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harm my sisters or my mom—”
    â€œLily. Honey. We’ve been over this. He was despondent. He’d lost his job. He wasn’t thinking rationally.”
    â€œBut isn’t it possible…that the fire might have started in the house next to ours? But that ours went up so fast because of the stuff my dad had in the garage? I mean, do you know who lived next door? What happened to them? I don’t remember at all—if that house burned down, too, or if anyone was hurt there, or anything else. If there could have been a connection…” Lily could have sworn she caught a flash of alarm in the sheriff’s eyes, yet his voice was as calm and patient as before.
    â€œAw, sweetheart. You got eyes full of hope. But there was no one in that house. It’d been for sale for several months. There was fire damage there, too, a course, but nothing like what happened to your place, where the downstairs fire took off like hell in a fury. Pardon my French. You were all trapped on the second floor. There was no one on the other side of the garage wall to be hurt.”
    â€œSo. You think that’s a dead end,” she said carefully.
    Something had changed in his expression. His posture was a little stiffer, his eyes more guarded. Or maybe it was her imagination, because his tone of voice never changed.“I think, if you want to come back here every single day you’re here, ask more questions, pursue anything on your mind, honey, then that’s what you should do. Let’s get this off your mind so it’ll never come up again. I admit, if I were your daddy, I’d be advising you to let it go, that it’s not good for you to dwell on something you can never make right. A tragedy is a tragedy, honey. You already went through it. No point that I can see in reliving it yet again. But you do whatever you need to do. I won’t get mad. That’s a promise.” He added, “Particularly if you keep bringing me Louella’s cinnamon muffins.”
    When Lily left the station, the temperature had risen to one hundred and thirty—at least . Virginia had hot summers, but nothing like this. She battled the humidity straight to the ice-cream store—which, she told herself, had nothing to do with seeing Griff. It was about saving her life.
    The place was wallpapered with kids, some slurping ice cream, but not all. Lily recognized the phenomenon. With school out for the summer, the kids too young for a job needed a hang-out place. Griff’s was clearly it.
    Two boys were manning the counter, with a third visible in the back, doing washup. Griff seemed to choose employees who looked as if they’d recently been let out of juvenile detention—lots of tattoos, lots of metal on their faces, lots of attitude. The one Lily had come to know—Jason—seemed to half-live there.
    â€œYou looking for Griff?” he asked when she made it up to the counter.
    â€œWell. It doesn’t look as if he’s here—”
    â€œHe’s here. He’s just locked up.”
    â€œLocked up?”
    Jason nodded his head toward a far steel door. “He’s in the vault. It’s where he makes the ice cream. Nobody’s ever allowed in the vault, but I can let him know you’re here—”
    Before Jason finished the comment, Griff appeared from beyond the locked steel door. As if expecting her, he turned and located her in two seconds flat. That slick, wild kiss on the dark veranda was suddenly between them as if it just happened.
    Possibly, she’d have had the good sense to run out the door, if he hadn’t crossed the room too quickly for her to take that option.
    â€œI don’t want to interrupt you,” she said immediately.
    â€œYou won’t if you come back with me. I’m right in the middle of something.”
    â€œJason just said no one’s allowed back there?”
    â€œNo one is,” he agreed, and motioned for