Page 63 of Light of Day
“Nice.”
“Yes. This lets you off the hook, too. No more interview required.” She fired off an answer, then put away her phone and sighed. “I really hate it when Gabby and I are fighting. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, phew. It reminds me of my mother. Do you know that she threw my clothes off the dock once after a fight?”
“Seems wasteful.”
“Yes, especially because she knows I don’t like the ocean. She knew I wouldn’t jump in to save them.”
“You don’t like the ocean?”
“I love looking at it and being around it. I just don’t want to get in it,” she explained. “My friend Ellen dived in and collected almost everything. I still miss my Benetton crop top that I loved.” She went quiet for a moment, as if something had tugged at her memory, but then she shook it off. “Did you catch that ‘feeble-minded’ reference?”
“Yes, I did. Andy must have been talking to someone who knew about the Hennessy stories.”
She nodded in agreement. “We need a list of historical society members. I think someone told him that story to scare him.”
“I’ll get a list asap.” His heart went out to the boy. Who would put such terrifying thoughts in his head?
Heather cracked open the window, letting in fresh evening air. The slightest hint of smoke drifted in. Someone must be roasting marshmallows. “I did a little online research, and back then, anyone who seemed slow was called feeble-minded. That would include neurodiverse people like Andy, even though he’s perfectly intelligent. And you know what else?”
“Shoot.”
“The eugenics movement was popular at that time. The idea was to only allow people with ‘desirable’ genes to reproduce. They wanted anyone who wasn’t quote ‘normal’ to be locked away in an institution so they wouldn’t taint the rest of the gene pool. Very cruel and uninformed, if you ask me.”
He felt the same, and could well imagine how such a threat would affect Andy. “So this younger man at the historical society was scaring him with a version of the Hennessy story and giving him nightmares. What for?”
“I bet he was trying to manipulate Andy. Maybe he intended for him to hurt Gabby, but Andy’s so kindhearted that he tried to rescue her instead.”
That theory actually held up for Luke. Andy did have a kind heart. And he was definitely terrified. “That would also explain why he had such a big meltdown. I was worried that we were the ones who triggered it.”
“Me too,” she admitted. “I went from being furious with him to being worried about him.”
He slowed his truck as they reached his house. Something didn’t look right. He switched off his headlights and crept closer, trying to figure out what had triggered his alarm bells.
“There!” Heather pointed at the east side of his house, where a figure in dark clothing was running across the lawn in the direction of the woods.
At the same moment, a flicker of orange inside the kitchen caught his eye. “Stay here.” He flung open the door and ran at full speed toward his front door, barely getting his keys out in time to unlock the door. Smoke poured from the direction of the kitchen. There was a fire extinguisher just inside the kitchen door, if he could get there before the flames reached it.
He grabbed a blanket off the couch and dashed toward the kitchen. Maybe he could smother the flames before they got too big.
Covering his mouth with one arm, squinting against the smoke, he felt his way toward the fire extinguisher. There it was—thank God. He pulled the trigger and aimed the foam toward the glimmer of orange visible through the plumes of smoke. In a few moments, the fire was out.
His kitchen was a soggy, charred, foam-covered mess. But his house was still standing.
Heather appeared at his elbow. “Are you okay?” she asked, out of breath.
“Yeah. Someone broke in and started a fucking fire.”
She tugged at his arm. “We have to go.”
“I need to clean up this mess?—”
“No. We can do that later. I called the volunteer fire department and the dispatcher told me the fire truck’s at my mom’s café! She said they think it’s arson!”
“Jesus.”
He sorted through options. If he left, his house would be unguarded. The arsonist could come back and finish the job. But Heather needed to get to her mother.
“Hang on, let me grab a few things.”
