Bacon spat grease from the griddle when Alice first got word of the arsonist.

Jim played hero to the kids, cooking a hot breakfast on a school morning. “It says someone set fire to the bushes outside the Porters’ house.” He studied his phone while the bacon began to burn. Alice took the tongs from him.

“The new neighbors across the street spotted it and called 911.” Jim read from his phone. “Gabby Ganon says, We brought out a few gallons of water we had saved for an emergency and put out the fire before the fire truck even got there. But the fire fighters came out and hung out looking at the burned bush for an hour. Did you hear fire trucks last night?”

“No.” Alice turned the bacon. Two strips were black enough already that Cecelia wouldn’t eat them.

The Nextdoor neighborhood social media was Jim’s latest obsession. Little surprise given how much time he already spent scrolling through Facebook and Twitter feeds. They found practical information now and again, but Alice mostly found it off-putting to read neighbors’ petty complaints about families who left their trash cans at the curb too long after the garbage truck had come through or who didn’t mow their lawns often enough.

It was fall 2018, and political squabbling had turned off Alice for good. It hooked Jim.

“Wasn’t there another fire last week?” Jim asked. “Another set of bushes over on the other side of the street?”

Alice maneuvered around him to fetch a plate for the bacon, and a second for toast. She fetched the butter from the fridge door and, on second thought, the fruit salad from the bottom shelf. She spotted a fortune cookie, still in its wrapper, in a corner of the floor—a vestige from Chinese takeout over the weekend, an encapsulation of what a mess the kitchen perpetually was. She was the only one to ever lift a finger to clean it. She picked up the cookie and left it on the counter as she looked at the clock. Still enough time for Rob to catch his bus.

Jim grabbed the fortune cookie and opened it without any acknowledgment he was surprised to find it there. He cracked the cookie shell and put half in his mouth before extracting the little white slip of paper. “Some things must be broken before they can be mended.”

Outside the window, Alice spied the young couple next door, surveying their backyard, maybe plotting a garden. They’d moved in over the summer. Twenty-somethings, probably renters. The houses all looked the same up and down the street, raised ranches with postage-stamp backyards. The boy was always clad in sleeveless shirts. He had a word—maybe a name—tattooed down his arm. Alice had never stood close enough to decipher it. The girl had long, kinky red hair and fetched packages from the front walk barefoot. In the summer, she tanned in a periwinkle bikini in the backyard as if the time spent in the sun and the swimsuit might manifest a swimming pool to lounge by. In the chill of late September, the boy still left his arms exposed, but the girl had retreated to an oversized sweatshirt. They sipped from big ceramic coffee mugs. Alice had never seen them look hurried.

“I don’t understand why someone would set a fire at the Porter house,” Jim said. “They’re the nicest people.”

The Porters were church goers, but not the sanctimonious types. Tom Porter was known to snow-blow not only his own driveway but half the street after bad storms and Mrs. Porter was a popular third-grade teacher who’d taught Rob. They had four kids, all of them bright, the kinds of athletes and honor roll students who garnered little profiles in the local paper. Alice tried to picture the outside of their house. Was it one of the little bushes out front or the hedge at the edge of their property?

“Probably teenagers.” Jim scrolled, his thumb moving faster now. “That’s what all the comments say. Dumb kids.”

Alice took one last glance at the neighbors as they kissed, and she could have sworn the girl opened her eyes to look straight back at her through the kitchen window. “We were young once, too,” Alice picked up the plate of toast, the plate of bacon. “We never set fires.” She spun around too fast and collided with Jim. He spilled orange juice onto his button-up. The bacon plate fell to the floor, strips and shards littered into cookie crumbs, stray hairs, and other kitchen detritus no one had swept up.

Rob didn’t look up from his own phone as he stood, walked to the pantry and fetched a box of Honey Nut Cheerios.

 

Years earlier, Jim would half-hope for Rob to miss the school bus. Having to make the extra stop on his drive to the insurance office made him late, but he enjoyed listening to the kid talk nonsense.

Nowadays, twelve-year-old Rob didn’t talk in the car. Four-year-old Cece took her cues from him and didn’t babble either. Meanwhile, Jim would’ve felt content enough to play The Marc Maron Show over the car speakers, but didn’t want to be the one to shut down any prospect of conversation in case one of the kids had wanted talk, besides which the kids were old enough not to be oblivious to curse words. No telling what Cece would repeat to her mother.

