“Is it Theo, though?” Gabriel asked. “I mean, he used to burn down sheds and shit, and then the buildings next to them would catch. He wouldn’t go into the actual building.”
“What happened?” I asked. “Did he burn a bunch of sheds in Greece? Is that why Silas and his family were in trouble?”
“It’s more than that,” Luke said. He turned the car onto the main road, and pushed the accelerator on the car. “But let’s drive around the other churches and see if there’s anything within walking distance.”
Gabriel started picking out other churches using his phone, and they never went back to explain what had happened with Theo.
The next church was occupied; there were cars in the parking lot.
We circled around it, but Luke and Gabriel was sure Theo wouldn’t start a fire in an occupied building.
We spent several hours in the car, driving between different churches.
It got darker, and then it got late. I struggled to stay awake after a while, but before long, I was stretching out in the back as Luke made wide sweeps around Silas’s neighborhood.
I was thinking about what to do if we found Theo. I meant to close my eyes for only a minute.
School Lessons
I was woken up by someone lifting me out of the car. I curled into him, smelling vanilla. I was put into a bed, and then was deeply asleep again.
I woke with the jolt of a dream that threatened to take me down. It was a rush, like I’d been holding my breath and I realized at the last minute I’d been doing so. When I started breathing again, I was so focused on the fact that I’d stopped breathing that I forgot what the dream was about. Had I really stopped breathing? Was I just startled? It was hard to focus.
I looked around and recognized I was at Nathan’s house. Nathan was nearby, dead asleep. His clock read four in the morning. It took me a moment to realize Luke and Gabriel must have brought me. They hadn’t stayed, but they might have been out still looking for Theo.
Where was Theo? Did they find him? I hadn’t realized how exhausted I’d been.
I moved slowly, trying not to wake up Nathan. I crawled out of bed. After waking up like that, I wanted to avoid sleep. I found some clothes in the closet and my phone on the nightstand and taking both, tiptoed out of the room.
I stood in the hall for a moment. The bathroom door was open. There were a few boxes of tile on the floor, waiting to be put in.
The shower wasn’t installed yet. The Academy work and school issues were slowing things like home repair down. In a way, I was grateful for things slowing it down, hoping they might change their minds about the tub.
Quietly, I shuffled through the house to the other side, and entered Nathan’s dad’s bedroom.
It was quiet and dark and I turned on the lamp near the bed. On the waterbed was a basket with towels and other bathroom items they’d moved from the destroyed bathroom. I grabbed one of the towels and tiptoed over to the second bathroom, looking in.
I drew a bath. I’d forgotten to collect a razor, and found a men’s disposable in a package. I felt guilty for borrowing it. It made me realize I might need to somehow find a way to get to the store to buy things I needed. Now that I got some money from working at the diner, I could probably get things I didn’t want to have to ask the guys for.
I spent a long time soaking in the tub, almost falling asleep again. I got out, dried off, and drained the tub. I put on a skirt, and a soft T-shirt, and then over top, I put on a thin sweater. I hovered in the bathroom for a long time, knowing it was still early and with no idea what to do.
I ended up sitting on the sofa and tapping at my cell phone. I thought about downloading a free game. I didn’t want to fall asleep again.
“Peanut?”
I sat up straight, rubbing at my eyes. They blurred from staring at the bright phone. I couldn’t exactly see where Nathan was in the darkness while my eyes adjusted, but I turned to where I thought I heard his voice. “Yeah?”
“You okay?” he asked, his voice gruff and deep. He shuffled around the couch and sat next to me. “Can’t sleep?”
“I guess not,” I said, and stretched, putting the phone in my lap.
He reached out, putting a hand on my leg, warming my thigh with his palm. He turned, picking his leg up to face me on the couch. “Come on,” he said.
I shifted a little, and with him guiding me, I ended up curled up next to him on the couch, facing him. His arm was under my head, his legs mixed up with mine. I had to put my hands on his chest. He bent his and kissed the top of my head.
