What Burns Away by Melissa Falcon Field Page B

sixteenth brightest star in the sky. I considered what other secrets I would have to keep and, like the scorpion battling Orion, I wondered what battles I would fight.
    When I turned back toward the water, Dean had stripped out of his jeans, down to his boxer shorts, and was wading into the stream.
    â€¢ • •
    I’ve never told my husband about the fire I set in my mother’s car. Dean was the only person who ever knew. Although I’d like to think that Miles and I could tell each other anything, we can’t. Or at least I can’t. I learned the hard way to keep my secrets after I divulged my mother’s infidelity to Miles in the early months of our courtship. That character flaw became something he referenced anytime her name came up, pressing on a wound that would never heal, reminding me of the danger in sharing old confidences.
    In a moment of tenderness, I came close to telling Miles about the car fire only once. It was before Jonah. We had been camping at Maho Bay in the U.S. Virgin Islands, celebrating the completion of his doctoral program in medicine. We were alone on the beach, our skin branded by the sun after a day of snorkeling. Drinking rum from the bottle, we sat with our faces illuminated by a bonfire we had built together.
    Miles threw his hand over my shoulder. “What is it about fire?” he wanted to know.
    With our eyes open, we made love there on the sand. But Miles’s gaze remained on the blaze, and in his eyes I watched the reflection of light flicker. I wanted to tell him then how I got away with it, how I kindled the car with newspapers and struck the match, but I didn’t because Miles had always possessed a righteousness, a belief in order and laws typical of the son of a judge. Disclosing my crime would mean opening myself up to questions that, if answered, would reveal a part of myself that made even me uneasy. So I tucked that part of my story deep in the corner pocket of myself.
    â€¢ • •
    But I did tell Dean how the fire trucks pulled onto Willard Street just seconds after I slipped back into my bed, faking sleep, before my parents came to get us.
    â€œMy father cried,” I explained in a whisper. “And he pulled at my mother’s shirt so hard, trying to hold her, that we heard the fabric tear as she moved away from him. When the officers came to the door, he finally let go.”
    â€œI remember that fire,” Dean said. “It was in the Hartford Courant . The article was all about how your dad was out of work, walking the picket line at Colt, and how he was the victim of vandalism. They blamed it on the changes in the neighborhood after Pratt and Whitney moved south. My mom was all worried about her property value.” He moved my hair off my shoulders. “It wasn’t a bunch of thugs from New London after all. It was you.”
    â€œMe,” I confessed to Dean. “To punish my mother.”
    When the cops arrived at the scene, they questioned my parents on the stoop while it snowed and snowed. Kara sat in my lap and we watched them from the living room. It was the last time I saw my mother touch my father, her fingers on his shoulder as the officers drove up. They were both afraid and Dad grabbed her, tried to keep her in his grip, but she pulled away from him, even as he begged her “Please” and “Don’t” and “Wait.”
    Despite the fire, Mom left the next day. She had packed just one bag and set it in the hallway the night before, the same rose-colored suitcase she took on their honeymoon weekend to see the Statue of Liberty, before Dad left for Vietnam. Other than her luggage, everything else stayed behind with us, even Mom’s sea glass.
    As a girl, I blamed myself for my parents’ divorce, always wondering if giving Dad that letter might’ve made a difference in his behavior, if he might’ve been softer, more attentive in time to save things. Perhaps, if