PART 4: THE HOUSE WITH THE BLUE CURTAINS
“Give me her number.”
“Mom, I’m trying to explain—”
“Her number, Bryce.”
He read it out.
I wrote it beneath the address, then handed the paper to Roxy.
“Call her. Tell her who you are. Tell her to get everyone outside and call 911. There may be a fire inside the wall.”
Roxy was already reaching for her phone.
“Dad said he was going over there,” Bryce said.
I stopped beside the back door.
“When?”
“I don’t know. He said he’d handle it.”
“Is he there now?”
“I don’t know.”
I pulled on my coat.
For twenty-eight years, people had called me because something had stopped working.
A light.
A freezer.
A furnace.
Usually, there was time to ask questions.
A discolored outlet and the smell of heat were different.
“Listen carefully,” I told my son. “Nobody touches that outlet. Nobody tries the heater again. Nobody goes inside to see whether it still smells.”
“Okay.”
“And you send me everything you have about that job.”
“Mom—”
“The contract. The messages. The name of the person who did the wiring.”
I hung up before he could ask me to make another promise.
Across the kitchen, Roxy had reached the homeowner.
“Mrs. Bell? My name is Roxanne. I’m Joanne Hollis’s sister. She’s an electrician. We understand you may have an electrical emergency.”
She listened.
Her eyes found mine.
Then her voice changed.
“Take your daughter outside now. Leave the shoes if you can’t find them.”
I grabbed my keys.
Roxy covered the phone.
“She says there’s smoke.”
The house was eleven minutes away.
I knew the neighborhood. Small houses built close together, most of them from the fifties, with narrow driveways and additions that had gone up whenever families grew.
Roxy came with me.
I drove.
She stayed on the phone until the homeowner confirmed that she and her daughter were outside and the emergency dispatcher was on the other line.
Then she read the address back to me.
“Fourteen twenty-six.”
“I heard.”
“Jo.”
“I heard.”
My hands were steady on the steering wheel.
That frightened me afterward.
How steady I had been.
There was a little girl standing outside a house with smoke coming from a wall, and I was driving toward her with my son’s voice still in my ears.
We only needed it until we found someone permanent.
As though my license were a spare ladder.
As though my name could stand in for someone knowing what they were doing.
We turned onto the street behind a fire engine.
Red light moved across the houses.
A woman stood on the opposite sidewalk in slippers, holding a little girl wrapped in a yellow blanket.
The child had one bare foot.
I pulled over well clear of the trucks.
Roxy was out before I had turned off the engine.
“Mrs. Bell?”
The woman looked toward us.
“I’m Roxy. We spoke.”
I came around the truck.
“Joanne Hollis,” I said. “Is everyone out?”
“Yes. Just us.”
Her lips were trembling.
“My daughter was in the living room when I saw the smoke. I thought it was dust burning off the heater. That’s what he told me.”
“Who told you?”
“The man from the company. Victor.”
I looked toward the house.
Blue curtains hung in the bedroom window.
One panel had been pulled crookedly, exposing a row of paper snowflakes taped to the glass.
A firefighter approached us.
“Are you the homeowner?”
The woman lifted a hand.
“Dana Bell.”
He asked her several questions, then looked at me when she said my name.
“You did the electrical work?”
“No,” I said. “My credentials may have been used without my permission. I haven’t worked on this house.”
His expression changed, but he didn’t stop to discuss it.
“Stay here. We’ll need to speak with you.”
“I understand.”
Dana turned toward me.
“But you’re Joanne.”
“Yes.”
“The woman from the picture.”
I stared at her.
“What picture?”
She shifted her daughter onto her other hip and pulled her phone from her coat pocket.
Her hands were shaking so badly that she opened the wrong screen twice.
Then she showed me.
It was a photograph of me at Bryce’s college graduation.
The same one that hung in my hallway.
Only Bryce had been cropped out.
Beneath my face were the words:
JOANNE HOLLIS — TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OF EXPERIENCE YOU CAN TRUST.
For a moment, the red lights seemed to stop moving.
I remembered that photograph being taken.
Bryce had pulled me closer and told the woman holding the camera, “Make sure you get my mom.”
Now someone had cut him out and sold what was left.
Dana watched my face.
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
“I asked for you. When they came to give the estimate.”
I couldn’t speak.
“Victor said you managed the work behind the scenes.”
Her daughter lifted her head.
“Mommy, is my rabbit inside?”
Dana pressed her mouth to the child’s hair.
“We’ll ask, baby.”