He held me like that for several minutes, with his face pressed up against me, and his body entwined with mine. He had on boxers, no shirt, and his body heat amplified through me.
“Did they find Theo?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Nathan said. “He’s at home now. North’s there with Silas. They grilled him a bit, but he wouldn’t say where he’s been.”
“Do you really think he set the fires?”
“I don’t know,” Nathan said quietly. “I really hope he didn’t.”
“Everyone else seems to want to get rid of him,” I said quietly. “Why? Why are they so worried? I heard he used to burn sheds, not churches.”
He buried his face into my shoulder, his lips brushing against the corner of my neck. “It was an accident,” he said even quieter than before, almost a whisper, but his voice was so deep that it carried. “I want to believe it was.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was really bad back then, from what I’ve heard.” His palm flattened against my side, rubbing warmly as he snuggled into me. “He was mixed in with a group that used to pick on him pretty hard. He had to be what...well Silas was ten at the time, so he had to be thirteen? Maybe a little older? Anyway, kids out there are pretty tough on each other, and he was a skinny kid trying to prove himself. When he was alone, he set fires. It was like something he felt he could control. Something he knew how to do and in his own mind, he was brave enough to start.”
“And he started with sheds?”
“He set fire to their own shed and burned it down. Then he went to hide in other sheds and do the same thing. It went on for months, but his parents didn’t make the connection that it was him. The neighbors didn’t know who it was, either.”
I sighed heavily. “What changed? What happened?”
“From what I know,” Nathan said. “One day he was at a local church’s shed. This one was really close to the church. He was lighting fires, and for some reason, one of the chemicals kept in the shed had spread out, seeping to the other side of the church underneath the confession booth things.” Nathan tucked his head tighter into my shoulder and then moved like he was shaking his head. “I wasn’t even there and I can’t imagine...”
The way he’d said it had me stiffening and my heart and breath froze, almost afraid to move and hear the next part. “And it burned the church?”
“Yeah,” Nathan said. “And the priest inside the confession booth...and Theo’s and Silas’s mother.”
A shudder swept through me, and suddenly I was in Greece, trying to picture a young Silas learning this for the first time, that his brother had set a fire and had caused the death of their mother.
“He didn’t know,” Nathan said. “Theo was a messed up kid, but he never would have done that to his own mom. It took a while to sort out what happened, but it was Silas who found out it was Theo. Theo tried to kill himself two weeks later with some pills and Silas saved his life. After that, Theo confessed what happened.”
“Mr. Blackbourne went to get them because North asked him to? How did North know?”
“They’d been friends and kept in touch. Silas called him after he found out. North was in his own trouble back then. When Mr. Blackbourne found out, though, North refused any help until someone could help fix Silas. He might have been just in time, too. They were all pretty bad off, and Theo...I mean it’s fucked up. Silas was messed up bad, too. He hated everyone. He
didn’t want to move from home. He wanted Theo dead and regretted saving his life. North was the one that insisted he come over, and bring Theo and Charlie with him.”
They escaped Greece to save themselves from destroying each other, and North and Mr. Blackbourne made it all possible. I thought of the leather chair, the one that was practically brand new and Charlie’s worn down one. Those couldn’t have been brought from Greece, could they? But he had reserved a spot for his dead wife, and still occasionally sought out a hand that wasn’t there.
In addition, Silas and Charlie lived with Theo, who had killed her. They probably fought the urge to hate and blame Theo every time they talked to him. What did they have to go through in order to be able to live with each other like that?
If Theo had been messed up and setting fires, and felt so bad about what happened, was that really Theo’s fault? I suppose now I wanted to fix it. “Can’t we do something?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we help Theo somehow?”
“We’re tracking him now. We need to keep a constant visual on him. North and Silas took this night shift. Victor I think is staying behind from school today. I’ll replace him tonight. You might end up at Kota’s house.”