Stopped at the red light, Jim checked Nextdoor. In a new comment on the thread about the burned shrubbery on their street. Pattie Murray proposed If it is some stupid teenagers, they should be tried as adults. They could’ve killed somebody. Whoever the kids were, Jim imagined they might feel proud of themselves. All down the street, any family on Nextdoor was talking about the fire.

Jim glanced back at Rob in the rearview mirror. He had an alibi, in his bedroom, playing a video game with his friends audible through the door in blasts of digital gunfire, in Rob making comments into his headset about how whoever was listening should come get some.

A car horn roused Jim, as Cecelia informed him, “Green light means go.”

 

Gabby Ganon: Fire Department told the Porters someone probably threw a cigarette butt out the window. But then the Porters heard them say it was weird because they didn’t see any cigarette butts.

 

The next morning was smoother. Alice had a Zoom meeting first thing after Jim and the kids were out of the house. A follow up with a client who worked for a children’s chorus Alice was designing a new logo for—a non-meeting, because the poor “executive assistant” hadn’t gotten feedback from the “executive director” who made all the decisions in their two-person office but didn’t have time to attend a virtual meeting.

Alice had started her freelance graphic design career two years before. Something to engage her and save money toward renovations. Nonetheless, a job she could set her own hours for, and she’d be home if the kids got sick. She’d imagined busier and quieter times, passing on projects that didn’t interest her the way she never could when she worked for an advertising firm before Rob was born.

She’d found too much ebb, though. Not enough flow. And she couldn’t pass on gigs when the gigs didn’t even present themselves, nor threaten to walk from a client who took too long making up her mind about minute details because, realistically, what else did Alice have to do? The meeting, at least, would count as a billable hour.

After the meeting, Alice poured her second cup of coffee and picked up her phone. She had a rotation of checking her own Facebook, then Jim’s, then Jim’s Twitter, then Jim’s Instagram. Neither of them posted to Facebook much anymore, especially since Alice read an article explaining why they shouldn’t share pictures of children. He didn’t post too much to Instagram either, but did a fair amount on Twitter, mostly retweeting NBA trade rumors and commentary on them. She found it more telling to keep track of Tweets he had “liked” which all showed up in order in a subsection of his profile on the Twitter app, offering perspective on unspoken interests, his celebrity crushes, any new people in his life.

Alice was back to doom scrolling her own Facebook feed when the messages from Missy Crouse came in.

u do graphic design, right?

that’s what ur profile says

Alice had gone to high school with Missy and didn’t think she’d heard from her again until a Facebook friend request around 2010 when it seemed like everyone got on social media. Alice had accepted as a courtesy, because Missy was the kind of person Alice didn’t have any reason not to like. They’d never really been friends either, though. Alice wasn’t even certain she’d recognize Missy at this point, her profile picture a silhouette of a body kneeling in meditation or prayer.

Hi! Alice typed. I’m freelancing now, yes.

She had a sense of where the conversation was headed. Another stay-at-home mom looking for part-time work to add meaning to her life and a second paycheck, if only she could figure out how to get a foot in the door in the field. People had always told her she was a good artist. So, would it be better to enroll in classes at the community college first, or to wing it on her own graphic design career? And Alice would have to decide if it were better to explain she had a four-year degree in graphic design and it wasn’t something to pick up as a hobby, or to offer vague encouragement that would pointedly lead nowhere.

While Alice waited for Missy to type, she opened Nextdoor on her phone to check for news about the fire from two nights before, but the first post she saw was about a new fire.

This one was farther from their house, maybe a quarter-mile down, toward the end the street, neighbors she’d never met. A photo this time. At first blush, it looked something like a mushroom cloud before Alice zoomed in to parse the orange flames and the red and white lights of the firetruck, the glow around each in the camera lens. The post was too new for comments speculating about what happened but did have several emoticon reactions. Open-mouthed shock. Red-faced fury. Blue tears.

I need help redesigning my school’s website, Missy wrote. Can u help?

Alice snapped to attention. For big advertising firms, a school might be small potatoes, but to Alice’s fledgling business, it meant an institution with real funding, modest as it may be. No question if she could do the work pro bono and awkward negotiation upward from there. Not to mention schools didn’t disappear overnight, a business idea abandoned. They stuck.

What’s the name of the school? Alice asked.

