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Raleigh shakes her head. “Forget it.”
When the house comes into view, I slow the car and watch her face for a reaction, but she doesn’t seem terribly bothered. I have to admit, the damage doesn’t look as bad as I imagined it would be last night. Only a quarter of the house was heavily charred. I pull into the driveway and step out, circling the house to where I first broke Clara’s window and carried her outside. Raleigh and Iris follow in silence.
Back here, things are much worse. The outer wall of the hallway bathroom is gone, and part of the roof has collapsed into it. Everything I can see through the missing wall is blackened, strips of paint and plaster peeling off the walls and carpet melted away. Charred wood litters the back and side yards, and glass crunches with the gravel under my shoes. Raleigh steps fearlessly over a pile of debris and pokes her head inside the shell of her room, still chewing on her straw. Iris stays close by her side, ready to yank her out of the house if a single beam creaks.
I take a look in the bathroom where the fire started. Sure enough, I can see the darker trails forming arcs along the floor and walls where the gasoline was poured. Rage simmers under my ribs, but nothing shows on my face. I was in this house last night, I was in the midst of the smoke and fire. But only now that I’m looking at this blatant evidence of arson in the cold light of morning does it really hit me.
Someone tried to kill my little sister. The last of my blood. We might never have had the best relationship, but I’ll be damned if someone hurts her and gets away with it.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” I say, and my voice echoes strangely through the hall. I look over my shoulder and find Raleigh frowning back at me. I don’t raise my voice, and now that I have, I’ve caught her attention.
“Clara showed up around midnight,” she says, like the words are teeth being pulled. “I asked her what the hell she was doing here, and she said that she had nowhere else to go. She just had to get out of Morgan’s house. She asked me if she could stay here for a day or two, just so she could figure out where to go next and buy a plane ticket or something.”
“And you let her in,” I say, incredulous.
“What was I supposed to-”
“Call me,” I cut in. “Close the door in her face, barricade yourself in your room, and call me. I’m five minutes away for a reason!”
“She was my best friend!” Raleigh shrieks. “Mine, not yours!”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“I needed to be the one to talk to her.”
“Fine,” I say, taking a second to control my voice. I can keep my cool during armed negotiations and hostage situations, but my little sister is the one who’ll get under my skin if I’m not careful. “Then tell me what you talked about.”
“Worried I spilled family secrets to the enemy?”
“This is not about you,” I remind her, but she just rolls her eyes.
“It is though, isn’t it? You’ve never forgiven me for being her friend and not knowing what was coming. Morgan turned half our people against us and set the house on fire on his way out, and I’m the one you’ve always blamed.”
I grit my teeth. Leave it to Raleigh to make one of the worst experiences of our lives about her. “You were a child. Of course I don’t blame you.”
“Well I’m not a child now,” Raleigh challenges. “So why are you still so goddamn suspicious?”
“Because your house was set on fire hours after she showed up,” I say evenly, gesturing to the blackened skeleton around us. “And I want to know who did it, and why, and what I need to do about it now.”
Raleigh turns and throws her drink into the charred depths of her room. What’s left of the slush and whipped cream splatters over melted carpet. Iris looks mildly disapproving, but stays quiet.
“She didn’t tell me anything, Thomas,” Raleigh spits, her voice low. Her face twists into a snarl, the way it does when she’s about to cry and refuses to show that weakness. “Not back then, and not last night. I asked if Morgan did anything to make her want to leave, and she wouldn’t say. She’s never had a bad thing to say about anyone, you know? I used to think that made her such a good person, but now-” Her voice weakens. “Now I know it just means you can never be sure what she really thinks of you.”
She levels her glare at me, and despite the tremble in her voice, her eyes are perfectly dry. In her own way, Raleigh has a poker face just as good as mine. Instead of pain, instead of fear, she’ll only ever show you her rage.
And it’s pain she’s feeling now, I’m sure. Pain that she doesn’t know her best friend anymore, and that maybe she never did. I also wonder if there isn’t humiliation mixed into that too, that once again, she didn’t see a betrayal coming. She gave Clara Speare a second chance last night, and Clara threw it in her face.
“If you’re so afraid she’s a threat, then send her back to her uncle,” Raleigh says. “If you don’t, the truce is over for sure. There’s no point keeping her hostage. She won’t give you any dirt on him.”
I frown. I would’ve thought she’d argue for me to let Clara go her own way.
When I don’t respond, Raleigh scoffs and turns away. “I’m gonna see if any of my winter clothes survived,” she says, moving toward the undamaged part of the house. Iris meets my eyes, asking without speaking if I want to continue the conversation, but I shake my head. I’ve reached the edge of Raleigh’s temper.
Iris follows my sister into the house, and I glance over the bathroom again before moving on to the room I found Clara in. There’s a trail of darker burns leading from the bathroom to the doorway, which makes me frown. If Clara set the fire, maybe she planned to get out through the window of this room. But then the window became stuck, trapping her inside? It doesn’t quite add up. Did her accomplice lock her inside the room?
The door and half the interior wall are gone now, and there’s very little left of the nightstand and bed. I check under it- if Clara came here pretending to run away, she would have brought a bag. There’s nothing there, so I check the closet. There’s a backpack there, but it’s almost entirely melted. I curse and grab it anyway. I’ll see if it’ll give up any clues back at the estate.
While Iris and Raleigh salvage what they can from Raleigh’s belongings, I return to the car. I left Clara alone to make a decision about whether or not she should give up her uncle’s secrets. Thanks to Raleigh’s meddling, she might be thinking she doesn’t have to make a choice after all.
