After the dishes were done, my father opened a bottle of champagne and some sparkling cider for me. We clinked glasses and made toasts to everyone we could think of, including the mailman, even though he wasn’t particularly fond of Duck.

  “What about Heidi’s baby?” I said. “Shouldn’t we toast to her?”

  “Absolutely,” said my father. “Do we know what they’re planning to name her yet?”

  It had been Heidi’s idea to call me Aurora, on account of something Bernadette had once said about the importance of having a promising name.

  “I haven’t heard anything about a name yet,” said my mother. “But if I had to guess, I expect she’ll be called Sophia, after Heidi’s mama.”

  “Maybe she’ll be lucky, like Heidi was,” I said.

  “That would be nice,” my mother agreed.

  My father raised his glass.

  “To baby Sophia,” he said.

  “And to luck,” my mother added.

  “And to Duck!” I said. “Because it rhymes!”

  We clinked glasses, and after a few more toasts my parents were both a little tipsy and I was ready for bed.

  After putting on my nightgown and brushing my teeth, I turned off the light and stared out the window at the moon for a while. I wondered why stars looked round up close and pointy from far away. I wondered how the same sky could look blue during the day and black at night. I wondered if Heidi was nervous about meeting me too, and whether she would remember what color the jelly beans were that she’d eaten before she gave the jar to my mother. Eventually, all that wondering made me sleepy, and I pulled the covers up to my chin and closed my eyes.

  In the middle of the night, Duck started barking. Sometimes he did that when raccoons raided the bird feeders or a skunk wandered into the yard to rummage around in the compost heap, but this was different. He sounded scared.

  “Rory!” my father shouted, bursting into my room. “Come quick! The house is on fire!”

  I jumped out of bed and ran into the hall. Dark smoke was billowing down the attic stairs. Duck was frantic, running back and forth, barking his head off.

  “Cover your mouth and nose with this,” my mother said, handing me a damp washcloth. The light bulb in the fixture above our heads flickered and buzzed, then suddenly burst with a loud pop. I screamed, and my father scooped me up in his arms, like a fish in a net. I clung to him as he carried me through the house while my mother, in a robe and slippers, hurried along behind us, clutching her purse and her jewelry box.

  Down the hill, the firehouse siren had already begun to blare, and soon the trucks arrived, carrying their bleary-eyed crews of volunteers.

  I felt like I was a million miles away, watching the scene from outer space. This couldn’t really be happening. Not to us. The air was thick with smoke, and it looked as if a fire-breathing dragon had crawled into the attic and was shooting bright orange flames through the roof. Our roof. One by one, the windows began to break.

  “Everyone get out okay, Sheriff?” asked one of the firemen. It was Dave Toffle, Lindsey’s father. I noticed he was still wearing pajamas under his rubber coat.

  “Yes,” my father told him. “We’re all here.”

  But when I looked around, I realized he was wrong.

  “Where’s Duck?” I asked.

  When you turn a fire hose on full force and point it at the window of a burning house, as the water goes in, random things come flying out. Clothes, books, shoes, CDs lay scattered across our roof like seashells on a shingle beach. The first thing the firefighters had done was break through the skylights in the attic to draw the smoke and flames upward and away from the rest of the house. The yard quickly became a muddy mess; shards of glass and splintered wood lay everywhere. One of my mother’s straw gardening hats ended up in the bushes somehow, along with a Popsicle stick reindeer ornament I’d made in kindergarten. The boxes of Christmas decorations were all stored up in the attic, along with our summer clothes and a lot of other things, but none of that mattered at the moment.

  “We need to go back inside,” I sobbed. “We have to find Duck.”

  The three of us were standing at the end of the driveway, watching the house burn.

  “Fellas!” my father shouted to a couple of men hurrying by with pickaxes slung over their shoulders. “There might be a dog inside.”

  “His name is Duck!” I called after them. “He’s black with a red collar.”

  They nodded and kept walking.

  When my mother realized I was barefoot, she quickly gave me one of her slippers, and we each balanced on one foot like a pair of flamingos, watching the smoke turn from black to brown and finally to gray. One of the neighbors brought us a couple of blankets and a thermos of hot coffee. My mother handed one blanket to my father and wrapped the other around the two of us like a cocoon. She was shivering, but I was too worried about Duck to notice the cold.

  When the fire was finally out and the firemen began to roll up their hoses, Dave Toffle came over to talk to my father. There was a dark streak of black soot across one of his cheeks, and his eyes were rimmed with red.

  “Them skylights were a lucky break, Sheriff, ’cause we got in quicker than if we’d had to cut a hole. Pretty sure you’re gonna need a new roof though. Chief’s in there right now looking things over.”

  “What about Duck?” I asked anxiously.

  “Duck?”

  “My dog,” I explained. “He’s black with a red collar.”

  Dave Toffle shook his head.

  “We didn’t find any dog,” he said. “Not as far as I know.”

  “Did you check in the kitchen?” I asked, tapping my chin. “That’s where he sleeps. Did you look in my room? He might be there too.”

  Lindsey’s father wiped his cheek, adding another streak of soot to his face.