The reply came quickly: The Way of Fire.

 

The kids called her Aunt Penny—a detail impossible to miss because both kids the young woman chased around at the playground said her name over and over again.

As in, Aunt Penny, can we go down the big slide?

And, Aunt Penny, can I have a juice?

And, Aunt Penny, can we go home?

Jim’s home life wasn’t so different. Cece was still in the mode of saying Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, louder on each repetition, and asking for whatever her heart desired. But Jim had found some reprieve. At twelve, Rob could shoulder some of the load of helping out with his sister if he didn’t have his earbuds in, tuned too loud to hear the requests. He was good about watching her at the playground—tending to her well enough Jim wasn’t certain he even needed to accompany them anymore.

Alice had needed a break. There’d been another fire on the street. More bushes, a little closer to home. Neither of them knew about it until someone posted to Nextdoor in the afternoon, and it was all she could talk about when Jim got home. So, he volunteered to take the kids out for a while before dinner. “Have a glass of wine,” he said. “Relax.”

At the playground, Jim stayed away from the action, perched on the arm of a cement bench, dedicating a third of his attention to his phone, a third to staying conscious of where Rob and Cecelia were on the playground, a third to Aunt Penny. She looked familiar. She might have been their next-door neighbor—he never got a good look at her. Maybe a college student or fresh out, hair flaming red. A cool girl, he surmised, as she chased the two boys someone had left her.

Aunt Penny announced it was time for a snack break and the kids ran ahead of her, screaming. Jim had to hand it to her. Though the kids weren’t her own, she could excite them with mundane things—the words snack break clearly engrained in them as a cause for electricity.

The bigger of Aunt Penny’s boys, whom Jim gauged to be six or seven, alternated bites between an apple and a banana, while the littler one, probably a year or two younger, sucked a yogurt smoothie from a pouch.

“Big appetites, huh?” Jim asked.

Aunt Penny was a beat delayed in looking at him, as if she hadn’t realized he were speaking to her, probably enjoying those few seconds while the kids had their mouths full and weren’t saying her name. She smiled politely and popped the top on an orange can of sparkling water. If she had an extra and offered him one, Jim decided he would accept it. Alice would crucify him if he let the kids eat from a stranger’s cooler, but he could make his own decisions and maybe sharing a soft drink would break the ice.

“A Penny for your thoughts?” he tried and immediately cringed at himself. Was he even capable of humor that wasn’t a dad joke anymore? Hopefully he would at least come across as harmless to this girl half his age and not creepy.

But she told him he could call her Penelope. “Penny’s what my family calls me. Them and my boyfriend.”

Jim couldn’t tell if she said boyfriend pointedly to drop a hint, or if the word only came across with more gravity for being the last thing she said before the littler kid yanked the yogurt pouch’s spout from between his teeth and flicked yogurt over his brother. Aunt Penny defused the situation. “Relax. You know it was an accident.” She told the younger brother he should still apologize as she dabbed at the yogurt drops with a Kleenex she produced out of thin air, before the older boy snatched it to clean himself, a little sore about it all, but more indignant at her cleaning him like a toddler.

Jim thought he’d ask her if she’d heard about the fires—he didn’t know if a young person like her would be on Nextdoor, and maybe practical information could buy him some good will. She was occupied, though, and he decided to cut his losses. He looked for his own kids. It took a few seconds to spot Rob with Cece She hesitated at the top of the big metal and plastic play apparatus full of tunnels and slides and bars to climb on. Rob stood a head taller than the tube of the tallest slide. He was holding Cece’s hands while she gathered the courage to go down. Jim could just make out him asking, “Are you ready?”

 

Two nights passed without a fire.

Alice had started peeking out the window in case she spotted flames but coaxed herself out of it. Even if someone were setting fires on purpose, on a long enough street the odds of landing on their house seemed slim. She could lose her mind looking out every time she thought to and made a rule not to check more than once every thirty minutes unless she heard something.

So, she had a poor night’s sleep and a typically hectic morning getting everyone out the door before she got herself ready for her meeting with Missy. They’d continued messaging and Missy sent a link to her current websites, an atrocity that looked worse than what someone could make with a free blog template, more like the type of GeoCities page Alice would dabble with in high school, when the Internet was fledgling. On top: The Way of Fire, in big block letters with pixelated graphics of campfires on either side. From there, the page listed classes, from Tae Kwon Do and jiu jitsu geared toward kids in the after-school hours, to the featured Way of Fire class every weekday evening.

