A Fire That Burns by Kirsty-Anne Still Page A

then it had most certainly happened. Except
hearing their sister deny the claims with such strength they knew they couldn’t
turn their backs and let her have everyone against her - especially with Tom so
adamant to stick with her claims. At the end of the day, it was Austin’s words
against Natasha’s. It was a shame that the majority of the town had already
condemned Austin.
      Tom had listened to the gossip
and the stories as they morphed from one thing to another. He fought back
claims that his sister was an evil monster who should leave town before she did
any more damage and he hit back at people who were ignorant to what was really
going on when he had seen it quite clearly enough.
    They witnessed that Tyler falling for the words that left his fiancée’s
lips and he was still pretty much caught under the stories she was feeding him.
Being pregnant, not being pregnant. The loss being a simple miscarriage, then
it wasn’t such a simple miscarriage. Even they could sit and assume that Austin
had caused this to happen with the sheer display of grief that Natasha spoke
with. They could fall for how truthful Natasha made it that Austin had pushed
and bullied Natasha to lose the baby.
    If there was one thing they had hoped for, it was that Austin would
slowly embrace Point Arena life and begin to love being back. However, what
happened was the exact opposite. They had never seen her oppose a lifestyle,
but she stuck it out as not to lose out all over again. Even now with the
recent turn of events she seemed to be sticking her heels in and disregarding
her better judgment of fleeing.
    While sitting in the local diner, they had never seen Austin more
uncomfortable and try to keep the lowest of profiles possible. If she could,
she would simply disappear. She had barely left the house recently, not even to
go near the house to do renovations and the Pearson siblings thought it would
be nice to take their baby sister out to take her mind off everything. The
moment they walked into the diner they could tell their idea of a treat had
backfired and Austin withdrew into herself more with
each new pair of judgmental gazes that fell upon her.
    “You can’t hide away forever,” Sienna pointed out as Austin looked like
she was ready to become one with the wall of their booth. They had been here a
while and Austin didn’t speak, barely moved and made no interaction. It was too
much and Sienna hated it.
    Looking up she sighed, “They all think I did something I didn’t do. That
isn’t going to change.” She looked around and everyone got back to their meals
and left the idle gossip alone for a moment knowing she had heard them. “Seems
the jury has well and truly spoken and there isn’t a damn thing I can say to
change that.”
    “You know you’re innocent,” Tom said as he rested his hand on Austin’s.
“This will blow over.”
    “When, eh?” she asked him. “When will it? When I leave again? When I
admit to doing something I didn’t do?”
    “First, you’re not leaving,” Dean told her forcefully and gave her a
stern look. As the oldest brother he felt it was down to him to keep the family
together as it was, but right now he felt it was his duty to keep Austin from
fleeing all over again. “You leave and you are guilty.”
    “What is the point of living here when I’m not even able to go shopping
because they don’t serve murderers?” she asked and then sat up and
pointed to the waitresses, “They’ve avoided our table more than five times even
though we’ve made it obvious that we are ready to order. I didn’t expect this
to be a walk in the park, me coming home, but I had at least hoped I would feel
like I belonged somewhere again. There’s nowhere for me to call home now. Don’t
you see that? I ruined my chances of that leaving and now this, this isn’t
going make it better. Everyone hates me and mom-” she paused and dropped her
head, unable to finish her sentence. She sniffled as she felt