  “Like I said before, we didn’t find any dog.” There was something not very nice about the way he said it that reminded me of Lindsey.

  “What happens now?” my mother asked, looking forlornly at the house.

  “Here comes Howie,” my father told her. “He’ll know.”

  Howard Strauss was the fire chief of Liberty. He and my father had played high school football together and had remained good friends.

  “Sorry about the mess,” he told us. “Other than the roof, though, you’re pretty lucky. Most of what you’ll have to deal with inside is smoke and water damage.”

  “Any idea what caused the fire?” my father asked.

  “We know it started up in the attic, but as far as the cause goes, we’re going to have to call this one undetermined,” he said.

  “Undetermined?” my mother asked. “Why?”

  “It could have been any of a number of things,” he said. “That bare bulb you had hanging up there might be the culprit. Or could be you had some rotting insulation. Even a mouse chewing through a wire could have caused a spark.”

  I thought about the mouse hole Duck had found.

  “I do need to ask you about something though, Roy,” he went on. “There’s a good-sized burn mark in one corner. Any idea what might have caused that?”

  My father’s face fell.

  “I’m sorry, Rube,” he said, turning to my mother. “I took your chest upstairs last night after you went to bed, to give it another coat of oil. There was a pile of rags in the corner.”

  “Oily rags?” asked Chief Strauss. “That would explain the black smoke.”

  “I should have known better,” my father said, shaking his head. “That was dumb.”

  My mother laid her head on his shoulder.

  “It’s okay, Roy. What matters is that we’re all safe.”

  Had she forgotten about Duck?

  “Can we go back inside now?” I asked. “To look for Duck?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Aurora,” the chief said. “We did our best to find your pup though. The guys looked in every room.”

  “I can find him,” I said. “I know I can.”

  Chief Strauss shook his head.

  “We had to turn off the electric and gas at the junction box. There’s no juice, so it’s pitch-black in there. Not safe.”

  “We have flashlights in the garage,” I said. “I’ll go get one.”

  My mother put her hands on my shoulders to hold me back.

  “How long before it will be safe to go inside, Howie?” she asked. “We’re going to need some clothes, and Roy’s heart medication.”

  I didn’t know he took medicine for his heart.

  “Are you sick, Dad?” I asked.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a murmur. I’ve had it since I was a kid.”

  “I can come by and take a look around first thing in the morning?” Chief Strauss offered. “Daylight’s only a few hours away. We’ll get the roof wrapped up, and if the structure’s sound, you folks can go inside long enough to get what you need. In the meantime, you’ll have to find someplace to stay.”

  “I’m not leaving without Duck,” I insisted.

  “We can stay with Julie and Scott,” my mother said, unwrapping the blanket and releasing me from the cocoon.

  Julie Graham and my mother had been childhood friends. She and her husband, Scott, owned a garage in Youngsville.

  “Darn. I left my phone inside,” my father said, patting the nonexistent pockets of his pajamas.

  “I’ve got mine,” my mother told him, reaching for her purse and the jewelry box, which were sitting nearby on a rock. “I’ll call Julie on the way.”

  “Wait,” I said. “What about Duck? We can’t just leave him here.”

  “We’ll come back and look for him when it’s light out,” my father said to me. “Everyone knows to keep an eye out for him. With all the commotion going on around here he probably got scared and found himself a safe place to hide until the dust settled.”

  “I’ll bet you anything he’s waiting for us on the porch in the morning,” my mother agreed.

  “I’m not leaving without him,” I insisted, but my parents were already heading up the driveway, my mother limping along in her single slipper. I stood for a moment in the moonlight, my nightgown fluttering like a circle of white moths around my knees, until I heard the car start up and my mother calling my name.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I whispered into the cold night air. “I’ll come find you, Duck. I promise.”

  “I gotta go to work now, hon,” Julie whispered in my ear. I cracked open one eye and looked at the clock. It was seven thirty. “The twins are still asleep—they had a late game last night, and Scott’s down at the garage. He doesn’t usually work on Sundays, but it seems like everyone and their uncle needs an oil change all of a sudden. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen if you’re hungry. Mi casa es su casa.”

  I sat bolt upright.

  “Where are my mom and dad?”

  “They’ve gone over to the house already,” she told me.

  “To look for Duck?”

  “They’re meeting with the fire chief, but your father took a package of hot dogs along. I’m sure that pooch of yours will come running once he catches a whiff of those franks. He better—they’re the expensive kind, all beef!”

  As soon as Julie left, I called the house, but the electricity must not have been turned back on yet because the message machine didn’t pick up. I tried both cell phones too, but they went straight to voicemail. My back ached, and I felt like a wrung-out dishrag. I hadn’t slept well on the soggy blow-up mattress Julie had set up for me on the floor of her sewing room. I was worried sick about Duck.