Wear comfortable clothes, Missy had messaged. Like what you’d wear to work out.

Alice was wary of whatever Missy had in mind for this meeting but remembered principles from when she worked for the advertising firm—mantras like the customer’s always right and meet them where they are to not push all her best ideas or be overly critical of a bad website or business plan. Better to make incremental improvements and have the client come back asking for more help.

So, Alice packed her laptop and wore black wind pants, a royal blue V-neck t-shirt she supposed she could have worked out in, but that still looked reasonably professional.

The Way of Fire was in an outer part of Shermantown Alice rarely drove through unless she were on her way out of town. It sat between a dollar store and print shop, where Alice imagined Missy had had the sign for her business made—a banner that matched the top of her website, hung at an imperfect angle. Alice wasn’t sure how weather resistant it would prove against the wind and snow to come. Barring the banner, Alice might have mistaken this business for a drugstore or a strip mall Chinese restaurant from the outside.

She peered through the glass doors and couldn’t see anyone, but even on a cloudy day, it was hard to see past the reflection of herself, the parking lot. She let herself inside.

The place was immaculate. It smelled of lavender. The laminate floors were new, and a great big, black wrestling mat stretched across the center, not a single crack in its vinyl exterior, with other, smaller mats around the perimeter, pristine mirrors lining the walls. An enormous vase rested in one corner, too fragile for a space like this. Alice took a step to look more closely, and that’s when Missy made her presence known.

“No shoes on the mat.”

Alice hadn’t noticed her, seated cross-legged, laptop in front of her, clad in a black rash guard with three-quarters-length sleeves, and compression pants, the legs stopping at her calves. Alice might have mistaken it for a conservative bathing suit were it not for the context of a martial arts school.

“I’m sorry.” Alice took a step back and started to make her way around the mat.

Missy stopped her again. “It’s fine. Take your shoes off.”

Alice didn’t want to take her shoes off. She didn’t mean to engage in anything but a business meeting about website design—and maybe redesigning the banner outside—but something about Missy’s voice was authoritative. Alice set down her bag, and clumsily propped herself on one foot at a time to remove her sneakers.

Missy came to her. Whatever authority she had didn’t come from physical stature. Though Alice herself was only five-foot-four, she found Missy shorter than she’d remembered—five-feet-flat at best in her bare feet. Thin, but wiry. She still had the mess of curly, thick brown hair Alice remembered from high school, but she’d grown into it for a look that appeared less haphazard, more cultivated.

Missy crossed the mat in even, practiced strides, at home in this space, the way Alice used to trust herself walking through the house in the dark before children had littered floors with matchbook cars and stray Legos. Missy reached out her hand to shake. “It’s good to see you.”

They caught up a little, chatting more than Alice ever remembered them doing when they were in each other’s daily lives. She explained away that she wasn’t in great shape—two kids taking their toll on her body and not having time to work out since. Missy informed her she had three kids. She had full custody and had started studying martial arts to defend herself against her bastard ex-husband.

“Sometimes you have to fight for the things you really believe in.” Missy poured them both black tea without asking, the teapot poised on an altar near the vase. “I studied Tae Kwon Do first, then jiu jitsu, a hodge-podge of other things. A lot of boxing training lately, but I never competed in that.”

“Impressive.” Alice never knew quite what to say when someone shared something objectively impressive, but not of any interest for her, like when Jim played in a rec center basketball league. He came home and told her how many rebounds he had, and Alice did her best to role model enthusiasm for the kids—how to be supportive of someone they cared about, all while wishing Jim would lend a hand with the dishes, or at least shower so he stopped dripping sweating on his chair at the kitchen table.

Martial arts and fighting didn’t mean much to Alice. The closest she’d come to that world was when she and Jim used to wrestle now and again when they were much younger, always playful because he was much bigger and stronger than her. The strain against one another was more foreplay than competition.

“There’s a peace that comes with knowing you can handle yourself in a confrontation.” Missy took a silent sip from her teacup, her every movement measured, precise. “I don’t shrink away if a strange man approaches me in a parking lot. It’s not just about fighting or self-defense, though. Back in high school, I’d be terrified to talk to a cool girl like you.”

Alice laughed out loud, because, surely, she was joking. Alice had her small circle of friends. She’d started dating Jim the fall of senior year and fallen into his crowd, too. But she wasn’t popular by any standard.

