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TRIAL BY
FIRE

TRIAL BY
FIRE

NORAH MCCLINTOCK

O R C A   B O O K   P U B L I S H E R S

To Eli, for so many opportunities.

CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

ONE

“Riley!” Aunt Ginny thundered. “Didn’t I ask you to break down these boxes?”

I poked my head out the kitchen door and found Aunt Ginny in the middle of the veranda. Except for a narrow pathway from the door to the steps, it was filled with empty cardboard boxes and twists of newspaper that I had used to pack fragile items like dishes. In my defense, when it came time to move, I was the one who’d done the packing—all of it, including Aunt Ginny’s bedroom, which, by definition, included Aunt Ginny’s most personal items. She was too busy finishing up the paperwork on her open cases to help me. Then, when we got here, I did most of the unpacking. I hadn’t got rid of the boxes yet, but it was on my list.

“Take care of it before I get back from work, will you?” Aunt Ginny said before trotting across the yard to her car. I surveyed the cardboard graveyard that was the back porch. It had never bothered me. I had spent most of my life moving around, especially when I was living with my dad’s dad, my grandpa Jimmy, we were often on the road with his band. But then Jimmy died and I had to go to live with relatives I’d never even met. My mom died when I was a baby. My dad? He turned into Albert Schweitzer, and if you don’t know who that is, maybe this is a good time to look it up. Dad’s a medical doctor with an international charity, and he spends almost all of his time overseas, usually in places that are too dangerous for a kid. He spent a lot of time in Darfur. Now he’s managed to get funding to set up a hospital in a remote area of Liberia. He emails me when he can.

Going to live with Aunt Ginny (my mom’s sister) after Jimmy died was tough. But it was made a little easier by getting to know Grandpa Dan, Ginny’s dad. The two of them, plus my uncles Ben and Vince, were just starting to feel like a real family to me when Aunt Ginny got a job offer she felt she couldn’t refuse, even though it meant another move for me, this time to a small town.

So now here we were, just the two of us, in a place where we knew no one and no one knew us.

Look on the bright side, Riley, I told myself. There’s always a bright side; it just isn’t always what you expect. That’s what Jimmy used to say. One of the things anyway.

And there was a bright side.

My new room.

So when Aunt Ginny left, even though I’d intended to do what she’d asked, I decided the boxes could wait. Besides, the evening seemed to stretch endlessly ahead of me. There was plenty of time. I would break down the boxes and stack them neatly after I took another look at my room.

I loved it. It was huge—three times larger than Aunt Ginny’s study in our old place, where I’d slept on a pullout bed for more than a year. My new room contained a brand-new actual double bed (with head-and footboards, a huge improvement over the creaky old hide-a-bed in Aunt Ginny’s cramped second-bedroom-office) and offered a spectacular view of the rolling meadows and farmland surrounding the rambling Victorian farmhouse Aunt Ginny had rented. It also had high ceilings and gleaming hardwood floors. I was entranced by everything about it, except the color. The walls were a dull and grimy shade of off-white, like cream left out so long that it had crusted over. I’d cajoled Aunt Ginny into buying me some sunny-yellow paint. My plan was to start painting tonight. Maybe even finish painting tonight. Aunt Ginny wouldn’t be back until morning. And it was summer. There was no school to get up for. I could paint until dawn, if I wanted to.

I pried the lid off one of the paint cans, dipped in a brush and applied a thick streak of yellow. It looked glorious, like the sun at noon, like daffodils, like summer. It didn’t take long for me to forget about the boxes, and begin to transform my poor Cinderella walls into the fair maiden who steals the prince’s heart. I didn’t stop until I had finished one whole wall, and I paused then only because I was dripping with sweat despite the gentle breeze that I felt whenever I stepped in front of my open window. I was thirsty too. I went downstairs to get a drink.

I stood at the kitchen sink, gazing out the window while I ran the water until it got cold. There was an eerie brightness in the sky over Mr. Goran’s place next door. I filled my glass and took it out onto the back porch to see what was going on.

Flames were shooting up into the sky over Mr. Goran’s property. It looked like his barn was on fire.

I raced back into the kitchen, grabbed the phone and dialed 9-1-1. I reported what I had seen and gave the address and location as calmly as I could. “On Route 30, west of Moorebridge.”

I slammed down the phone and raced outside again. Of all the places for a fire to break out, why did it have to be Mr. Goran’s farm?

Mr. Goran! Was he home? Was he awake? Did he even know his barn was on fire? Was he out there now, trying to battle the blaze? Or was he frozen to the spot, flooded with memories and nightmares, unable to move?

I ran across the lawn, scrambled over the fence and raced toward the blaze, yelling Mr. Goran’s name the whole way.

Lights were on in his house, but if he heard me shouting, he didn’t answer. When I hammered on his front door, it swung open. I called him again.

