That was true long before you showed up.” He made her look him in the eye. “Kate, it’s not your fault.”

Kate gave him a jerky nod and handed him back the letter. He looked at it one last time before putting it back in the box. He closed the van door, and the sound echoed over the clearing.

“I didn’t even know my father was at home that morning,” Wes said, his hand still on the door handle. “I heard what I thought was his truck pulling away, going to work like usual. I even looked in the garage, and the truck was gone. I didn’t know that he’d gotten so drunk the night before that he’d left his truck at the bar and someone had given him a ride home. The sound I heard was him being dropped off that morning. He was passed out on the floor on the far side of his bed, and I had no idea. And Billy … I didn’t tell Billy what I was going to do. I’d packed our stuff the night before and hidden it in the woods. I doused the house with gasoline from a container my father kept to burn stumps. I picked up Billy—he was still sleeping—and I threw down a match as I reached the front door. My God, the sound it made. My ears popped. I ran into the woods, and Billy had woken up by this time. I remember him looking around, trying to figure out what was going on. I didn’t think I had anything to worry about. He trusted me. He always trusted me. I told him what I did, and he got this worried look on his face. He started going through the things I’d taken from the house. He was looking for something.”