“I guess cool is relative.” Missy smiled, and though Alice didn’t believe in psychics or extrasensory abilities, in this moment—in this space—she was all too ready to believe Missy could read her mind. “You seemed cool to me.”

Missy talked more, laying out The Way of Fire as not only the name of her school or a technique, but a way of life. She taught different combat forms, yes, but also meditation, reflection, trust exercises.

“The only way to really understand is to experience it.” Missy took a step back. “Let me show you something.

Before Alice could follow what was happening or ask her not to, Missy had advanced on her, Alice’s wrist in her hands, Missy’s shoulder in her armpit. The next things she knew, Alice was flipping through the air, easy as a quarter flipping from a thumb, landing flat-backed, air rushing out of her lungs. Missy collapsed on her, thighs around her arm, calf in her face, ankles crossed. Missy still had Alice’s wrist. Alice felt her elbow lock into place.

“I could break your arm from his position,” Missy said.

“Please don’t.”

The transition was fluid, too fast for Alice to follow the mechanics. Missy straddled her chest, shifting her legs, still clinging to the same wrist, not hard enough to hurt, but firm. Alice recognized this was what Missy did as a teacher. A paradox—to know how to hurt someone, but so carefully condition oneself not to. There would be no mistake, even if Alice struggled and threw off the mechanics of what Missy was aiming for. Missy would adjust, too.

Missy rolled, so Alice rolled, stomach down to the mat, neck and arm trapped between Missy’s thighs. A light squeeze. It didn’t hurt to be there, less an attack than an embrace against the cool material of Missy’s pants, her soft, smooth skin.

“This is a triangle choke,” Missy said. “If I squeeze, you go to sleep.”

Her breath was perfectly even, no sign of exertion at all, which made Alice suddenly conscious of how heavy her own breath was, still trying to catch up from the initial collision with the mat.

“Please don’t.”

Missy let her go and rolled backward, disentangling, arriving at a kneeling position. “When you’re ready, try it on me.”

“What?”

Alice could follow well enough what Missy, meant, though, to try the same sequence of moves on her. Alice demurred, but Missy wasn’t having it, moving herself into position behind Alice. She slid an arm around Alice’s neck, no choke this time, though it might have turned into one. Alice recognized Missy might hurt or subdue another human from any position at all. But she wasn’t out to hurt her, and fed her arm down until Alice could take a wrist. Missy half-executed the move on herself, to the point that, with the height differential and Missy’s body leaned over Alice’s, it was easier to flip her onto her back than it would’ve been to hold her.

Alice released Missy’s arm, but Missy kept it in the air and told her not to. She guided her through applying the armbar. “You want my elbow right in your pelvis.” Missy met her more than halfway, sliding her body into the hold. “Then you pull my arm straight—slowly. Only do it fast if you really mean to break it.”

Alice tried to think of a situation when she’d really want to break someone’s arm, and marveled, in the same instant, at Missy’s willingness to lend her body to someone who didn’t know how to not to fracture it. Missy had learned to execute every move and transition not to hurt a student; she must’ve known how to protect herself.

Suddenly, Alice had Missy in a triangle choke, Missy continuing to coach, pulling Alice’s leg with her free hand to demonstrate the difference between a straight-legged squeeze—tighter, but easier for an opponent to slip free from, as opposed to burying her foot in her knee pit, the proper shape of a triangle. Missy slapped at Alice’s thigh finally, and Alice wasn’t sure what to make of it, but as Missy’s face turned a shade of pink, she gave her some slack on the hold.

“I was tapping out,” Missy said. “That means it’s time to let go.”

They drank water together afterward, Missy from a tall, thin metal bottle lined in bumper stickers from the WFUR local radio station, another read OAR. Wasn’t that the name of a band Jim used to listen to? Alice drank from a paper cone by the water cooler. As she drained her second one, Missy told her to drink as much as she wanted, and Alice recognized herself, all but panting, sticky with perspiration. Missy hadn’t broken a sweat.

“It’s empowering to know you can defend yourself. Assert yourself. And it’s catching on—the school.” Missy said. “The business is growing. We’re on our way to being the top martial arts training facility in Shermantown.”

