Free In Too Deep by Mary Connealy Page B

from cleaning up the supper dishes. Then Ethan scooped up Maggie and took her along as he grabbed a chair from the kitchen for himself.
    Ethan came back in with his chair just as Audra sat down in the rocker. She gave a worried look, and Ethan wondered what was sitting uneasy on her pretty little head this time.
    She nodded at Seth.
    Without Maggie to distract him, Seth had turned to sit, staring at the fire as if it held the meaning of life.
    Ethan put his chair beside Audra’s, wondering what his little brother was so interested in. “Seth?”
    There was no response. No sign Seth had heard Ethan say his name from a couple of feet away.
    â€œSeth!”
    No reaction.
    Ethan gave Audra a worried look. He reached forward and grabbed Seth’s shoulder. “Seth, what’s wrong?”
    With a shout, Seth whirled and leaped to his feet, stumbling backward almost into the flames. He clawed for a gun that wasn’t there.
    Ethan was mighty glad it wasn’t.
    Seth froze, looked between Ethan and Audra as his eyes focused. “Uh . . . I-I’m sorry, you startled me.”
    Ethan wondered just how dangerous Seth could be. “What were you thinking about?”
    Seth shoved both hands deep into his hair, then turned to face the fire. “I . . . I guess it was the war.” Staring hard at the crackling flames, he said, “When fire talks to you, Eth, what do the voices say?”
    Ethan’s throat went dry. “Uh . . . fire can’t talk, Seth.”
    He exchanged a glance with Audra, who gave a tiny shrug.
    â€œSure it can. If you listen real close, it calls to you. In the war we were always burning something. A house, sometimes a whole town. The people would run, the ones we didn’t kill. But the houses would howl like the flames caused them pain. And the fire would laugh, like it was having fun. And sometimes it would call to me, tell me to join the fun.”
    With a short, hard shake of his head, Seth turned from the fire, almost as if he had to wrench his eyes away. “You can’t hear it?”
    Ethan thought maybe there was a right and wrong way to talk to Seth right now, but he’d be switched if he knew what it was. He decided to just tell the truth. “Nope. I think maybe this is a notion you’ve got in your head from being burned so bad when you were a kid. Then the war made it worse. The idea that fire is alive and wants you is coming from inside your head. Fire’s just fire. It doesn’t have a voice.”
    â€œI wonder if you’re right.” The tension left Seth and he sank back to the floor, turning away from the fire this time, resting his back along the warm stones of the hearth. “Reckon I oughta give up trying to make sense of what it says to me, huh?”
    â€œMight as well.” Ethan leaned back in his chair, trying to act calm.
    Maggie squirmed to get off Ethan’s lap, and he left her to toddle around. Seth kept a watchful eye until the little girl started to yawn and finally tugged on Ethan’s leg to be picked up. She fell asleep in his arms. Seth fell asleep leaning against the fireplace. Ethan nudged him with the toe of his boot and told him to go up to bed.
    When Seth’s bedroom door clicked shut, Ethan said, “He might be dangerous, Audra. We need to take care.”
    â€œHow do we do that?”
    â€œI think I’ll start by putting the guns somewhere kinda hard to get at, so he won’t ever grab one in a bad moment.”
    â€œGood idea.”Audra swallowed hard. “Take Maggie up to bed. You might as well get to sleep, too. I’ll nurse Lily and hopefully she’ll settle for a few hours.”
    Ethan went upstairs, but he had no plans to sleep while his wife was up working. That was his last thought before the long day caught up with him.
    Ethan jerked awake when Audra came slipping into the room. “How late is it?” he asked.
    Audra