Free THIEF: Part 2 by Kimberly Malone Page B

Emma’s eye.  “…when she’s the one who started that fire, who almost got Emma killed?”  Curiosity lets in a little sympathy, for that poor little girl, caught in the middle of it all.
                  Silas doesn’t answer.  He starts to turn away, but I grab his shoulder and turn him back.  There are tears in his eyes, and my stomach drops.
                  “Oh, my God.”  I let go of him.  “Abby didn’t start that fire.  You did.”
                  He stares at the tile floor, shifting his jaw and cracking his knuckles with his thumbs, his telltale signs he’s about to lose it.  But even as the tears start to trickle down his face, he keeps doing it.  Like maybe he can reverse it all, erase my words from the air.
                  But he can’t.  They’re here.  And the longer he stays silent, the truer they become.
                  “You could have told me,” I whisper, but I know why he didn’t.  When he told me about Emma’s eye, all I could picture was a monster.  Even now, I can’t match that monster to the Silas I know.
                  “I wanted to kill myself, after that.”  Silas’s voice is grainy, strained.  He puts his back to the doorway and slides down to the tile, forearms resting on his knees.  He looks at his feet instead of me, even when I sit beside him.
                  “They told us Emma wouldn’t live,” he continues.  “The only thing that kept me going was her.  As long as she was still alive, no matter what the doctors said would happen, I had hope.  Enough to keep me from suicide, at least.
                  “I wanted to donate one of my eyes, but I wasn’t a match, and her socket was too damaged, anyway.  In the end…all they could do was graft the burns and hope for the best.”  He bites his lip.  “Abby filed for divorce the day Emma moved out of the ICU.”
                  I reach out and touch his knee.  It’s all I can do, but he seems grateful; he closes his hand over mine and looks at me.  “For a little while, I started getting wasted again, even worse than before.  Just trying to deal with it, I guess.  Then one afternoon, on my way to visit Emma, I….”  He takes a breath.  “…I got a DUI.”
                  His pause is long enough to warrant a question, so I say the only thing I can think of: “Did you go to jail?”
                  He shakes his head and looks away again.  “Suspended license for a little while, suspended jail time.  And…hours.”
                  “Hours?” I ask, and it translates itself for me.  “You mean…community service?”
                  Silas shifts his jaw again.  “Yeah.  A hundred hours.  At Fox Ridge.”
                  My hand tenses, but I will myself to leave it on his knee.  “So you aren’t a counselor?”
                  “I’m a volunteer, now,” he admits.  “When my service ended, I started doing summers there so I could see Emma.  Actually, I planned that part—started stuffing Abby’s mailbox with the camp brochures, knowing she’d want to send Emma.  I had to keep it a secret that I worked there, though.  Thankfully, Emma understood that.  But Abby just found out, 'cause of this locket thing.”  He hitches his thumb back to the door.  “That’s why she was here.  To slap a restraining order on me.  But, to answer your real question…no.  I’m not a counselor.  I lied.”
                  “But your money…your rent on the apartment…I don’t understand.”  I look around the kitchen.  The place isn’t glamorous, but it’s certainly more than a jobless volunteer could afford.
                  “I get by with odd jobs the rest of the year,” he explains.  “Not much, but enough so I can take summers off and see Emma.”  He lets