Alice bit her tongue on asking how many martial arts training facilities there could possibly be in Shermantown. “But the website needs work.” She immediately worried she’d overstepped her bounds. You had to let a client know they needed you, yes, but you didn’t want to disparage what they’d done on their own to the point they got indignant.

Missy didn’t bristle. “The website’s the first impression we make to a lot of people. I want to make sure it communicates what we’re about.”

Alice went back to the work bag she’d all but forgotten—had uncharacteristically forgotten to check on while her laptop was inside it—to fetch her computer. “Let me show you something.”

 

Gabby Ganon: Any word on the fires? Does anyone have anything on their security cameras?

 

There had been a sliver of time when date nights were a glorious thing.

One of Alice’s parents or, more often, Jim’s mom came to the house and the kids were excited to see them—particularly Jim’s mom, because she always snuck them Reese’s peanut butter cups. The heyday of those nights out together had converged when Uber became available in Shermantown. Jim and Alice went to Unlucky Ned’s for beers. It only took two or three for Alice to suggest they get on the dancefloor, and Jim’s own tolerance was shot to hell, his college drinking days a distant memory.

“Don’t go.” Cecelia hugged her mother tight on the couch. “Stay here.”

Alice smoothed her hair. “You love Grandma Carolyn.”

“I love you.” Cecelia had gone through cycles like this. Whereas Rob had been ready and eager to go to school when the time came and made Jim wistful for when he was little and clingy, Cecelia had dragged her feet into pre-school, until Alice had actually broached the topic of homeschooling. Jim put his foot down. If they coddled her like that, she wasn’t going to be ready for school the next year, or the year after. She’s going to fall behind if we don’t push her, Jim insisted, and he could tell Alice didn’t really want to homeschool because she didn’t press the issue. Cecelia almost immediately established herself as a better student than her brother, a better student than Jim had ever been. More like her mother.

Jim noticed but did not comment on Cecelia’s choice of words. I love you. A pointedly singular you that wasn’t I love you and Dad or I love you two. The kid made a teary mess of Alice’s top, to the point she’d probably want to change, then when she came back downstairs, they’d go through these histrionics all over again. Just thinking about the scene and apologizing to his mother about the drama was exhausting.

Jim poured himself a glass of water from the Brita and spied the fortune from the morning before, still on the counter where he’d left it at breakfast time. Some things must be broken before they can be mended.

It was still 6:10, according to Jim’s phone. His mother wasn’t due until 6:30. “Ma probably hasn’t left the house yet,” he said. “We can do this another night.”

Alice glared at him for an instant, but then something shifted. She wasn’t angry so much as sad as she rubbed a hand over Cece’s back. “We made plans.” She kept her voice even. “We’re going.”

He thought he might allude to the fortune cookie wisdom. Maybe their plans were one of the things they should break.

He let it go. They did go out. Alice didn’t bother changing and everyone put on a happier face when Grandma arrived—even Cecelia, who transferred her clinging attachment, holding Jim’s mom tight when she came through the door.

“You give the best hugs,” Mom said, then waved a hand to Jim and Alice. “Go enjoy your night.”

They didn’t talk much in the car, but when they got to Unlucky Ned’s, Jim felt relieved. A night out like this was a step backward through time when they scrapped whatever plans they had for dinner at home and went out the bar on a whim to drink and dance and eat chicken wings, not on a schedule, but because they were famished.

It helped that Jessie was tending bar.

Jessie was Jim’s best friend’s sister growing up, and he’d loved her since they were kids.

Alice and Jessie were opposites. Alice was uncomplicated to love. Stable. Case in point, they’d started dating senior year, went to the same college, and moved back to their hometown to marry and start a family. Meanwhile, Jessie was in and out of Shermantown, always some cross-country or international adventure for Jim to track on Facebook.

Jessie hadn’t reached out to him when she came back this time and he couldn’t go straight to her with Alice there. He’d never come out and told Alice about his infatuation, his flirtation, his close calls with Jessie. Still, Alice always seemed to know.

So, Jim went to another bartender while Jessie tended to a large party on the far side of the bar, and ordered a Blue Moon for each of them, a basket of popcorn for a starter, and signaled toward Alice’s table where he should bring Jim’s burger, Alice’s wedge salad.

“I had a meeting today,” Alice volunteered while they waited.

Wednesday night, no live band, no line dancing or karaoke. Jim wouldn’t have minded such distractions; he’d actually found himself a little disappointed at the quiet.

“A new client,” Alice said.