Roxy took off her scarf and wrapped it around the little girl’s bare foot.
That small act nearly undid me.
I looked back at the house because I couldn’t look at the child.
A firefighter came out carrying a section of blackened wall material.
I knew enough not to draw conclusions from the sidewalk.
I also knew how close some families came to losing everything before they understood there had been a problem.
My phone buzzed.
Bryce had sent a name.
Darren Pike.
Then a message.
Dad hired him. I only met him twice.
I saved it.
I didn’t reply.
A dark car turned onto the street and slowed.
Victor.
He parked behind my truck, got out, and stood looking at the fire engines.
For once, he didn’t immediately know what to do with his hands.
Then he saw me.
“Joanne.”
I stayed beside Dana.
Victor approached with a strained expression.
“Dana, thank God you called. Is everyone all right?”
She stepped back.
“You told me it was normal.”
“I said a new heater can sometimes—”
“I told you the outlet was hot.”
A firefighter moved between them.
“Sir, who are you?”
“The contractor.”
“Then I need you over here.”
Victor looked past him at me.
“Jo, tell them we’ll take care of this.”
I felt Dana’s eyes on my face.
I thought of Caroline sitting in that café.
Of my son saying she had kept asking questions.
Of every time I had softened a sentence because the unsoftened version would make Victor angry.
“I don’t work for your company,” I said.
His jaw tightened.
“This isn’t the place.”
“You brought my name here.”
The firefighter looked from him to me.
“Sir. Come with me.”
Victor went.
He didn’t have much choice.
A few minutes later, another responder told Dana that the immediate danger was under control, but she could not take her daughter back inside yet.
The damaged area needed to be assessed, and the power would remain disconnected.
Dana nodded as though she understood.
Then she asked, “Where do we sleep?”
Roxy glanced at me.
“Do you have family nearby?” she asked gently.
“My sister’s in Freeport.”
“Can you call her?”
Dana nodded again.
She still hadn’t put her daughter down.
I wanted to say I would fix everything.
The words rose automatically.
I had said them to Bryce about broken bicycles, missed deadlines, forgotten projects.
But there was a child wrapped in a blanket and a wall opened by firefighters.
This needed more than a promise made on a sidewalk.
“I’ll give you my number,” I told Dana. “My actual number. And I’ll tell the people investigating exactly what I know.”
Her eyes filled.
“I saved for two years.”
I looked at her.
“For that room. It used to be a porch. She was sleeping in my room, and I wanted her to have her own space.”
The little girl pressed her cheek against her mother’s shoulder.
Dana looked toward the blue curtains.
“He said doing it now would be cheaper because your crew had an opening.”
I didn’t ask which man she meant.
Not then.
A police officer arrived while Dana was calling her sister.
He spoke to the firefighters first, then approached me.
I explained what I knew.
The business.
The forms I had refused to sign.
The document Caroline had received.
I was careful about the things I didn’t know.
I hadn’t seen who performed the work.
I hadn’t seen anyone submit a permit.
I hadn’t seen who signed my name.
But I had never agreed to supervise the job.
That much I could say without hesitation.
He wrote it down.
“Do you have the documents?”
“Yes.”
“Keep everything.”
“I am.”
Across the street, Victor was talking rapidly to another officer.
He pointed toward me once.
Then toward his car.
Then he folded his arms.
I had lived with him long enough to recognize the progression.
Explanation.
Blame.
Offense.
Before we left, Dana came over with her daughter.
“My sister’s coming.”
“Good,” Roxy said.
Dana looked at me.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to think.”
“You don’t have to decide tonight.”
“Did your son know?”
The question was quiet.
I could have said I didn’t know what Bryce knew about the wiring.
That would have been true.
It also would have avoided what she was asking.
“He knew I hadn’t agreed to be part of the business,” I said.
Dana’s face changed.
She nodded once and walked back to the waiting ambulance, where someone had found a warm place for her little girl to sit.
I watched her go.
There was no relief in telling the truth.
Only the knowledge that I hadn’t added another lie.
By the time we reached my house, my work boots felt heavier than they had after any twelve-hour shift.
Roxy put water on for tea.
I called Elaine.
She answered with, “Are you all right?”
“No one was hurt.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
I sat down.
“I don’t know.”
I told her what had happened.
She listened without interruption.
Then she asked for the officer’s name and the incident information I had been given.
“Tonight, preserve what you have,” she said. “Don’t sign anything Victor sends. Don’t agree to describe this as a misunderstanding. We’ll address the business records and the use of your credentials as soon as we can reach the appropriate offices.”
