PART 2
I slammed my hand against the window as hard as I could.
“WE’RE INSIDE! THERE ARE KIDS IN HERE!” The man jumped back like he’d been shot. He looked up at the window and saw me. His face went white.
He dropped the lighter in the grass and ran.
I grabbed Bo out of his crib. I ran down the hall to Emery’s room.
She was already sitting up. Shoes on. Eyes wide.
“Is it the accident?”
“We’re leaving, baby. Right now. Hold my hand.”
We went out the front door, away from the gasoline, in our pajamas. Bo was crying. Emery didn’t make a sound. She just held my hand and ran, exactly like she’d been told.
I called 911 from the neighbor’s front lawn.
The fire department got there first. They found gasoline soaked into two walls of the house and the back porch. The lighter was in the grass. Unlit.
The fire chief walked over to me afterward.
“Ma’am, if that had caught, with the smoke detectors disabled, I don’t think anyone inside would have gotten out.”
I showed the police the photos I’d taken. The gas cans. The detectors. The insurance policy.
They found the man in the hooded sweatshirt the next morning. He’d left his car parked two blocks away. His name was Wendell Gaskin. He worked part-time at Darrin’s body shop.
He confessed within an hour.
Darrin had offered him five thousand dollars to burn the house down on Saturday night, while “the family was out of town.” Darrin would be camping with friends. He’d have an alibi. The insurance would pay $650,000. Darrin’s debts would disappear.
Then the detective showed me Wendell’s phone.
Friday night, 9:47 p.m. A text from Darrin.
“Still on for tonight. Nobody will be home.”
He knew.
I had told him at dinner. To his face. That the kids and I were staying home.
And he sent that text anyway.
Darrin was arrested at a campsite two hours away on Saturday afternoon. He tried to act shocked.
“My family? Oh my God, are they okay?”
The detective read him his own text message.
He stopped talking.
Darrin was charged with attempted murder, conspiracy to commit arson, and insurance fraud. Wendell was charged with attempted arson and agreed to testify against him.
At trial, Emery testified by video from a separate room. She was so brave. She told the jury about the phone call in the garage. The twenty dollars. The shoes.
“He told me to keep my shoes on so I could run fast,” she said. “But he didn’t tell Mommy. Or Bo.”
The jury was out for three hours.
Darrin was sentenced to twenty-eight years.
I filed for divorce from my sister’s guest room. The insurance company canceled the policy and opened their own fraud investigation.
We live in a little rental house now. Every smoke detector has a fresh battery. I check them on the first of every month. Emery helps. She holds the ladder.
She doesn’t sleep in her shoes anymore.
But she keeps a pair right next to her bed. Laces untied. Just in case.
Last week, she asked me if I was mad at her for keeping the secret for two weeks.
“No, baby,” I said. “You told me. That’s what saved us.”
She thought about it.
“Next time,” she said, “I’ll tell you the first night.”
THE END.