  Sometimes when I felt sad, I would crawl under our dining room table at home. It was old and made of dark wood, the curved legs ending in feet carved to look like lion’s paws. After a while, Duck would come looking for me. If I was crying, he’d lick the tears off my face, and if I felt like being quiet, he knew to lie down beside me and be quiet too. I didn’t have the dining room table right now, or Duck, so I pushed a basket of paper dress patterns out of the way and curled up under Julie’s sewing table. A hunk of hair fell across my face. It smelled of smoke and so did my nightgown. Julie had offered me a pair of clean pajamas one of her boys had outgrown, but they had tags in both the top and bottom and I didn’t have the energy left to explain why that would be a problem. Closing my eyes, I sent up a silent prayer that when my parents returned, Duck would be with them. I pictured him bounding through the door, jumping up on me to lick my face. I would press my nose into his popcorn-scented ears and tell him how sorry I was that I’d left him behind.

  It was raining. Big round drops swam down the windowpanes like fat tadpoles. It was a tighter squeeze under the sewing table than I was used to, and the big metal foot pedal dug into my back. When my legs began to cramp, I crawled out and headed to the kitchen for some breakfast. There were various kinds of cereal on top of the refrigerator. Without even thinking, I quickly reorganized them, turning the boxes so they all faced in the same direction and lining them up by height. After considering my options, I poured myself a bowl of Froot Loops and grabbed a spoon out of the drawer. There were a bunch of purple pens with Youngsville Garage written on them jammed into a chipped coffee mug beside the phone. I pulled one out and between bites colored in the four o’s on the front of the cereal box.

  When I was finished, I carried my empty bowl over to the sink and noticed my mother’s jewelry box sitting on the counter. When I was little I had loved to play dress-up with a pair of shiny gold bangles my father had given her, slipping them over my wrists, all the way up my skinny little arms. I rinsed out my cereal bowl and put it in the dishwasher, then I undid the clasp on the red leather box and lifted the lid.

  There was a section in the middle where my mother kept her rings, each one pressed into a padded groove covered in velvet. I took a minute to organize those as well, grouping all the rings with stones together. On one side of that section were my mother’s earrings, neatly hooked together in pairs, and on the other a jumble of beads coiled like colorful snakes. I started to reorganize those as well, until I remembered the reason I’d opened the box in the first place was to look for the gold bangles. Where could they be? I wondered. After digging through the beads I recalled that the box had another layer, a hidden compartment on the very bottom.

  I lifted out the top section, and sure enough, there were my mother’s bracelets—including the gold bangles. There was something else familiar: a pale yellow envelope. The first thing that occurred to me was that my mother had hidden the letter because what my father had told me wasn’t true. Maybe Heidi wasn’t looking forward to meeting me at all, and my mother didn’t want me to find out because it might hurt my feelings. I thought about what my mother had said to Uncle James that day in our backyard. Curiosity killed the cat. Then I tapped the corner of the yellow envelope once, twice, three times and lifted the flap.

  Heidi’s letter was written on paper the same shade of yellow as the envelope. Her handwriting was small and neat, the letters slanting to the left like rows of little sailboats in a stiff breeze. I quickly skimmed the first page and halfway down the second found the part about me. My father had been telling the truth. Heidi had written that she was very much looking forward to meeting me in person.

  I was certain that the visit was off now, because of the fire. My mother wouldn’t dream of having company come with the house in the state that it was in.

  Part of me was disappointed that Heidi wouldn’t be coming, but most of me was relieved. I hadn’t been looking forward to having to share my room with a stranger. Besides, with Duck missing I needed to focus all my attention on finding him.

  As I was slipping the letter back into the envelope, I discovered that Heidi had sent my mother something else as well. A photograph. It was a faded picture of my mother standing in our front yard, her arms wrapped around a young girl with short brown hair.

  Heidi.

  I had never seen this picture before, but I knew the story well. The day after Heidi found out that her mama had died, she’d been so upset, she’d chopped off all her hair. I studied their faces carefully. Heidi was smiling at the camera, but you could tell that she’d been crying. My mother was smiling too, but there was something funny about her eyes. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  I heard the front door open.

  “Rory?” my father called.

  Quickly I jammed the photograph back in the envelope, tossed it in the jewelry box, and slammed the lid.

  My father’s wet hair was plastered to his forehead, and the legs of his jeans were dark from the knees down.

  “Did you find Duck?” I asked, anxiously scanning the room.

  My father shook his head.

  “We called and called, but he never came. I left a message at the animal shelter, so they’ll know to keep an eye out for him.”

  “I need to go home,” I said. “Right now. What if Duck comes back and there’s no one there to let him in? What if he’s hungry? Or hurt?”

  “We can’t go home,” my father said. “Not yet anyway. The roof needs to be replaced. The wiring is wet, so there’s no electricity, and the whole place reeks of smoke. All the carpeting and bedding and curtains will have to be cleaned or thrown out. That’s how …”

  His voice trailed off before he’d finished the sentence.

  “That’s how what?” I asked.

  “Your mom wanted to strip the beds to see if the mattresses could be saved, and …” He hesitated again and looked over at my mother, who was still standing in the hall.

  “Take off your coat, Ruby,” he said. “You’re dripping on the rug.”

  My mother didn’t move, and her face was still as pond water.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “We need to talk, Aurora,” my mother said.

  “About what?”

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out the Zippo lighter.

  “About this.”