Free White Picket Fences by Susan Meissner Page B

across his chest and reached for his cup. He took a sip and waited.
    “Chase never mentioned the fire again.” Amanda gazed at the warmly hued boughs of the tree Neil had made. “Not once. We moved here when Delcey was three months old, and Chase just never brought it up again. We were sure he had forgotten it. And we were okay with that because it was such a sad day. Neil and I didn’t see any point in reminding him of what happenedto Alyssa. He’s always seemed a little cautious around fire… but no more than other kids I know. And like I said, he never mentioned the fire again, so we didn’t either.”
    “I suppose I can understand that,” Gary said vaguely.
    Amanda turned back to face him. “Now I’m not so sure we were right.”
    “Right about what?”
    She lowered her voice as if divulging a secret she didn’t want the walls to hear. “This weekend at a church picnic, I saw Chase standing in front of a barbecue grill. Flames were shooting out. It was like he was in a trance. He looked like he was talking to the fire, like he was whispering to it. He had the oddest look on his face. I swear he was having a conversation with the fire. There was nothing normal or explainable about it.”
    Gary’s brow puckered. “Does Chase know you saw him? Did you talk to him?”
    “When I went over to him, he’d already started to walk away. I asked him a question and he seemed fine.”
    “You asked him a question?”
    “I asked him if he knew where Tally was. It was a perfectly reasonable question to ask. And he gave me a perfectly reasonable answer.”
    Gary said nothing. He appeared deep in thought.
    “I told Neil about it. I told him I thought perhaps Chase does remember the fire. But he thinks I’m jumping to conclusions, that there’s a rational explanation for what I saw. He says we’d know if Chase had memories of the fire, especially disturbing ones.”
    Gary rubbed his neck. “Well, I suppose that’s probably true.But why guess? Why don’t you just ask Chase if he remembers it?”
    “Neil doesn’t want to. He says that if we drag this out now, we could unearth something that’s best left buried. Neil doesn’t want to mess with Chase’s future by digging up a past he doesn’t even remember. He made me promise I wouldn’t say anything to Chase about it.”
    Gary leaned back in his chair. “To be honest, I can’t think of a whole lot of things that are best left buried. Maybe you and Neil should go see a psychologist together and talk about what you should do… and maybe about what you should’ve done.”
    A wisp of regret spread across her face. “You think we should have asked Chase about it a long time ago.”
    He shrugged. “I just think if you had kept the line of communication open from the beginning, even when he stopped talking about it, you wouldn’t be having this conversation with me. Chase would know he’d survived a fire where a baby died because he would’ve always known. And I don’t get why you and Neil are afraid this would be too hard for him to handle. He’s nearly an adult. Does he have emotional problems? Is he depressed? Is he deathly afraid of fire?”
    Amanda was about to say no to all three questions when a thought slammed into her: Chase always closed his eyes when he blew out his birthday candles. Delcey—and every other kid she could think of—made a wish with eyes closed but would open them wide to blow out the candles.
    Not Chase.
    He always wished with his eyes open and then closed his eyes tight to snuff out the flames.

twelve
    C hase and Tally stood in a swath of late afternoon sunlight as Neil backed the borrowed pickup into the driveway. Next to them, two solid-cherry bookcases glistened.
    “Why is he giving these away?” Tally asked, touching the shelf nearest her and sliding an index finger across its smooth finish.
    “Somebody at La Vista asked him to make them for a new library, so he did,” Chase answered. “People are always asking him to