It felt like a trap. One of the rules of date night was they weren’t supposed to talk about work—the kind of rule couples made to connect, but Jim had grown suspicious in their case the rule was designed to disadvantage him because, after all, work was where he spent forty hours a week—virtually all the time he didn’t already spend with Alice and the kids. They weren’t supposed to talk about the kids either.

She asked if he remembered Missy Crouse.

“She dated Will Peek, right?”

“You’re thinking of Mary Decker. They were friends. Missy was the mousier one. She never said a word in class.”

Jim did remember Missy. She’d sat in front of him in a class or two and had a pleasant slope to her shoulders, wild hair that invited him as a teenager to imagine what it would like splayed across a pillow. His mind had wandered to a lot of girls like that.

Reminiscing, he’d missed the start of Alice’s story, but caught on Missy was a martial arts instructor now, and Alice had agreed to redesign her website.

“That’s great, right?” Jim asked. “She’ll make a good client.”

“I think so.” Alice drank from her beer.

She seemed annoyed with him, and Jim tried to piece together if he’d missed something important, or maybe phrasing his congratulations as a question gave her pause. Maybe it wasn’t so great, because though Alice had wanted to get her freelance career off the ground, this sort of meeting was supposed to be run of the mill, the kind of progress she’d enjoy on a weekly basis, not cause for celebration.

Before he could decide what tack to follow up with or wait out Alice to say more, Jessie arrived at their table. She’d grown out her hair since the last time Jim saw her. She wore her bartending uniform, a black tank top, arms bare with the familiar oak tree tattoo all over her left upper arm.

Jessie had their food and didn’t bother asking who ordered the burger. She bent over to hug Jim and her hair smelled like oranges. She hugged Alice, too, who offered a stiffer pat on the back, less the kind of hug you gave an old friend than the kind she’d give Jim’s brothers at family functions. “You should’ve said hello when you came in.”

“I thought I saw you.” Jim kept his body facing Alice more than Jessie, even as he spoke to her. “I didn’t know you were back in town.”

“You know me and Shermantown. I keep leaving, but I always find myself back here.”

Jim wanted to ask where she’d gone in between. She might’ve been anywhere at all—the Amazonian Rain Forest, Thailand, Phoenix.

“Could I get a glass of water too, please?” Alice asked.

Jessie kept the smile on her face, but is more waxed on, less authentic. The smile she gave customers. “Absolutely.” Jessie waved from the elbow, and she was gone.

Before Jim could say anything, Alice had her phone out. “I’m nervous about the kids.”

“Relax. Right about now, I’m sure they’re all scheming how late they can stay up past their bedtime, but still act like their sound asleep when we get home.” The corner of the label on Jim’s beer bottle was peeling and Jim couldn’t resist fidgeting at it with this thumb. “Maybe Mom found the roll of cookie dough in the fridge.” No, not maybe. Of course she’d gone looking for and found it, unless she’d smuggled in cookies of her own in her purse. The minute she became a grandmother, she’d abandoned old ideas about balanced diets and strict schedules, embracing her new role as spoiler of children. “I just hope they save some for us.”

Alice set her phone down on the table, open to Nextdoor. “I’m worried there’s going to be another fire.”

Jim imagined a fire threatening their house. Jim’s mother was getting too old to carry Cecelia out in a hurry, especially if she weren’t cooperating, and Rob might be too oblivious to notice a fire. But between the two of them, they could get themselves and Cece to safety. “Maybe our neighborhood arsonists have gotten the fire thing out of their systems.”

“I don’t think so.” Alice sighed. “It’s like that weird mole you had on your back last year, and you kept saying it might go away on its own, and I kept telling you if it were skin cancer, the most important thing was to get it checked early.”

“It was an in-grown hair.”

“But when you finally had it checked, we knew and could stop obsessing over it.”

Jim hadn’t obsessed. The in-grown hair had occupied his back, and he probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all if Alice hadn’t pointed it out. It was nice to get it resolved, but he also wasn’t sure it’d been worth the drive to and from the dermatologist’s office, sitting in the waiting room, meeting with the doctor, the fifty-dollar co-pay.