“What about Dana?”
“Tell the truth. Cooperate. Let the facts establish who did what.”
I looked at the blue folder.
“What about Bryce?”
Elaine was quiet for a moment.
“Jo, I can advise you about protecting yourself. I can’t make the choice about your son hurt less.”
After we hung up, I went into the hallway.
Bryce’s graduation photograph was slightly crooked.
I straightened it.
Then I stood there with my hand against the frame.
Roxy found me a minute later.
“You can still love him,” she said.
I looked at her.
“I don’t know how to do this.”
“I know.”
“What if telling the truth destroys his life?”
She glanced toward the kitchen, where the picture of Dana’s damaged wall was still open on my phone.
“What happens if you don’t?”
I lowered my hand.
At nine-forty, someone knocked.
Three light taps.
Bryce had knocked that way since he was a teenager, usually because his arms were full and he wanted me to hurry.
Roxy looked through the curtain.
“It’s him.”
I opened the door.
He stood on the porch without a coat.
His hair was wet from the mist, and his eyes were swollen.
For a second, I saw the fourteen-year-old who had stood in that same doorway with a duffel bag after a fight with his father.
Then he lifted a thick envelope.
“Can I come in?”
I stepped aside.
He looked around the kitchen as though he hadn’t been there in years.
The mug beside the sink.
The calendar.
His old high-school team photograph held to the refrigerator by a magnet.
He noticed the blue folder on the table.
His face crumpled.
“Mom.”
“Sit down.”
He did.
Roxy remained standing beside the counter.
Bryce placed the envelope in front of me.
“Dad asked me to bring this.”
I didn’t touch it.
“What is it?”
“He said it would clear up the licensing issue.”
“Did you read it?”
“Yes.”
The answer came too quickly.
I waited.
He lowered his eyes.
“Some of it.”
I opened the envelope.
The first page was headed:
RATIFICATION OF PRIOR AUTHORIZATION.
I read the first paragraph.
Then the second.
According to the document, I had verbally agreed in August to supervise electrical work undertaken by Hollis Residential Services.
According to the next paragraph, the lack of a signed agreement had been an administrative oversight.
There was a line for the date.
Someone had already typed August 12.
I turned the page.
Another paragraph said I had reviewed and approved the company’s completed electrical work.
I set it down.
“Your father wants me to sign this tonight.”
Bryce nodded.
“After what happened.”
“He said the work can be fixed.”
“A little girl was outside without her shoes.”
“I know.”
“No. You know I said it. I don’t think you’ve let yourself understand it.”
He began crying again.
I let him.
The kitchen clock ticked.
Roxy set a glass of water beside him.
He didn’t reach for it.
“Did you come here to ask me to sign this?” I said.
He stared at the paper.
“When I left Dad’s house.”
“And now?”
His shoulders shook.
“I don’t know what to do.”
It was the first thing he had said all evening that I believed completely.
“You start by telling me what happened.”
“I told you.”
“No. You told me enough to make your father responsible for the parts you couldn’t explain.”
His face lifted.
“That isn’t fair.”
“Then correct me.”
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
I waited.
Finally, he said, “I told him you’d probably agree.”
“When?”
“Before I brought the folder.”
I felt something cold settle beneath my ribs.
“Why?”
“Because I thought you would.”
“You hadn’t asked me.”
“I thought you’d want us to have something together.”
“I did.”
His face changed at that.
“I would have liked that very much,” I said. “But you weren’t asking me to build something with you. You were asking me to put my name on something your father controlled.”
Bryce wiped his face with his sleeve.
“When you said no, Dad said you’d always been afraid of taking chances.”
I looked at my son’s hands.
Soft palms.
A tiny scar near his thumb from the summer I taught him to strip wire on a dead practice board.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re twenty-six, Bryce.”
“I know.”
“You have to stop using silence as though it means you weren’t there.”
He looked down.
After a while, he said, “The first customer had already paid.”
“Before you brought me the folder?”
He nodded.
I closed my eyes.
“How much of this did you know before August twelfth?”
“Not all of it.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I knew Dad was telling people we had an electrician.”
“Me.”
“Yes.”
“And after I refused?”
“He said he’d find someone else.”
“But the advertisement still had my picture.”
“Yes.”
“The customers were still being told I supervised.”
He nodded again.
My son had made a series of choices.
That was the hardest part to look at.
I wanted one moment. One terrible decision made under pressure. Something I could separate from all the years before it.
