Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
I take my phone out to call her—only to get an incoming call at the same time—from Bryce. I hit the red button and attempt to call Anneliese, but her phone goes straight to voice mail.
Bryce calls again.
Once more, I ignore it.
I’ll call him back in a sec.
I try Anneliese a second time, getting her voice mail once again.
“Hey,” I say after the tone. “I know we didn’t leave off on the best note earlier, but I have good news. Great news, actually. Call me when you get this.”
I hang up, only to get a third call from Bryce.
I start my truck, back out of my spot, and answer, putting him on speaker.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Your house is on fire.” He speaks so quickly that the words jumble together into one big, long word.
“What’d you say?” I ask, certain I misheard him.
“Your house is on fire, Lachlan,” he says, clearer this time.
The stoplight ahead flicks to yellow, but I slam my foot into the gas and make it through.
“Where’s Anneliese?” My knuckles turn white against the steering wheel, and I hold my breath as I wait for him to answer.
“She’s with Berlin,” he says.
“I’m on my way.” I end the call and blast through another yellow light. The closer I get, the stronger the scent of burning wood. Up ahead, the crystal-blue sky is filled with ominous black-gray clouds of smoke.
By the time I get there, there are so many cars and emergency vehicles lined up and down the street that I have to park almost a block away. Sprinting toward the scene, I scan the crowd of neighbors, onlookers, and hometown heroes for Anneliese.
The heat from the fire stretches far, and I stop to glance at the house, but only for a moment. Flames shoot from every busted window, licking up the siding and spreading across the roofline. A large portion of the house has completely collapsed. For the longest time, this was all I ever wanted, and now that it’s happening, all I want is to find her and make sure she’s safe.
“Lachlan!” a voice I don’t recognize shouts from behind. I turn to follow it, spotting Berlin flagging me down. “She’s over here.”
I find Anneliese crouched on a curb, her elbows on her knees, staring ahead with tear-streaked cheeks. The instant she spots me, she scrambles up and throws her arms around me, squeezing so tight I can’t breathe.
“I was so worried you were inside,” she says, her words muffled against my neck. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for going off on you earlier.”
Berlin watches us from a careful distance. I take it the two of them patched things up, but now’s not the time to discuss that whole situation.
She peels herself off me, turning her attention back to the inferno across the street.
“I can’t believe it’s gone,” she says.
“Me either.” I wrap my arms around her waist, holding her from behind as we watch the place go down.
“I don’t understand how this happened,” she says.
“Two hundred grand up in smoke, just like that.”
She turns back. “Two hundred grand?”
Reaching into my back pocket, I show her Callie’s market analysis.
“What’s this?” she asks.
“When you were on your walk, I went to see how much we could get for this house if we sold it. After seeing the number on that bank statement, I decided to sell the house so you could get your investment back. It was the right thing to do.”
Anneliese presses the paper against her chest, turning back to face me. “You were going to do that? For me?”
I brush a strand of tear-dampened hair from her cheek. We exchange a look that says so much without saying a damn thing.
The fire roars, lighting the early-evening sky.
But all I see is her.
An older man shuffles past on the sidewalk with his wife, giving her a nudge before pointing to the fire and saying, “This one’s going to be a slow burn. These big houses always take a while. All that wood, it’s all kindling now.”
“They seem to have it pretty well under control, Herb,” his wife says.
“It’s the hot spots they really have to look for,” he says. “That’s a lot of property to search.”
The couple continues on, and Berlin keeps back, chatting on the phone with someone.
“You want to sit down and watch it burn?” Anneliese asks.
“Might as well, right?”
She slides her hand inside mine, leads me to the curb where she was perched a few minutes ago, and we take a seat. I stretch my arm around her shoulders, and she leans in, resting her head on my chest.
The fire is both wondrous and terrifying: a fitting demise for a house that was equally beautiful and ugly, filled with good memories and evil.
Now it no longer exists.
Everything is just . . . gone.
We stay until most of the crew clears out, we’ve said our goodbyes to Berlin, I’ve assured Lynnette half a dozen times that we’re safe and sound, and we’ve had a chance to speak to both a police lieutenant and a fire chief. It isn’t until the last fire truck leaves that we discover Anneliese’s Prius—which was parked in the driveway—did not survive the fire.