No answer.

If the door was unlocked, that had to mean Mr. Goran was somewhere on the property. He had to be at the barn. I ran back to the barnyard and ground to a halt when I heard the scream. It was coming from the barn. I heard something else too. Banging.

“Mr. Goran?” I shouted. “Mr. Goran, where are you?”

“Help! Help me!”

The voice was coming from inside the barn. I raced to the door and tried to pull it open, but the latch handle had been heated to scorching by the fire. I yelped and yanked my hand back. It had been burned. I wound the bottom of my T-shirt around my other hand and tried again. The latch wouldn’t give. It was stuck.

“Help!” Mr. Goran’s voice was high and panicky.

I looked around wildly and saw a pitchfork leaning against the side of a shed. I could use it to pry the door open.

Whenever I think about what happened next, I see it as if I’m watching myself in a movie. I hear screams. I’m halfway across the yard, focused on the barn and the flames and what I am about to do. I’m praying that I’ll be able to do it because I know I’m Mr. Goran’s only hope of escape. I run toward the barn. Then there is a deafening sound—an explosion—and pieces of wood and scraps of other things (I don’t even know what they are) fly past me. Then something wallops me, and I am blown backward off my feet. It’s a weird sensation. I see the barn getting farther from me instead of closer. When I land, the air is knocked out of me, and everything goes black.

I have no idea how long it is before I open my eyes. When I do, everything is blurry, but even so, I realize I am no longer alone. The yard is filled with people. One of them leans over me.

“Are you hurt?”

I try hard to focus. Why is this person shouting at me? And why does it sound like his voice is coming from the end of a long tunnel?

“Mr. Goran,” I manage to say.

“I’m a firefighter. What’s your name?”

“Did you get Mr. Goran out?”

“Mr. Goran? The owner?”

“Did he get out of the barn?”

Then someone else shouts. “There’s someone in there!” At least, I think that’s what he says. The voice sounds like it’s coming from the next county. Everything gets blurrier and then fades to black again.

The next thing I know, someone is poking at me. I hear voices. Someone lifts me. I have a sensation of speed. Then nothing. Then bright lights and someone talking loudly, asking my name. More blurriness. More double vision. More blackness.

Then Aunt Ginny. And a massive headache.

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“…concussion.” That was the first word I heard when I woke up again. It didn’t come from Aunt Ginny. It was spoken by a man, probably the doctor in the white coat I saw when I opened my eyes. He was talking to Aunt Ginny against the backdrop of a sunny window. I had slept the night away.

“We’d like to keep her here today,” the doctor said. “When she goes home, she’ll need to be monitored for a few days, just to make sure.”

Just to make sure of what?

Aunt Ginny nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”

The doctor left, and Aunt Ginny sank onto a chair beside my bed. I’d never seen her look so worried.

“You’re lucky to be alive, Riley,” she said in a trembling voice. That surprised me. Aunt Ginny prided herself on being a strong person, and for the most part, that was exactly the image she conveyed. But she didn’t sound so strong now. “Another inch or two and your head would have struck the corner of that cement.” Cement? What cement?

“You could have died, Riley.” Her face was pale. “What happened?”

“I was trying to get into the barn.” I remembered that. But it was hard to recall anything else except why I was trying to get in there. I closed my eyes and tried to think. “There was an explosion. It blew me away like I was a piece of paper.”

When I opened my eyes, Aunt Ginny’s face was somber. And was that a tear gathering in the corner of her eye?

“I should have let you stay with Dan.” She meant Grandpa Dan, her father, but she never referred to him that way. She never called him Dad or Father either. It was a long story. “He’s always around. You wouldn’t have been alone. It’s not too late to go back, Riley. School doesn’t start for a couple of weeks.”

“I’m fine, Aunt Ginny,” I said, even though at that moment it felt like a gang of monkeys was playing Whack-a-Mole inside my skull. “I knew what I was doing when I said I wanted to come with you.” Aunt Ginny had given me a choice: stay with Grandpa Dan and my uncles in the city, or move with her to the rural community where she had finally gotten a job as a police detective. “Mr. Goran was in the barn when I got there, Aunt Ginny. Is he okay?”

“He’s upstairs, in Intensive Care. I’m not sure how he is.”

“Can you find out? He was screaming.” I shuddered when I remembered the terror in his voice. It was the most hideous sound I had ever heard. “He got locked in somehow.”

Aunt Ginny frowned. “What do you mean, locked in?”

I struggled to recall. “The barn door closes from the outside with a latch. The latch was stuck. I was going to get something to try to pry it open with when the explosion happened.”

“I’ll look into it. But right now you need to rest. And I have to find someone to take care of you.”

“I don’t need taking care of. I’m fine.” Except for the fact that suddenly I felt like throwing up.

