Page 25 of Up In Smoke

Every time she thought she'd shaken the past off, something grabbed at her. That many children in that short of a time period? It gave Ivy the shudders, but she hid it. Smiling at the woman, she told herself that she didn’t know that Layla’s situation was the same as her family’s and that she couldn't undo what was already done.

That was a lesson she'd learned a long time ago. So she pointed them to the children's section, saying hello to the two little ones as they passed by. They offered cute gap-toothed smiles, and she felt her heart melt. She was where she belonged.

After she’d told Luke as much as she could last night, he’d put his arm around her for just a moment, she'd sunk into him, feeling that at last she had a rock she could lean on.

But he wasn't her rock. He might not even be a rock at all. He was possibly harboring the arsonist who’d tried to kill her. And he'd never quite answered the question of whether whoever it was—brother or not—might come back and try to kill her again.

She'd been tense for weeks, wondering if she might be in danger. And she hated how the fire had taken everything from her. Ivy had to remind herself it hadn’t gotten everything, and the arsonist hadn’t gottenher.

She'd vowed the night she left home that she was the sole owner of everything she had—her belongings, her reputation, her feelings. Leaning on Luke felt both wonderful and unsteady, as though she were handing over some of her precious control. She knew it was okay to do it, she knew that what she felt was an overreaction from her past … but that didn’t make doing itfeelokay.

A little tired, and more than a good bit overwhelmed, Ivy went through the usual motions of her job. She wasn't up for designing extra reading contests or finding new ways to reach into the community today. She could run this library with her eyes closed, and at eleven, when her part timer came in, Ivy turned over the front desk. Some of the volunteers just shelved books, but everyone who was paid knew how to do every job. When Ivy had had to miss shifts from the fire, it had paid off. There was a certain pride in being indispensable, but there was more pride in knowing that she’d set the library up to run without her.

“Thanks Shannon, I'm going to be in the back. I'm heading into the record room to do some reorganizing.” She didn't like to lie, so she would do some organizing while she was there. But most of what she did was dig through some old files and city records.

Half an hour later, she had the names and birthdates of Luke Hernandez and his brothers. Santiago, was the oldest, Luke second, then Mario, then Carlos. There had been a fifth boy born to Mrs. Hernandez—a small, premature baby that had been named Jose—who, according to the records Ivy found just a little while later, had been stillborn.

Luke hadn’t mentioned a fifth Hernandez son. Had he not known about his little brother? Or was it one of those things the family just didn’t talk about? This was that odd kind of knowledge that she couldn't unknow. She’d found it through researching him and so she couldn't quite ask him about it either, not without admitting that she'd been digging into his family’s past.

Tiago had a string of arrest records, mostly petty things. He’d shoplifted, gotten into bar fights, and he'd once stolen a car. At one point, one of the townspeople had pressed charges for him breaking in and stealing about ten thousand dollars from the man’s home. Tiago had served some time for that one but had been released for good behavior—it seemed he was always getting released for good behavior—a few years ago.

Ivy sat back, her pencil clattering to the note paper. She hadn't wanted to take notes on her phone. It was linked to the internet. And she knew from her own searches on her family, that so many things that people thought were private could be uploaded from any connected device.

For example, the minister who’d assaulted her little sisters was eventually jailed. One of the other families in the church had decided that their daughters weren't, in fact, worthless and had pressed charges. The minister had been convicted mostly based on the testimony of the children and text messages he’d sent someone about what he was doing.

For Ivy, reading everything about the story of the other family had been both cathartic and deeply painful. She’d found more than one newspaper article where they'd spoken up about how their group—they’d named no names—had kicked them out for turning on the beloved minister. At least he was gone, and hopefully her own sisters were now safe.

Ivy also had to remind herself that children grew. And her younger sister was older than she remembered. Older than she'd been herself when that minister had come to town.

Ivy also had two younger siblings that she'd never met. It turned out her mother had been pregnant the night her father had kicked her out. Had her mother felt trapped and unable to protect Ivy because she'd had another baby on the way? Or had she simply believed as her husband did?

Ivy had long ago come to terms with the fact that she would probably never know the answers. She didn't crave them anymore, but it sure would have been nice to get them someday.

And it would be nice to know more about Luke's brothers. In fact, sheneededto know.

Tiago didn't strike her as an arsonist. Despite the chain of arrests, none of them were for fire. None were for things like animal torture or assaults or the other things that arsonists and serial killers tended to start with.

Her fire had clearly been premeditated, not reactionary or spur of the moment in any way.

In each case, there was accelerant at the scene. In the three she could find out about the accelerant was different. One had been gasoline. Another had been oil from the garage of the shop that had burned and a third had been kerosene. In all cases, the place had been ringed with accelerant and set ablaze.

Did Mario Hernandez have the wherewithal to do this? He’d been ready to fight Luke for street drugs the other day. Ivy would imagine a drug addict would make mistakes and not be able to elude the investigators for long. The fourth brother, the baby, Carlos, wasn’t even in town. He lived in between Lincoln and Omaha and was climbing his way up some ladder at a car dealership.

Had Kane and Taggart not found this information? They were the arson investigators. Should she take it to them? Tell them about the Hernandez boys?

If someone died and she hadn’t done everything she could, would she be able to live with herself? But what did she even tell them? That Luke had a suspicion … one that she thought didn’t hold much water on deeper inspection.

Honestly, his family was a mess. But his didn’t hold a candle to hers, so who was she to turn them in when even Luke didn’t have a strong suspicion?

She pushed away the old birth and death records and pulled up articles. Maybe she could learn something by looking up accelerants or arson. While it was fascinating, it didn’t do much for her suspicions or Luke’s. Not until the third article sparked another thought in her mind. The problem with arsonists, was they knew how to set fires and not get caught.

Her heart caught as she thought of Luke.

As the writer pointed out: who knew how to set fires better than a fireman?

Chapter Twenty

Luke let his spoon drop, splatting into his bowl of cereal and sending milk everywhere.

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