“So you paid off the investigator,” I said.

Mother did not deny it.

She just nodded, her shoulders shaking under her silk blouse.

“We told them we were in the yard when it started,” she said. “We said we ran in and pulled you out.”

“But you didn’t,” I said.

My voice was flat, empty of the emotion that was choking her.

“The neighbor did.”

Mother covered her face again.

“He died three years ago,” she whispered. “We kept paying his family to stay quiet.”

The officer wrote something down in a small notepad, his pen scratching against the paper.

He looked at the rusted canister.

“And this canister of kerosene?” he asked.

“It was in the shed,” Father said, his voice suddenly hollow.

He turned back around, but he looked smaller now, his shoulders slumped.

“We told the police the fire started from an electrical short,” Father said. “We had to hide the accelerant. If they knew there was kerosene inside, they would have looked closer at how it ignited.”

Chloe dropped the wet paper onto the concrete.

She looked at her hands, then at me.