“You have a concussion,” Aunt Ginny said. “There’s no way I’m leaving you on your own while I’m at work. What if something were to go wrong? What if you fell asleep and didn’t wake up? What if you had a seizure or convulsions? What if…?”

“Aunt Ginny, you’re scaring me.”

“Good. That’s why you need someone with you.” She sounded like her old self again—brisk, in charge, matter-of-fact Aunt Ginny didn’t believe in sugar-coating anything. Not at work or at home. “If anything had happened to you, you’d have been in for big trouble, young lady, and I mean it. Now get some rest. I’ll be back in a while.”

“Find out how Mr. Goran is,” I called after her.

“Rest.”

I tried to, but it wasn’t easy. I kept hearing Mr. Goran’s screams. And I couldn’t shake Aunt Ginny’s words. Another inch or two…

TWO

The next day they tested my memory, my balance and my coordination. And they warned me. Boy, did they warn me! Take it easy. Don’t do any strenuous physical activity. If anything feels off, tell someone. If your headaches come back, tell someone. If you feel dizzy, if you lose your balance, if you feel sadder than usual, if you…

“What about Mr. Goran?” I asked the minute Aunt Ginny appeared. She had something behind her back, and I was curious about it. But first things first.

“What about you?” Aunt Ginny said. “How are you feeling?”

“That depends. Can I go home?”

“They’re releasing you tomorrow morning.” She produced an overnight bag with a great flourish and handed it to me. “I found someone to stay with you while I’m at work. She’s also going to help get us unpacked.”

I groaned and started to protest again. I felt fine.

“You either have someone staying with you while I’m at work, or I’ll go and find that doctor again and make him keep you here.”

Sometimes I could find a way around Aunt Ginny, and sometimes I couldn’t. The stiff-jawed, sharply focused, cop-with-perp attitude she’d adopted as she insisted on a babysitter for me told me that she was dug in. There was no way she was going to budge, no matter what I said. I had no choice but to relent.

“Okay. But just for a few days, right?”

“Right,” Aunt Ginny said. “Assuming you’re okay.”

I knew I would be. “So what’s going on with Mr. Goran?”

Aunt Ginny’s stern expression morphed into weariness, and she sank down onto the room’s only chair. “He’s in critical condition. He was badly burned, Riley.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

She seemed to struggle before finding an answer. “They don’t know.”

That didn’t sound good.

“I didn’t do what you told me.” I made myself spit out the words. I’d been thinking about them ever since I woke up. “You told me to clean up the porch, but I didn’t do it.”

“Clearly,” she said. “I still can’t remember what color the floor is.” She peered at me. “What are you trying to tell me, Riley?”

“I started painting my room instead.” But she already knew that too. How could she have failed to notice? She’d packed me a bag of clothes. “I only went downstairs because it was hot and I was thirsty. That’s when I saw the fire. What if I hadn’t been thirsty? What if there’d been a stronger breeze? I might not have gone downstairs at all. Mr. Goran might have burned to death in his barn.”

I was shaking by then. I thought about my grandpa Jimmy. Boy, did I ever miss him! He wasn’t the most educated guy in the world—he never finished high school—but he was one of the smartest. He read a lot and traveled a lot, and he knew more about how life worked than anyone I had ever met. Jimmy used to say that all of life, every single second of it, was balanced as if it were a penny about to fall one way or the other, heads or tails, fortune or folly, failure or success, door number one or door number two. He was so right. As soon as Aunt Ginny had left the house that night, I was that penny, and I’d fallen on the side of not doing what I’d been told to do.

Aunt Ginny shook her head. “They couldn’t save the barn. They said that was obvious as soon as they arrived. After they got Mr. Goran out, they focused on making sure the fire didn’t spread. They said barn fires are fast, especially in old places like Mr. Goran’s, where the wooden barns have been standing for generations. It’s quite possible that had you tidied up the porch and then gone upstairs afterwards, you wouldn’t have seen the fire at all, certainly not from your bedroom. You wouldn’t have been able to help.”

It was nice of her to say that. But possible doesn’t mean probable. Ever.

“What if you’re wrong, Aunt Ginny? What if I’d seen it right from the beginning and called 9-1-1 right away? I was the only person who could have called. There’s no one else close by.”

“Mr. Goran is extremely lucky that you saw what was happening and called for help, that’s for sure.” She glanced at her watch and stood up. I knew what that meant. “The fire wasn’t your fault, Riley. The fact that you happened to see it when you did? There’s no doubt that’s given him a fighting chance to live. And that’s the end of the story as far as you’re concerned. Now get some rest, and I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning.”

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A small TV hung from a metal arm near the side of my bed. I reached for the remote on my bedside table and turned it on in time to catch the local news. I had to sit through the international stuff first, which I didn’t mind. Jimmy had liked to keep up on world events, and I had sort of caught the bug. I wished sometimes that everything didn’t sound so dire: another budget crisis, warlords and rebel groups in various countries in Africa (including the one where my father was), tensions with Russia, and the ongoing struggle between the West and extreme religious fundamentalism in the Middle East.

