Chapter 5 - Fire in the Walls
The lighter fell toward the gasoline-soaked rug.
I kicked it before it landed.
It skidded beneath Dad’s desk, still burning.
Fire raced along the edge of the carpet.
Ryan grabbed a wool blanket from the chair and tried to smother it, but the gasoline ignited faster than he could move. Flames climbed the curtains.
“Get out!” he shouted.
Tessa ran toward the hallway.
I caught her arm.
She swung at me, her ring cutting my cheek. The ledger slipped from my hands.
Tessa reached for it.
Ryan shoved her away and grabbed the book.
For one insane second, he held it above the flames.
“Destroy it!” Tessa screamed.
Ryan stared at the ledger containing proof of his crimes.
Then he looked at me.
Smoke rolled across the ceiling.
He made his decision.
He tucked the ledger under his shirt.
We stumbled into the hallway as the study windows shattered behind us. Heat blasted through the doorway.
Tessa raced downstairs.
I stopped at the landing.
“Mom’s photographs.”
“What?” Ryan coughed.
“The envelope in her bathroom.”
“Leave it!”
I ran anyway.
The bedroom had begun filling with smoke drifting through the ventilation system. I found the hidden envelope, but when I turned, part of the ceiling collapsed outside the door.
The hallway was blocked.
I shut myself in the bathroom, soaked towels in the sink, and pressed one beneath the door.
Below, sirens approached.
I opened the window. The ground was two stories beneath me.
Smoke thickened.
Then Ryan appeared outside on the roof of the porch.
He had climbed from another window.
“Give me your hand!”
I hesitated.
“Meredith, now!”
The bathroom door began to blacken from the heat.
I climbed through the window.
Ryan pulled me onto the sloping roof. We moved carefully toward a ladder firefighters had raised against the porch.
As we descended, flames erupted through the roof.
Dad’s study disappeared inside them.
On the lawn, Tessa spoke rapidly to a police officer. She had removed her gasoline-stained blouse and wore only a camisole. Tears streamed down her face now.
“She attacked us,” Tessa said, pointing at me. “Meredith started the fire.”
I almost admired the speed of her transformation.
Ryan climbed down behind me.
A police officer approached.
“Sir, your wife says—”
“She’s lying,” Ryan said.
Tessa stared at him.
Ryan pulled the blue ledger from beneath his shirt.
“My wife brought gasoline into the study. My sister has a recording.”
Her face became still.
Police separated us.
I gave them my phone, explained the confession, and watched as officers placed Tessa in handcuffs.
“You don’t understand,” she said to Ryan. “Everything I did was for us.”
“No,” he replied. “Everything you did was for yourself.”
She laughed.
“You approved the steel.”
Ryan’s shoulders dropped.
“And he helped cover up a warehouse collapse,” she told the police. “Ask him about the altered inspection reports. Ask him why his father threatened to remove him from the company.”
Ryan did not deny it.
When the ambulance took us to the hospital for smoke inhalation, he sat across from me.
His hands were blackened with soot.
“Did you hurt Mom?” I asked.
He looked down.
“I restrained her.”
“You tied her wrists.”
“She kept trying to leave.”
“You pushed her into the bathtub.”
“She was hitting me.”
“She is seventy-eight years old.”
“I know.”
“Did you drug her?”
“Tessa managed the medication.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
He rubbed his face.
“I knew she was giving Mom extra pills. I told myself it was necessary because she was agitated.”
“You let her do it because confusion made Mom easier to control.”
“Yes.”
The word broke something between us that could never be repaired.
“You forged the power of attorney.”
“Tessa prepared it.”
“And you used it.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know about Northbridge?”
“Not at first.”
“But later?”
“Yes.”
Every answer was quiet. Almost peaceful.
That was Ryan’s gift. He could confess to monstrous things in the tone of a man discussing weather.
“Why didn’t you go to the police when you learned Grant killed Dad?”
“Because Dad’s records would have exposed the defective materials. The company would have collapsed. Hundreds of people would have lost their jobs.”
“You protected yourself.”
“I protected everyone.”
“You always call it protection when you’re deciding who gets hurt.”
He looked through the ambulance windows at the burning house.
“I didn’t want Mom dead.”
“You just needed her frightened, drugged, and legally powerless.”
“I thought once she signed over the shares, Tessa and I could place her somewhere safe.”
“Safe from whom?”
He had no answer.
At the hospital, Claire met us with news. The emergency court had suspended Ryan’s authority. A temporary guardian would be appointed until Mom could select a new representative.
The police listened to my recording.
Tessa’s confession was clear.
She had named Grant Mercer as the person who poisoned Dad.
But before detectives reached his home, Grant disappeared.
His car was found abandoned near the interstate.
Inside the trunk, police discovered hospital scrubs, a stolen identification badge, and an empty insulin package.
Grant had been the man with the syringe.
Mom cried when I told her the house had burned.
“Your father built the study himself.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Did you save the ledger?”
I showed it to her.
She pressed the blue cover against her chest.
“Then we saved what mattered.”
Ryan remained under police guard while being treated for smoke inhalation. Tessa was charged with arson, attempted murder, elder abuse, fraud, and conspiracy.
Yet Grant was still free.
That night, a detective named Samuel Ortiz came to Mom’s room.
“We searched Mr. Mercer’s residence,” he said. “We found passports, cash, and information about your family.”
“What kind of information?” I asked.
“Schedules. Medical records. Photographs.”
He placed one photograph on the table.
It showed me outside my Nashville home.
The date printed at the bottom was six months earlier.
“He’s been watching you,” Ortiz said.
Mom gripped my hand.
“Why?”
May you like
The detective’s expression darkened.
“Because your father mailed something to you before he died, and Mercer believes you still have it.”
