Free White Picket Fences by Susan Meissner Page A

arms across his chest. “Blowing what out of proportion?”
    Amanda exhaled heavily. “Okay. First, no one else knows about what I’m going to tell you. It happened a long time ago when we lived in Orange County. And we just don’t talk about it.”
    Gary’s facial features softened with concern. His eyes encouraged her to go on.
    “When Chase was four, our baby-sitter’s son lit a cigarette in his upstairs bedroom. His room caught fire. The upstairs smoke alarm wasn’t working and the fire spread. Chase was asleep with two other children in the master bedroom. He and one of the other kids managed to crawl out into the hall, and they were rescued. But there was a baby in a crib… Nobody could get to her.”
    Gary shook his head. “That’s too bad.”
    “I know. It was terrible. Chase was taken to a hospital for smoke inhalation, and he was fine physically after they gave him oxygen. Neil got to him while he was still in the ER. I was pregnant with Delcey and at the doctor’s office when all this was happening. By the time I got to the hospital, the doctors were ready to send Chase home.”
    “I’m glad he was okay.”
    “Oh my goodness, so were we. I felt so bad for the parents of that baby. Her name was Alyssa.” She paused for a moment. Even after all these years, she still ached for the baby’s parents.
    Gary looked thoughtful. “So had the baby-sitter’s kid leftthe cigarette burning in his room? I mean, if he was upstairs already, why didn’t he save that little girl?”
    “He told the police he was outside on the balcony with his cigarette—so his mother wouldn’t smell it—when he noticed that his curtains were on fire and he couldn’t get back in. Personally, I think he was lying. I think he fell asleep on his bed with that cigarette, his room caught fire, and he just got scared and hightailed it off his balcony. I think he wasn’t thinking about anybody but himself.”
    “And where was the baby-sitter? How come she couldn’t get to her?”
    “Carol was out front with two older kids, talking with the woman who lived across the street. She told the police she had taken the older kids outside so the younger ones could rest, and that she just went across the street for a few minutes so the kids could see the kittens in the woman’s garage. Carol’s next-door neighbor was the first to notice smoke and flames pouring out of the upstairs windows. By the time Carol turned around, the whole upstairs was on fire. Carol told me later she had bought the new batteries for the smoke alarms. They were sitting right there on her kitchen counter.”
    “You wonder how she could forget to take care of something like that.”
    “I don’t know. She was a nice person, never yelled, and Chase liked her. I liked her. She wasn’t what I would’ve called irresponsible. She was devastated.”
    “No doubt.”
    “Afterward, Chase kept asking about the baby. He kept askingme where Alyssa was and telling us his clothes smelled like smoke. For days and days afterward. The neighbor who rescued him heard the baby crying. So the boys had to have heard her too.”
    “What did you tell him? About the baby.”
    Amanda shrugged. “What can you tell a four-year-old? We told him she was with Jesus.”
    “So sad.”
    “The thing is, a couple of months afterward, Chase just stopped talking about it. We thought it was a little strange, so we asked a child psychologist about it, and she told us kids that young have a different grasp of reality than adults do. She gave us a list of behaviors that would indicate Chase needed help processing what he’d been through. But he never exhibited any of those behaviors. It was like one day he just started living as if it had never happened.”
    “Well, he was pretty young.”
    “True. It was weird, though. After Delcey was born, he called her Alyssa a couple times, and each time he did, I didn’t know what to say. But after a while he stopped.”
    Gary unfolded his arms from