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  “Budge is the one who busted Stewart and Lynnie for embezzling,” Riley said. “He always tattles. It fits.”

  “Why’d she come back now?” Nell said.

  “Seven years,” Riley said. “They were going to declare Stewart dead and collect the insurance. Except Margie kept stonewalling.” He grinned. “Like father, like daughter.”

  “So she blackmails Margie and Trevor goes to meet her?” Nell said. “Is that it?”

  “Or Budge,” Suze said. “Or Budge might have told Jack. Budge tells Jack everything.”

  “And whoever it is tells her that there’s been a snag in the insurance and to back off from Margie, but there are diamonds at our place,” Riley said. “There is a way this makes sense.”

  “Why does Trevor care about the diamonds?” Suze said. “He has plenty of money.”

  “Because they were the last loose end,” Gabe said. “My dad died without telling him where they were. And he couldn’t come to me to look for them without telling me everything. So he—”

  “Waited,” Nell finished for him. “Did he kill Lynnie?”

  “It could have been Jack,” Suze said, her voice small. “He could have met her and done the same thing. He’d do anything to protect that law firm.”

  “We have to give this to the police,” Gabe said. “Let them track it down.”

  Riley nodded. “Couldn’t agree with you more.”

  “So is there a chance that Stewart’s back?” Suze said. “Is Margie in trouble?”

  “No,” Nell said. “Lynnie said she was working alone. She didn’t lie to me.”

  “Your faith in her is touching,” Gabe said. “She lied to everybody.”

  Not me, Nell thought, and stood up. “I’m tired. I’m calling it a night. Suze?”

  “I think I’ll stay a little longer,” Suze said, not looking at Riley.

  Good for you, Nell thought.

  “I’ll give you a ride,” Gabe said to Nell, and her pulse kicked up when he smiled.

  His hand felt good under her arm again as he walked her out to the car, and when he was sitting beside her in the dark, she said, “I missed you.” He leaned over and kissed her, and she said, “I missed the car, too. Do you think—”

  “Fat chance,” he said and started the car.

  When they pulled up in front of the duplex, Nell said, “Are you ever going to let me drive this car?” and he leaned over and kissed her again, a long slow kiss this time, and then he said, “No.”

  “This relationship needs work,” she said, but she kissed him again before she went inside.

  * * *

  She was asleep when she first heard the yelling, like part of a dream. Then Marlene barked, and she woke up and heard Suze screaming her name, and she sat up and inhaled smoke and heard muted crackling outside her door that could only be flames. She rolled out of bed and the floor was warm, and she grabbed Marlene, who yelped and tried to squirm out of her arms, and went to the door, her heart pounding.

  The only way out was the stairs, so she opened the door slowly when she saw smoke and then all the way when she didn’t see fire. She dropped to the floor, Marlene under one arm, and began to crawl, one-handed, toward the head of the stairs, trying to stay under the worst of the smoke.

  She could hear Suze outside screaming, “Nell,” but she was afraid to yell back, she needed all the oxygen she could get. At the top of the stairs, she could see an orange glow from below, and Marlene squirmed harder and fishtailed out of her arms to run back into the bedroom. Nell scrambled after her and found her back on the bed, pushing her nose under the chenille throw, and she gathered the dog up so that the throw wrapped around her and covered her eyes, and this time she made a dash for the stairs. She stumbled down through the orange light, afraid to look behind her until she got to the door. Then she turned around just for a second and stopped, horror-stricken.

  The center of the apartment was an inferno, her grandmother’s dining set glowing orange before her eyes. The glass cracked in the hutch, the Susie Cooper figurine fell forward, almost in slow motion, as the Clarice figure followed, looking over her shoulder as she slid down the glass door and the glass shelf collapsed under her. The kestral teapot fell down onto the Stroud tureen and cracked the cartouche, and the Secrets plates pitched forward and crashed onto fragile bone china, which shattered on impact, bubble trees and houses and crescents and swirls, shattering in front of her—

  Then Riley was there, frantic, yelling, “Come on,” and she said, “My china,” and he pulled her out into the spring night, across the street to Suze who was crying and Doris who was swearing. The fire trucks were there, and she realized she’d heard the sirens all along. She looked over Riley’s shoulder to the apartment, to the furnace that had been her living room, and thought of Clarice and Susie, melting and cracking, all those memories, all that beauty, murdered and gone.

  “Somebody did this,” she said to Riley when she was standing barefoot in the cold grass. “Somebody—”

  Suze pushed Riley out of the way and hugged her. “Oh, thank God you got Marlene, I thought you were dead, I thought you were both dead.”

  “I think you saved me,” Nell said, keeping her back to the house as a car fishtailed to a stop beyond them. “I woke up when I heard you scream, I—”

  She heard a car door slam, and then Gabe said, “What the fuck is going on?” and she turned and went to him, letting him wrap his arms around her and Marlene both, and only then did she realize that Marlene was struggling to get out of the chenille. She leaned back a little and pulled the blanket off Marlene’s head, and Marlene barked, three times, sharp high barks on the edge of hysteria, but she didn’t try to get down.

  “This is what I saved from the fire,” she told Gabe. “Marlene and a blanket. Everything else is gone. All my china. My grandmother’s dining room set. The rest of it I don’t care about, but, Gabe, all my china. My grandma’s china is gone.”

  Even as she said it, she knew she was being frivolous, she was safe and Marlene was safe and so was Suze, they weren’t losing anything really important, but she knew when she closed her eyes again, she’d see Clarice, flirting back over her china shoulder, falling into the perfect world of the Stroud cartouche, everything shattering.

  * * *

  Two hours later, Nell sat exhausted at Gabe’s kitchen table in one of Lu’s nightgowns, still overwhelmed, while Marlene dozed in her lap.

  “You need sleep,” Gabe said.

  “I’ll never get the smoke out of those blue pajamas.”

  “No,” Gabe said. “I wouldn’t even try.”

  “You used to like them.”

  “I liked what was in them. If you remember; I got rid of them as soon as possible every time.”

  “Right,” Nell said and tried to smile.

  An hour later, she was in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the comforting sound of Marlene’s snores, hearing that crackle again, and the crash of the china. Susie’s crescent bowls and kestral teapots, Clarice’s Stroud and Secrets. The china had rung with her mother’s and her grandmother’s voices. Tim had bought her the pieces to the Secrets teaset one by one when he still loved her. Jase had given her the sugar bowl when he was ten, his face lit with excitement. Her throat grew tight. The son of a bitch who’d torched her apartment had dissolved her past, melted it down into slag. It was almost more than she could bear, and she rolled over and buried her face in the pillow and wept until she gasped.

  Eventually she realized there was something cold on her neck, and she pulled back from the pillow to find Marlene, poking at her with her nose, probably telling her to keep it down. “Sorry, puppy,” she said, and Marlene licked the tears from her cheek, and then Nell broke down again, cuddling the dog to her while Marlene licked her face. When she finally stopped crying, Marlene flopped down on the bed, exhausted, and Nell kissed her furry little head and went into the bathroom to wash off the tears and the dog spit.

  She scrubbed her face hard and t