‘I wanted to save my mother—’

We had so much in common!

‘Save your mother? By sacrificing my son?’

‘—and Caleb. I thought I was helping them both.’

‘He got arrested!’

He started his engine, closed his door, wound down the window to continue. ‘I got it wrong. I thought he’d be cleared long before now…’

‘You did nothing to make sure he was.’ My words were directed only to his vanishing tail lights.

Nina returned. I stared at her. This ordinary woman, indistinguishable from many of my friends, had the ability to ruin Caleb’s life. Then she spoke.

The charges against Caleb could not be proven and must be dropped, she said. He was innocent.

I slumped, covering my face with my hands, overcome by confused emotions. We could go home.

But what was home?

I imagined leaving this room, everything as it was last summer, Stephen circling the courthouse in his BMW, looking for a place to park. In the back seat, Caleb’s hand on the seatbelt catch, buzzing with impatience to find out what was going on. Since the fire, we’d been trapped in this nonsense world of blame and recrimination. Neither of us had really been home in a long time. And above that, a rush of joy because Caleb was innocent. I’d always believed this – though perhaps never enough.

And despair at the deeper knowledge that none of this was true. Caleb wouldn’t go to prison, but Stephen was still playing house with Ivy and Sean was still wheeling himself around the secluded back rooms of Rosie’s house. And Caleb hated me. And Jack, I had betrayed Jack.

I returned to Caleb on the footpath outside the courthouse. Selena Branham shook my hand, then his. ‘I hope someone answers for what these charges did to you both.’

Sadie Riley approached Caleb. He took Stephen’s advice. ‘No comment.’

I commented. ‘The investigators should be charged with incompetence. With ruining my son’s life.’

Sadie had only begun to write this down when Leanne Beckwith, teased hair rising inches over her head, pregnant (again) belly tilted aggressively said, ‘You want a quote, Sadie? This fire was an act of God. We can’t control God. Now fucking go away.’

Leanne smiled at me. I’d felt so frustrated about her arrival on the morning of the fire. Now I understood her loyalty and tried to smile.

26

26

VESTA | Goddess of Home

Her priestesses were freed from the paternalistic authority of their fathers, but if they were unchaste, they could be buried alive. Occasionally shown as a female figure herself, Vesta was more often represented by a flame.

AFTERWARDS

The next time my path crossed with Jack’s, outside the rebuilt fruit shop on Brunton’s Main Road, he shook his head. I’d imagined many possibilities – bellowing rage, a long monologue expanding on his anger, a quiet, How could you?

But that shaken head, then he walked away.