I'd Give Anything(64)

“That must’ve been hard. Thinking he’d done it,” said Daniel.

There was Daniel, reaching for compassion first thing.

“Thank you. It was awful. You know, when I first heard him confess it to my mother—or throw it in her face—I didn’t believe it. I knew instantly that it wasn’t true. As reckless and angry as Trevor could be, he wouldn’t be so horribly destructive. He just didn’t have it in him. But I’d heard it. I heard his voice saying it. And then I think what I did was, once I’d heard it, without meaning to or wanting to, I constructed a version of Trevor inside my head that matched what he said he’d done. And, honestly, I didn’t have to search very hard for memories of Trevor that tipped him from being just an angry, rebellious kid to someone who could be responsible for a man dying. He had a lot of rage toward my mother back then. He would go very, very far, too far, just to try to hurt her.”

“But not that far,” said Daniel. His face was closed, unreadable.

“No,” I said. “Not that far.”

Then I said, “Although the person who set the fire probably didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. It was nighttime; the building was empty; everyone was out watching the game. It might have been a prank that got out of control. Teenagers tend not to think things all the way through. All the neuroscience stuff we know now about teenaged brains not being all the way wired together; teenagers don’t always foresee consequences.”

After a pause, Daniel’s eyes met mine, and he said, “That would have been a pretty big fire for a prank.”

“Yes, but maybe it started off small. Maybe the theater curtains were exceptionally flammable or something.”

“The building might not have been empty,” said Daniel. “There could’ve been a custodian inside. Or a thief trying to jimmy open lockers, or a drunk kid trying to find a bathroom. There were a lot of drunk kids at that game.”

“I remember.”

Daniel’s gray gaze held steady. “Including me.”

“Oh.”

“When the police questioned me the first time, they said witnesses had seen a person matching my description hanging around behind the groundskeeper’s shed, drinking. And I told them that that person matched my description because that person was me.”

“I see.”

Daniel took another sip of water. “So now I guess you’re going to ask me if I did it, aren’t you?”

I looked around at Daniel’s kitchen, at the specific elements of his specific life: chili-pepper-red enamel tea kettle; thick white diner mugs hanging from hooks beneath his kitchen cabinets; a glass bowl filled with lemons and limes; a white doctor’s coat slung over a chair; in the corner, Mose’s round bed with Mose sitting in it; and on the wall next to the refrigerator, a bulletin board pinned with postcards and photos. I could see a girl in almost all of the photos. Georgia, in every phase of childhood. I couldn’t make out her features, but I could tell, to my surprise, that she was as buttery blond as Mose.

I sat up straight, folded my hands on the tabletop, and shook my head.

“No,” I said.

Daniel blinked. “Wait. No? No what?”

“I’m not going to ask you if you set the fire. On my way to your house, in the name of finding and facing the truth, no matter what, I thought I would. I thought it would be a failure of bravery not to ask. But just now I realized that not asking wouldn’t be a failure of anything. So, no, I’m not going to ask you if you set the fire.”

“You mean not right now?”

“I mean never. I mean I think it’s time I trusted my gut.”

“And what does your gut say?”

“That you hand me dogs when I’m crying, and, when Mag is sitting on the ground, you help her up every single time. That you have the most open, unguarded smile of anyone I’ve ever met, except for Avery. That you are an all-in listener. That I can say anything to you, even that I’m not sure whether or not I am sad about the death of my own mother, and you won’t judge. That talking to you feels like coming home. That you have a dog bed in every room of your house, and I know I haven’t seen every room, but I don’t have to have in order to know that you do. That your face fills with easy, graceful, lit-up love when you talk about your mom and dad. That you came back here, to this place that hurt you, that’s full of bad memories, the place you had escaped from for what could have been forever, because your daughter missed having conversations with you.”

A smile ghosted around the edges of Daniel’s mouth. “Your gut says all that?”

“So I don’t need to ask because I know you. I know you’re a person who grants others the full measure of their humanity. And I know you couldn’t set a fire that had the potential to hurt innocent people. Not now, not twenty years ago. Not ever.”

Daniel tipped backward in his chair and let out a huge, windy sigh that ended in a hoot.

“Thank God you didn’t ask,” he said. “You would’ve been within your rights. No one could’ve blamed you. Not even I could’ve really. But I have been asked if I was responsible for that terrible, killing heartbreak of a fire so many times by so many people, and I have said no so many times, and if you had asked me—”

He ran his hands through his hair and smiled at me.