Instead, there had been opportunities to stop.
A folder.
A photograph.
A customer’s question.
A dinner in Madison.
And each time, he had kept going.
“Why did you tell Caroline I borrowed money?”
Bryce took a breath.
“Dad needed to replace money in the business account.”
“Money he had taken out?”
“Yes.”
“Why use me?”
He pressed both palms against his eyes.
“Because she wouldn’t give it to him.”
The kitchen went very still.
I heard Roxy set her cup down.
Bryce lowered his hands.
“She’d already said no to investing. She said we needed to keep the house money separate.”
“So you told her she was helping me.”
“Yes.”
“And the dinner?”
He stared at the table.
“Bryce.”
“Dad said if you and Judith started talking, it would get complicated.”
I felt my sister move closer behind me.
I didn’t turn.
“What did you think that meant?”
“I knew what he meant.”
The words were barely above a whisper.
For two weeks, I had wondered whether my clothes had embarrassed my son.
Whether I had laughed too loudly around Caroline.
Whether I had mentioned a job site one time too many.
All those nights, I had been examining myself for the flaw that made me unfit to sit at their table.
“You needed them not to trust me,” I said.
He started to answer.
Stopped.
Then he nodded.
I sat back.
“And Whitney being your amazing mom?”
He looked toward the hallway.
“Dad said it would make things look normal.”
I looked at the boy in the graduation photograph.
Then at the man sitting in my kitchen.
“You let me believe you were ashamed of what I do.”
Tears slipped down his face.
“I know.”
“You knew exactly how much that would hurt.”
“Yes.”
I couldn’t speak for a while.
Bryce reached across the table.
I moved my hand into my lap.
He pulled his arm back slowly.
“I’m not signing this,” I said.
“I know.”
“No. Hear me. I will not say I supervised work I never saw. I will not say I borrowed money I never received. And I will not lie to Caroline so you can keep her.”
He nodded, crying silently.
“If you want to begin fixing anything, you send her the truth. You preserve your records. And you get your own legal advice.”
“Will you come with me?”
The question came out small.
I looked at him.
“I can help you find someone to call. I cannot be the person who tells you this will be all right.”
He bent his head.
For the first time in his life, I let the uncertainty stay between us.
Then his phone lit up.
DAD.
Bryce stared at it.
The call stopped.
A message appeared.
He read it, and the color drained from his face.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Nothing.”
“Bryce.”
He turned the phone toward me.
Did she sign? Don’t leave the packet if she won’t.
I looked at the envelope.
“How many pages did he give you?”
“I don’t know.”
I picked it up and emptied it.
Two more sheets slid onto the table.
One was a copy of a company form.
The other was a printed email.
Elaine Mercer’s name appeared at the top.
For a moment, I thought Victor had somehow obtained our correspondence from that afternoon.
Then I saw the date.
Twelve years earlier.
During the divorce.
I recognized Elaine’s office address.
Beneath it was a forwarded message from Victor to the lawyer who had represented him.
My eyes moved down the page.
Proposed buyout of Joanne’s interest in marital residence: $42,000.
I stopped breathing.
Forty-two thousand dollars.
The exact amount of the debt they claimed I owed.
“Jo?” Roxy said.
I read the next line.
Client confirms funds will be delivered to Joanne Hollis upon execution of attached acknowledgment.
I had signed an acknowledgment during the divorce.
I remembered sitting in Elaine’s office.
I remembered being told that the money would be delivered through the closing process.
But the transfer had been delayed.
Then disputed.
Then tied up with a claim Victor made about an old joint account, until I had spent so much trying to resolve it that I agreed to revisit it later.
Later had become survival.
Work.
Support payments.
A blue bedroom waiting for my son.
Roxy leaned over my shoulder.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“I don’t know yet.”
But I was already reaching for my phone.
I photographed the email and sent it to Elaine.
Then I called.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Jo?”
“Please look at what I just sent.”
I heard her moving.
A door closed.
Then silence.
Long enough for Bryce to look up.
Long enough for me to hear the refrigerator motor switch off.
Finally, Elaine spoke.
“Where did you get this?”
“Victor sent a packet for me to sign. It was in the envelope.”
“Do not give him any of it back.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“What is it?”
“I need to compare it to the old file before I say more.”
“Elaine.”
She paused.
Then her voice became very careful.
“Jo, the forty-two thousand dollars may never have been a debt you owed Victor.”
Across the table, Bryce went still.
“It may be the money Victor still owes you.”
END PART 4…
