An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [83]
"So why isn't she?"
"It's complicated," my father said again. I could see that "complicated" was the word he used to describe that which he didn't understand, the way I used "accident." My father dropped his eyes and then returned them to the letters. He picked one up and I could see his hand shake. He seemed more and more feeble and distracted with each passing second, and I thought I'd better finish asking questions before he fully reverted to the stroked-out father I'd been thinking he was.
"Dad, how many people have seen these letters?"
"Too many to count," he said, and this seemed to please him. He rallied a little bit and started walking around the kitchen, waggling beer cans to see if they had any beer left in them, drinking out of the ones that did.
"Does anyone know where you keep the letters?"
"Of course," he said. He sat down at the table and started flipping through the letters again. "Lots of people do."
"Does anyone suspicious know where you keep the letters?" I asked. This was a weak question, and my father gave me a look as if to say, They all were, and so I thought about how to be more specific. What would a suspicious person look like, exactly? I asked myself, and immediately Thomas Coleman came to mind, especially since he'd seemed to know my father, knew where his bedroom was, and had been in this same home only the day before. Plus, I'd already fingered him as guilty to Detective Wilson, so I had some stake in his guilt. Plus, I didn't think I had anyone else to name except my mother, and I didn't want to name her, not unless I had to.
"Do you know someone named Thomas Coleman?" I asked him.
"I know lots of people," my father said.
"He has blond hair," I said. "He's thin, has blue eyes." I thought about it some more, wished there were more ways to physically describe the people who are ruining our lives. "Really thin," I said again. "Does that sound like someone who has seen the letters?"
"Lots of thin people have seen the letters," my father said, talking more to the letters than to me.
"Dad, pay attention!" I barked, the way a parent does to a child, and the way every child eventually does to his parent, too, taking revenge for being barked at so many years earlier, revenge being yet another one of the many kinds of sadness. My father's head jerked up and he held it there, at attention. "Thomas Coleman's parents died in the Emily Dickinson House fire," I told him.
"They did," he said.
"Yes," I said. "I killed them." It felt good to admit this finally, although every good feeling exists only long enough for you to ruin it, and I ruined this one by adding, "By accident."
"By accident," my father said.
"Do you know Thomas Coleman?" I asked. "Has he seen the letters? I'm pretty sure someone who has seen the letters tried to set fire to both the Bellamy House and the Twain House. They probably have the five other letters, too. Dad, please, think hard. Do you know a Thomas Coleman? This is important."
My father thought hard; I could tell by the way the worry lines on his forehead deepened and multiplied. He even brought his index finger to his lips and left it there. Finally he said, "I have no idea. I'm sorry, Sam, but I don't."
"OK," I said, and I believed him, and that will also go in my arsonist's guide: don't trust a man who says, "I have no idea," but also don't underestimate his capacity not to have one. "Dad," I said, "you don't think it could be Mom who tried to burn those houses, do you?"
"No," he said. "Why would you ask something like that?"
"Because I'm pretty sure it's a woman," I said. "If it's not this guy Thomas Coleman, then I'm pretty sure it's a woman."
"Why do you say that?"
"It's complicated," I said, throwing his favorite word back at him. "But trust me, I'm pretty sure it's a woman."