I.

One morning just before Christmas, my mother could not find her groceries.

She had carried in several bags then answered a phone call.

A few minutes later, she went to retrieve the balance.

They were gone.

It did not trouble her greatly: “Maybe someone needed them more.”

But we started locking our doors that night.

Our neighborhood always had been safe and comfortable: retirees with small plots near the river, borderline picturesque homes.

Our house was tan with green shutters and a white picket fence. When, months beforehand, an electrical fire destroyed our backyard woodshed, Mom had constructed a large one-room suite to fulfill her dream of a bed and breakfast. The waterfront view was enchanting until a giant, gray, prefabricated building appeared between and swallowed the open lot.

My older sisters implored Mom to be cautious, less than naïve enough to leave open her car—but it was Christmas. We lost ourselves in company, savoring rare treats that descried our collective love individually.

Swept away in Utopian peace by giving and receiving, we convinced ourselves that danger had passed. The crime was freakish but isolated.

A thick snow fell on December 27 while my father and I hunted the creek beyond his farmhouse. Mallards, black ducks, scaup and Canadas poured in, visibility low, not detecting snow piled on backs of decoys. I crashed into the river sporadically to dip them, but there was hardly time between volleys to drink our thermos of hot chocolate. Scalding barrels warmed our hands as falling white powder hid their dark-gray smoke. And their burning stench alloyed the air while empty shells multiplied.

After carrying double handfuls of birds into the plywood shed and looping cord around their purple-tinted black and chrome green, bulging heads, slinging them over a crossbeam to age, I sat before the woodstove, devouring smoked salmon and homemade cinnamon rolls. Full and happily tired, I washed away the cold sweat of melting snow in a hot shower.

Thoughts of destruction were nowhere close.

The following night (December 28), my sister Josie’s roommate was visiting so we decided to see a film: the latest “all-star comedy.”

I sat comfortably among three very different looking women: my mother, brunette, Josie, blonde, and Michela, olive skinned.

Having been raised essentially by three mothers, my sister Eliza (the eldest) included, this company was familiar—and I needed attention, since I had lost recently, to another, my first serious girlfriend.

The film was amusing: we laughed, happy for the occasion, sharing playful looks and popcorn.

About halfway through, Josie signaled she would return.

I watched her disappear near the entrance.

Moments later, she came running down the aisle with our father and Wayne, Mom’s former boyfriend, on either side.

Josie gasped.

“Our house burned down.”

We kept silent as her statement fell.

Around us the crowd erupted in laughter.

Hands over her face, Mom declared: “I can’t take it.”

Outside, I excused myself and walked into a nearby alley.

Once beyond sight, I bashed my hand on a metal dumpster, splitting it open, and vomited on the pavement.

II.

Dad and Wayne waited for me. Next to each other stood my real father and one who lately had, to some extent, assumed his role.

Joined though incensed by their experience with Mom—resentful towards this connection—both men had acquired in minutes the look of days without sleep. Their sunken, dark eyes burned a hole in me: wretchedly sympathetic.

I rode with Dad while Wayne drove the girls. It seemed less awkward. Somehow those worries entered my head.

Dad tried hard to council me, bestowing examples of prior hardship: encouraging words. They swirled the cab in his truck, desperately clinging to empty space.

His intentions were moving, but as I started allowing them, a sickening thought entered: my great-grandfather’s gun was in the house. Dad gave it to me, his only son, as a fourth-generation present.

It was my coming of age.

III.

Our road teemed with police cars, their blue lights frantic. Against coal black sky, blankets of light gray drifted. Streams of people dispersed before me, likely shouting reports and orders—but I heard nothing. Time passed slowly as though lost to death. I felt myself hover like smoke.

As I neared the house, our neighbor ran to inform me the police removed my gun.

It was intact.

But unfortunately, I did not gather myself before seeing our home.

It was a jagged collection of embers decomposing. A few smoking beams remained upright. In horror I beheld a withered skeleton.

How did my sanctuary, where friends felt more at home than anywhere, the core warmth in my life, safest of places, just incinerate? Why did this happen? What am I going to do?

Alone I pondered these questions. No one can give us the strength we need. But I was scarcely a legal adult: when my great-grandfather promised I would “learn to truly feel, and truly see.”

All I had was quandaries pounding my brain like a hideous chant, rubble to sift, and the clothes on my back.

IV.

In our neighbor’s living room I sat with Mom, Josie and Michela.

We devoured pizza on paper plates.

Staring past each other, we barely wiped our mouths.

People called incessantly, offering beds, most confirming the rumor: “victimized” by curiosity. My ears rang hearing, “Is it really true?”

Eliza and Chris (my brother-in-law) were rushing down from Baltimore—but we concealed that Beau, our black and white cat, was missing.

Fire fighters were skimming the rubble and spotlighting trees. While pursuers assured us cats stay close, we prayed Beau would come running.

But time elapsed, drawing Eliza near—so Mom and Josie decided to walk the neighborhood calling his name.

After they left, a policeman and deputy fire marshal came forward, asking if I had been last to exit our home.

“Yes, but my sister Josie was on the steps.”

They said thanks and departed, appearing satisfied.

Moments later, these civil servants resurfaced to casually request a written statement.

“Would you mind sitting in our car? Everything is there already.”

In the backseat of their Crown Victoria I projected honesty. Believing they wanted details, I jotted down my routine of checking kitchen appliances, the back door, windows and lights before locking and closing the front door behind me. As I filled a page with sloppy, adolescent handwriting, the deputy fire marshal complained about “the wife and kids” to his partner in the driver’s seat, about whom I remember nothing except his police uniform and sips from a Dunkin Donuts cup with militant regularity.

But this deputy I recall loathsomely clear. He wore unmarked black and thick glasses. His precisely trimmed, brown mustache and stout cheeks drooping past his neckline like a bulldog spewed aloof entitlement.

I should have noticed long before his cavalier indifference.

He snatched the clipboard and greedily read my statement, glasses rebounding light from a streetlamp; then—“just a formality”—he carefully Mirandized.

“Tell me what really happened.”

“I already have. Twice.”

“I know you’re hiding something.”

“No, I told you everything. Why would I have something to hide?”

“We have your gun in the trunk. If you don’t tell me, you won’t get it back. Don’t start pissing me off.”

Why is he doing this? Why am I being targeted? My age? Having long hair and a beard? Could I resemble an arsonist?

I reeled in shock, watching the attack, and briefly wondered if someone else was under scrutiny.

It sank in gradually, slow cooking hatred. His cynical, drooping face and lifeless stare inflamed my skin while I repeated details like a broken record.

There is little more infuriating, I had learned, than being forced to attest innocence during tragedy.

But the deputy kept threatening and, facing me, contorted in his seat, making violent gestures, striking air, he paused to offer me a doughnut.

I could barely answer “No.”

His flippant courtesy in the midst of accusation was grotesque.

So when he started inventing facts, “You left separately, ten minutes after your family”—I boiled over.

“That’s it. I have cooperated fully. You took my property to ransom a confession. Every resident of this block will confirm I left beside my sister…. Don’t tell me when and how I traveled. You were not here. Clearly you were at Dunkin Donuts. My name is on the deed. Get off this property…. I’m sending Wayne for my gun. Hand it over and, unless you want your badges gone for this heinous shit, this fucking joke of an investigation, drive away immediately. Leave us alone!”

I was not close to ready, but for months I would have to survive.

Next Chapter: Chapter Two