The network broadcast ended and a local anchor appeared to deliver the news closer to home: a proposed wind farm, which a lot of people were against; the shortage of school-bus drivers, which was going to be a huge issue in another month when school started; and rumors that a cannery in the area might be closing, which would eliminate a ready market for local farmers, who depended on the extra cash they received for selling their beans, peas, carrots and corn. Finally, there it was, news of the fire.

“Arson cause of Moorebridge barn fire,” the pre-ad promo blared over a shot of the smoldering remains of the barn. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I had been in that barn the afternoon of the fire. I’d gone over to tell Mr. Goran how terrific his salad veggies had been, and he’d shown me around. Now it was just a pile of burned-out beams and wet ash.

Six commercials later, a reporter shoved a microphone in the face of Fire Marshal Dave Brewster, who reported his finding that the Moorebridge barn fire had been deliberately set and that the matter was in the hands of the Moore County Police Service, where Aunt Ginny worked. I wondered if she was working the case. Even if she wasn’t, she probably knew something about it. The reporter wrapped up by noting that the police were so far not commenting on the case.

I shut off the TV.

Arson.

Someone had deliberately set fire to Mr. Goran’s barn. But who? And why his barn? He seemed like such a nice man. He was also our closest and only visible neighbor, which probably explained why he was the first to welcome us to our new house. He’d driven over in his red pickup truck as soon as the moving van had finished unloading everything Aunt Ginny and I owned. He’d brought us a basket of fruits and vegetables that he’d grown himself. He didn’t stay, even though Aunt Ginny offered iced tea.

But he dropped by again first thing the next morning with flats of flowers and plants and spent the whole day grooming the overgrown flower beds at the front of the house and transplanting what he’d brought from his own garden. I went out and helped him. He spoke in a soft, accented voice. He was from Kurdistan, in Turkey, he said, where he had grown up on his father’s grain farm. He told me all about life there—until Aunt Ginny called me inside.

“Here,” she said, thrusting a small can of lighter fluid and a box of matches at me. “Go light the barbecue. I’m going to make hamburgers for lunch. It’s too hot to cook inside. Besides, I can’t find anything.”

“You’re going to make hamburgers?” I stared at her in disbelief.

“For your information, I do know how to cook.”

Information? It was more like breaking news flash.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “So I sort of know how to cook.”

Who did she think she was kidding? Aunt Ginny knew how to open packages of food and heat up their contents. She knew how to boil water. She was quite capable of brewing coffee. But actually cooking?

“In other words,” I said, “you know how to barbecue.”

She did her best to look dignified when she said, “Yes.”

Our barbecue was an ancient, kettle-like metal dome on skinny legs. It had been left by the previous tenant. I used the Jimmy method to light it: toss in some briquettes, squirt on some lighter fluid and throw a lit match on top of it all.

Flames shot up with a mighty swoosh. Mr. Goran turned at the sound and let out a shout, startling me. I jumped back involuntarily, bumping into the barbecue. It toppled over, strewing lit briquettes onto the dry brown grass at the edge of the patio. The grass burst into flames. Mr. Goran looked horror-stricken. He shouted in a language I didn’t understand as I ran for the hose and doused the fire.

Mr. Goran’s face had drained of color. His hand clutched his heart. His knees buckled. I turned off the hose and ran to grab him.

“Are you all right, Mr. Goran?”

He didn’t seem to hear me. I led him to a lawn chair and sat him down.

“Are you hurt, Mr. Goran?”

“The fire.” He was breathing heavily.

“I’m sorry. It was my fault. I should have checked that the barbecue wasn’t so close to the edge of the patio.”

“No, no, the fault is mine,” he insisted. And then he told me about his father.

Mr. Goran’s father had planned for Mr. Goran to take over the family farm one day, just as Mr. Goran’s father had taken it over from his father. That plan changed in the late 1980s when war brought death and destruction to the region of Kurdistan where they lived. Mr. Goran’s father was sympathetic to the rebels who were demanding an autonomous region for the Kurds. Because of that, government forces torched their farm. Mr. Goran’s father died trying to save his few animals from the fire. Mr. Goran was badly burned. “I have scars on my back,” he said. “Always I had nightmares, always about burning up.” Mr. Goran’s mother died soon after, a victim of starvation in the war that followed. Eventually the rebels were crushed. Mr. Goran and many others had to flee.

Aunt Ginny appeared with hamburger patties on a plate. She stopped short when she saw the barbecue, on its side on the burned grass and drenched in water, and turned to me for an explanation.

“Accident,” I said. “Sorry. I’ll have it ready to go again in a jiffy.”