Chapter 6: The Night of the Fire
Marcus set a second photograph on the table.
Then a third.
The security drive Nora had kept for years had been enough to pull a full sequence — twelve images, timestamped, showing the east corridor of the Mercer estate from 11:31 PM to 12:04 AM on the night of the fire.
Juliette in the corridor at 11:47.
The canister in her hand.
Juliette at the east stairwell door at 11:52.
The door propped open.
The corridor empty at 11:58.
The first smoke visible at 12:01.
"The fire investigator's original report said the cause was an electrical fault in the east wing," Marcus said.
He was not speaking to the room.
He was speaking to my father.
"The report was filed forty-eight hours after the fire.
The investigator retired six months later.
He moved to a house in Portugal.
A very nice house, from what I understand."
My father stared at the photographs.
"I want to know everything," he said.
"I want to know all of it."
"Dad," Juliette said.
"You don't—"
"Juliette." His voice was flat.
"Stop talking."
She stopped.
Marcus pulled his chair closer to my father and began walking him through the files, one document at a time.
I stayed where I was.
I had waited years to hear this told out loud, but now that the moment was here, I found I didn't need to watch it happen.
I already knew the story.
I had been living inside it.
Nora sat beside me again.
"Your mother's letter," I said quietly.
"Did you read it?"
"She read it to me," Nora said.
"When she wrote it.
She wanted a witness."
"What did she say about Juliette?"
Nora was quiet for a moment.
"She said she had seen it coming for years.
The way Juliette looked at the estate.
The way she talked about it — not like a home, like a prize." She folded her hands in her lap.
"Your mother said she tried to talk to your father about it.
He told her she was imagining things."
"He always told her that."
"Yes," Nora said.
"He did."
Across the room, I could hear my father asking Marcus a question in a low voice.
I couldn't make out the words.
I could hear the weight in them.
"Nora," I said.
"The night of the fire.
You pulled me out of the east bedroom.
How did you know I was there?"
She turned to look at me.
"I heard you," she said.
"You were coughing.
I was in the corridor below and I heard you through the floor."
"And Juliette?"
"Juliette was standing at the bottom of the main staircase when I came down carrying you.
She was watching the east wing burn." Nora's voice didn't change.
"She didn't move when she saw me.
She looked at you — at what I was carrying — and she didn't move."
I had wondered about that for years.
Whether Juliette had known I survived.
Whether she had simply assumed the fire had finished what she started, or whether she had known and chosen to let the lie stand.
Now I had my answer.
"She watched you carry me out," I said.
"Yes."
"And she said nothing."
"She said one thing." Nora paused.
"She said, 'Put her down, Nora.
There's nothing you can do.'"
The ballroom was very quiet.
"I didn't put you down," Nora said.
I reached over and covered her hand with mine.
We sat like that for a moment without speaking, while across the marble floor my father continued reading through the evidence of everything he had failed to see, and Juliette stood near the white roses with her arms crossed and her face arranged into an expression of patience that I recognized as the last defense of someone who had run out of moves.
She still had one left.
I knew that.
May you like
Juliette always had one left.
I just didn't know yet what it was.
