“This is one too many burning houses, Sheriff,” Charlie Fritz, one of her deputies said. “The fire department wants us out of here right away. Let’s go.”

Elsbeth’s face flashed in Katie’s mind. Had she just given up and chosen to die with her husband? No matter what she’d been a party to, Katie didn’t want her to be dead. Too many were dead already.

When they were near the road, they looked back to see the beautiful old Victorian lit up from its bowels, turning the black sky orange, spewing flames upward. Its old wood exploded in shards everywhere. It was an incredible sight, as long as you were away from the devastation.

Katie stood next to Miles, aware that his arm was holding her close, for warmth, for comfort, to make the world real again, to right the madness. He said, “Reverend McCamy went into that sex room and pulled a bottle full of gasoline out of one of the drawers beneath that marble altar. He lit the wick and threw it at me. It hit the bed, and the flames shot up in an instant.”

“What happened to your face?”

Miles touched his fingers to the slash along the side of his face, from his temple to his jaw. “He pulled a whip off the wall and slashed me with it.”

“And you shot him?”

“I tried to grab the whip away from him, but he fought me. I could hear the fire, knew time was growing short, and then he tried to grab the gun.

“I swear to you, Katie, there was madness pouring out of him, and a frenzy that seemed to unleash all the strength inside of him. He was grinning and moaning at the same time. I felt my blood freeze.

“And then there you were with a pillow over your face.”

“You never saw Elsbeth.”

He shook his head. “I heard her voice, but no, I didn’t see her.”

“She preferred to die with that man rather than survive,” Katie said, shaking her head. She looked up at Miles and shook her head again. “I think we’re going to need a paramedic.” She began to examine the cut and changed her mind. “It doesn’t look at all deep, but no paramedics this time. I want to take you to the hospital.”

Wade was standing next to them now. “The firemen are already bitching at all this work, Sheriff. Now you want to piss off the paramedics?”

Miles laughed, he threw back his head and really laughed. He looked up at the burning house. “It’s over,” he said, “it’s finally over. It seems like it’s been going on forever-and it’s been only days. Amazing.”

Katie nodded and smiled at him. She grabbed Miles Kettering and hugged him to her.

34

A t ten o’clock Thursday morning the rain had lightened to a thick gray mist, mixing into the low-lying fog that crept up the sides of the mountains, blanketing the land.

“Do you really think it’s over?”

Keely pursed her lips, looked doubtful. “I don’t know, but I sure hope so. Last night was real scary, Sam.”

Sam sighed, thought that every night since early last Friday morning had been scary, and leaned in more closely. “Yeah, I know, but your mom and my dad, they took care of us.” He sighed again, deeply. “But since everything is over now, you know what that means, Keely.”

“Yeah, I know. You’re gonna have to leave and never come back.”

“I’ll tell Papa that I don’t want to leave, okay?”

“Do you think he’ll let you stay here and live with Mama and me?”

“I want him to stay, too,” Sam said, and pulled Minna’s soft wool blanket more closely around both him and Keely because it was getting colder.

“If your papa doesn’t want to stay, what are you going to do, Sam?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said finally and he fisted his eyes. “I’m only six. Nobody listens to me.”

“They listen to you even less when you’re five. I heard my grandma talking to Linnie just a while ago. She told Linnie that your papa and my mama should get married and that would be that.”

“What would be that?”

“Well, I guess it means that if you leave, I get to leave with you.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good.”

“Your father would be my steppapa.”

“Yeah, and Katie would be my stepmama. That’s weird.”

“We could fight and stuff and no one could say anything about it.” Keely punched his arm, gave him a huge grin, then settled her head on his shoulder.

They were sitting in Minna’s porch swing. Since Sam’s legs weren’t long enough to reach the porch, he’d taken a walking stick out of the umbrella stand that had belonged to Keely’s grandfather. Every few minutes, he shoved the stick against the wooden floor to make the swing go back and forth.

“I don’t want you to go away, Sam.”

“I know and I’ve been thinking, Keely. Papa isn’t stupid. He’ll marry your mom.”

Keely said, “You’re six years old. You don’t know if your dad’s stupid or not. My mama says this is the most beautiful place in the world. Even if your dad was stupid, he could be happy here. I know, tell him we’ll take him rafting on the Big Pigeon River. That’s in the Smokies.”

“Papa’s been rafting before. I’ll tell him, but you know, Keely, he’s got that big helicopter business in Virginia. Since those bad men took me he hasn’t gotten much work done.”

Keely pondered this for a while. “I know, tell him that Mama is the best rafter in Tennessee and she’ll teach him. Oh, and tell him that Sam Houston taught in a log schoolhouse when he was eighteen. I’ll bet your dad will be impressed. Tell him we’ll take him there. Tell him he can e-mail to his business.”

“Keely, if my papa and your mama got married, what would your name be?”

Keely didn’t have an answer to that. Sam shoved the walking stick against the porch floor and the swing swung out widely. They laughed and hung on.

Children’s laughter, Katie thought, there was nothing like it. She and Miles were standing just inside the screened door. Neither said a word and they didn’t look at each other. So this was why her mom suggested they take a look at the beautiful hazy fog that was climbing the sides of the mountains.

Miles said quietly as he stepped back, “They look like a Norman Rockwell painting.”

It was true, with their heads pressed together, the swing gently going back and forth, but any words Katie would have said stuck in her throat. She nodded and looked toward the mountains, blurred and softened by the fog, like fine smoke. Her mom had told her that looking at the mountains on a morning like this was like reading without reading glasses.

“Even in the winter, when it’s so cold your toes are curling under and the mountains look weighted down with snow, they’re still so beautiful it makes you want to cry just looking at them. And down at Gatlinburg-”

“Katie, what the kids were talking about…”

She turned to face him then. The emergency room doctor hadn’t stitched Miles’s face, just pressed the skin together using Steri-strips. She’d told him to rub on vitamin E and there wouldn’t be a scar on his handsome face, unless he wanted to look dangerous, and she’d waggled her eyebrows at him. Katie said, “I guess this means you don’t want me to tell you about the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.”

“Not right this minute, no.”

“Okay. You mean us getting married?”

“Yes,” he said. “Maybe we should give it some thought.”

Katie had firmly believed, up until, say, just four minutes ago, that she’d rather be incontinent than get married again. But now?

“Katie? Miles? I brought some cinnamon nut bread for the kids.”

Her mother had excellent timing, Katie thought. She always had, particularly when there’d been horny boys around during high school. She’d given them enough time to overhear the kids talking, enough time to think about it, even say it out loud. They were both smiling when they turned to see Minna coming with a platter that smelled delicious from twenty feet away.

“I’m starving,” Miles said, surprised. “I hadn’t realized.”