That morning, I had posted an Instagram photo from the airport. I was supposed to fly to San Diego for a work conference. Weather canceled the flight, and I came home early. I had told no one except my coworker, Jasmine.
“She may have thought I was gone,” I said.
Reyes exchanged a look with a nearby officer.
“What happened with the inheritance?” he asked.
I nearly laughed. Even covered in soot outside my ruined home, it still came back to money.
“My grandmother, Evelyn Whitman, died in March,” I said. “She left me her house in Ashland and about $180,000 from a retirement account. My parents said it was unfair because Miles has two kids and debt. But Grandma raised me half the time. She knew what they were like.”
“What were they like?”
I stared at my destroyed building. “They treated love like a bill. If I didn’t pay it exactly the way they wanted, they cut me off.”
Reyes nodded and wrote it down.
Then another officer approached with a second evidence bag. Inside was a warped red gas can nozzle.
“We found accelerant traces near the kitchen doorway and outside the bedroom,” Reyes said. “The fire started in two separate locations.”
I gripped the edge of the seat. “Someone set it?”
“That is what it looks like.”
A cold numbness spread through me. It was worse than fear. Fear moved. This sat like stone in my chest.
“My cat,” I said suddenly.
Reyes looked up. “You had a pet inside?”
“Oliver. Orange tabby. He hides under the bed when he’s scared.”
The officer looked away.
I did not need him to say it.
For a moment, everything blurred. The ambulance lights stretched into red ribbons. My apartment had held my clothes, laptop, my grandmother’s letters, old photos, and every dull little proof that I had built a life without my parents.
But Oliver had been alive.
And someone had left him locked inside a burning room.
My phone buzzed in my hand.
A text from Miles.
Mom says stop accusing people. You’re embarrassing the family.
I had not accused anyone yet.
I slowly turned the screen toward Investigator Reyes.
He read it.
His expression shifted.
“Claire,” he said, “do not respond. Do not warn them. Do you have somewhere safe to stay tonight?”
I looked down at the evidence bag holding the key.
Then another message appeared.
This one was from my mother.
Insurance fraud is a crime. Think carefully before you lie.
My chest went ice-cold.
Because I had never mentioned insurance.
PART 3
By sunrise, I was in a cheap hotel near the airport with a borrowed sweatshirt, a plastic pharmacy bag of toiletries, and a police report number written on the back of a business card.
I did not sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw orange light climbing my kitchen wall. I saw Oliver’s green eyes under the bed. I saw my mother’s handwriting on that purple key tag.
At 7:12 a.m., Jasmine called.
“Oh my God, Claire,” she said. “I just saw the news. Are you okay?”
“No,” I said honestly. “But I’m alive.”
