He cleared his mind of contemplating the facets of teenage angst and his own shortcomings, and instead focused on Travis. Regardless of Travis’s confession, James still didn’t believe the man was guilty. The Travis he’d known practically from birth, whom he’d grown up with, didn’t have a mean bone in his body.

As he finished his meal and headed home, James went over everything Travis had told him. If he thought on it long enough, hard enough, he’d get to the bottom of it. There was a flaw in something Travis said, and James would find it, pursue it, and convince Duane that the whole matter needed to be looked over once again. He expected that last task to be the most difficult.

The house was dark and quiet when he arrived. He sneaked down the hallway to his bedroom, changed into pajamas, and climbed between the sheets. His mind was still spinning with images and recollections of conversation as he slipped to sleep.

Heat seared the air. Flames roared like an agitated lion ready to devour anyone who came close, and licked the sky in plumes of black smoke and orange tendrils.

“What’s done is done and can’t be undone.” Duane’s voice rose above the rumbling flames.

Travis materialized through the smoke, the burning cherry of his cigarette looming close. “Burn it down. Burn him before he burns you.”

Travis dissolved into the disappointed face of Glen Moore. “Do you ever plan on finishing anything?”

James ran, ran from the taunts, from the heat, from the flames that threatened to torch his life.

He let out a loud scream and suddenly…

He was awake. Focusing to calm his racing heartbeat, James took deep, deliberate breaths. Sweat-soaked pajamas clung to his body as he tried to escape the bedding wound around his legs and waist. Flames still feathered in his thoughts, wisps of memory tangling with his emotions, a chaotic quagmire of pain and loss overriding his physical world. It took a few seconds in the darkened room to calm down.

It was dream. Only a dream.

7

James trudged through the shin-deep snow towards the remains of the Pearce farm. His breath preceded him in visible puffs as if guiding him. Moving pieces of debris, he looked for any clue that might help him understand what had happened that fateful night.

Nothing.

He couldn’t even see why they’d deemed it arson. Then again, he wasn’t an arson investigator, so he had no idea what clued them into declaring it such.

Moving around the property from what was left of the house’s foundation, he stopped for a moment at the swing set. Absently he pushed the two-seater air glider. The Pearce children had been teenagers. What had they thought of this swing set? Had they flounced out here in teenaged angst to sit in the swing while they pouted away whatever had rocked their world for the moment? Had they sat out here in twilight, content with their lives, giddy with the excitement of being young? Perhaps even in love? How long had Mary said the Pearces had lived in Kipling? Five years? So the kids had been maybe ten years old when they’d arrived. Probably on the cusp between loving this swing set and thinking they were too old for it.