Officer Hale stood immediately.
“Mr. Turner.”
Richard lifted his hands, almost amused.
“What? We are all adults here.”
Fire Marshal Briggs’s voice was flat.
“You’re under arrest, Mr. Turner.”
Vivian began to sob.
Richard laughed once.
It was a terrible sound.
“You think my son’s guilt and some old tape will hold?”
Officer Hale took his wrist.
“No. But the fuel residue reports, the recovered purchase logs, the archived insurance complaints, and your wife’s statement may help.”
Richard turned to Vivian.
The room changed.
His face finally broke.
Not with grief.
With betrayal.
“You talked?”
Vivian looked at Caleb’s messages spread across the table.
Then at me.
Then at my mother.
Her voice was thin.
“He was nine,” she whispered. “He came home with his hands burned and smoke in his hair. He kept saying, ‘I got her out, I got her out.’ You told him if he spoke, they would take him away. You made him believe saving her was a crime.”
