Bentley Little: The Burning

The Williams place might have burned to the ground, but its influence lingered.

She needed the money and was happy to be employed. Leslie had offered to find her something to do at the restaurant, but that would have been a make-work pity position, and she would have accepted it only as a last resort. Her mother had said she and Skylar could remain at her place indefinitely-and the three of them had been getting along extremely well, particularly with the moratorium on drinking-but the quarters were still too close, the situation too stressful, and she needed to assert her independence and try to start a new life.

It was Ned's wife who'd found a place for her and Skylar to live. Lottie Tanner was in real estate, and though Jolene hadn't said anything to her, Ned must have, and she located a cabin for rent just down the road from Leslie's place. There was only one bedroom, but the cabin was furnished and the sofa in the living room folded out into a bed. Rent was cheap. It was not someplace where they could live permanently, but in the interim, while she decided what came next, they had a roof over their heads.

Even more important than her finding a place of their own, the divorce had become finalized.

It should have been messy, should have been complicated-she and Frank had a son together, after all-but Frank had been neither as intransigent nor as vindictive as she'd expected him to be, and they'd been able to do it all through lawyers, without meeting face-to-face. He'd even agreed to pay child support and waive all visitation rights, although this was not something she'd shared with Skylar. Jolene suspected he had someone else on the line already, and in a way she was glad. It took his focus off them, left them free to move on.

The truth was, Jolene hadn't discussed much of anything with Skylar since ... since everything had happened. Her son had always been somewhat close-mouthed and reserved, keeping his emotions to himself, but she'd prided herself on the way she shared everything with him, kept him in the loop, maintained a close relationship despite the circumstances of their lives and his natural disposition. In the wake of their experience at the Williams house, however, she'd found it easier to avoid certain subjects, to not talk about what they really should talk about. She felt guilty about that, but she still couldn't bring herself to break the pattern.

Three o'clock rolled around. Jolene got off work, picked up Skylar at school, and the two of them stopped by her mother's for a moment to say hi and pick up some hamburger casserole for dinner before heading home. Inside, the cabin was quiet, too quiet, and Jolene quickly turned on the

television so they'd have some background noise.

Skylar shut it off.

She looked at him in surprise.

"Mom ..." He started to say something, then changed his mind, looked down at the floor.

"What is it?" she prodded gently.

"It's ... I just ..." He shook his head.

Jolene walked over, put a hand on his shoulder. "Tell me."

Skylar looked up at her. "Are we going to stay here?" he asked. "Are we going to live here for good?"

Jolene had not made a decision about that, although she realized almost instantly that the decision should not be hers alone. These were important years for Skylar, and after all that he'd endured, he deserved to know what they were going to do, where they were going to live. He needed some stability in his life. "Do you ... ?" she began, but in his eyes she already saw the answer to the question she was about to ask. She thought about her mother and Leslie and her job and Skylar's school, where he'd already made a little friend. "Yes," she told him, meeting his gaze. "We are."

He hugged her tight, and she could tell from the way he hung on, pressing his face into her side, that he was crying. "Good," he said, and beneath the tears she heard gratitude. "Good."

Flagstaff, Arizona

What surprised Angela most was that she didn't go back home.

Despite everything that had happened, despite all that she'd gone through, all the horror she'd seen, she didn't go running back to Mommy and Daddy, didn't retreat into the safety of the familiar and the bosom of her family. She stayed and toughed it out.

Like an adult.

Although she'd decided to remain and finish out the semester, after that, anything was possible. She could stay; she could return home; she could transfer somewhere else. For now, though, the discipline and stability were necessary for her to work through all that she'd experienced.

Angela sat in the quad, watching students pass by. She and Derek both had a free period right now, but neither of them had made an effort to meet up with each other. It was an anniversary of sorts, two months since the night at Promontory Point, but it was not something that either of them felt like celebrating or even talking about.

She was surprised that the two of them hadn't become an item. In movies and books, males and females thrown together under traumatic circumstances invariably became lovers, although it was impossible to say how long those liaisons lasted after the credits rolled or the book covers closed. In the back of her mind, she'd half expected that to happen to them. Conditioning, she supposed. But instead the opposite seemed to have occurred. After it was all over and done, the intimacy they'd shared seemed to pull them apart rather than draw them together. They were awkward with each other now, both seemingly embarrassed by the sides of themselves they'd exposed, and while neither of them had dropped Dr. Welkes' class, they made no effort to sit together.

Derek definitely bore the brunt of the fallout. Dealing with what had happened was tough on her, but he'd lost his mother and his brother. She'd endured nothing compared with that. He was relying more on his old friends than her for support, Angela knew, and as guilty as it made her feel, she was grateful for that. She wasn't ready to be sucked into that emotional hurricane right now, and she didn't think she was strong enough herself to be someone else's rock.

Who knew, though? In time ...

For now she was content to attend classes, study and continue on with the responsibilities of being a full-time student.

Not that there weren't scars.

Occasionally, she found herself glancing around at the other young men and women in her classes, in the library, in the student union, at the pub, wondering if they had been in the crowd cheering the lynching of Edna Wong. She tried to tell herself that even if they had, it was the mold that had made them do that, that had affected their behavior. But the ethos of personal responsibility was too strong within her, and it was impossible for her to completely absolve those who had murdered Edna.

Which was one reason why she thought she might transfer to another college next semester.

Maybe somewhere in New Mexico.

She liked the Southwest.

Her cell phone rang, and Angela answered it. "Hello?"

It was her mother. She was grateful to hear her mom's voice, and it felt relaxing and comforting to speak Spanish, despite the looks of disapproval it engendered on the faces of some of the passersby. They talked for a while, about nothing really; then her mom said she had to make lunch, and hung up.

Angela put the phone back in her purse and looked up. The campus seemed to be getting foggy. Buildings on the opposite end of the quad were light and getting lighter, bulky outlines behind a sheer wall of white.

It wasn't fog. It was snow.

She still was not used to seeing snow fall-in Southern California, snow was something that happened up in the mountains, not on the ground-and as the flakes became larger and more obvious, as the under-dressed students around her began hurrying toward their indoor destinations, she stood there smiling up at the sky, the snow hitting her face and melting against the warmth of her skin.