“Everyone in the neighborhood’s scared, like they’re waiting for someone to tell them what to do.” Alice’s face was turning red. She called it her Asian flush, a chemical reaction to drinking because a certain percentage of certain ethnicities didn’t have an enzyme or something to process alcohol. Half a beer plenty to spark it. The flush made her look drunk, made her face warm. “I think we should start a patrol. We can make a schedule for all the neighbors we can trust so no one’s giving up more than an hour of their night. Maybe we wouldn’t even have to go every night.”

Alice knew how to manage logistics. He’d admired that about her when they were younger and she was a yearbook editor, or in college when she’s decided she was vehemently opposed to US military action in Iraq. Someone else had had the idea of staging a protest on campus, but Alice had arranged for professional printing of handbills with action steps they could take like writing their representatives in congress. Someone else had the idea to road trip to a march in DC, but Alice had found the sixteen-passenger van rental and a local hippie over the age of twenty-five to drive the thing.

However, Alice could get in over her head. She’d decide the family should go on an Alaskan cruise, foregone sleep researching options, only to communicate, crestfallen, to Jim in the morning that it was too expensive and impractical to weave between the kids’ school schedules and Jim’s busy times of year at work. Jim tried to share in the disappointment—the mourning—for a trip he’d only thought of as a flight of fancy. A delicate balance existed between being supportive but tempering expectations, protecting Alice from herself.

“We don’t really know the neighbors anymore.” Jim took a bite from one of his steak fries. “Remember, the Pawelecs moved out last year? And we didn’t even see the Maggiano family split town.” The Maggianos leaving had been a particularly bitter pill to swallow, friends since high school who’d brought them casseroles to freeze after Rob was born. Rob had been friends with one of their boys when they were little. But then the Christmas card they sent down the street came back, marked return to sender, and when they asked Rob, he said they’d moved years back. “We know a few families, but it’s not enough to organize.”

“We’ll use Nextdoor,” Alice said. “That’s where we’re hearing about everything anyway. I’ll put up a post outlining what I’m thinking and asking people to PM me if they’re interested. And I’ll try to vet them all—we can meet up in person, too.”

“And if this arsonist shows up, claiming to be a concerned citizen?”

“I’ll feel them out, and if anyone gives weird vibes, we can keep an extra eye on them.”

Jim had a good start on one of the corners of the beer bottle label, peeled about an inch down from where it started. Given enough time, he could get it all off clean and see his reflection in the surface of the glass beneath.

Somebody came by and dropped off Alice’s water. Not Jessie. Someone younger.

“Don’t you worry the arsonist might start watching you, too? If he knows you’re the one spear-heading the community watch?” Jim peeled back the top bun from his burger to squirt some ketchup. “Shouldn’t we leave this to the police?”

Alice didn’t say anything at first. She hadn’t touched her salad yet. She had a hurt pout on her face that he’d seen it back at the house, when she insisted they see through their date plans regardless of how much they upset Cecelia. “I wish you’d fight for us.”

 

The next night, Alice worked on the website in an easy chair in the living room where she could peek between the blinds to watch for fires down the street. She was exhausted. When she rested her eyes, she saw flames. Burning bushes. The Way of Fire logos she’d mocked up.

She imagined what the shrubbery outside their house would look like ablaze. She breathed in and the fire shrank. She exhaled and the fire wasn’t in their front yard at all anymore. In a space between imagination, dream, and memory, she found herself at the bonfire their friends had built back when they were high school seniors and she’d lied to her parents about where she was spending the night. Alice and Jim wound up the last two by the fire. They sat, wedged together in a camping chair that strained under their combined weight, her legs over his lap. She told him she wished the fire would never burn out.

The flashing lights outside the living room roused her.

Alice peeked through the blinds and spotted the fire truck. Jim was there, too, at her side. Then Cecelia called from the top of the stairs, asking what the lights were. Jim hollered for her to go back to sleep.

Jim disappeared to tend to Cecelia, and Alice supposed she was lucky he was handling their daughter and that Rob hadn’t woken up (or, more likely, was too absorbed in whatever video game he was playing to register what happened outside).

Alice went outside.

The fire had been across the street and two houses down. The bushes again. The flames were mostly out by the time Alice got there, but little remained of the shrubbery, charred ends protruding from the ground.

A single woman lived in the house. Alice had seen her outside now and again, waved from the car window, but they’d never spoken. She always looked put together, hair tied back tightly, the type of business suits Alice had never owned and never thought of women in their neighborhood wearing.

It took Alice a moment to recognize her in a baggy blue t-shirt, plaid pajama pants, flip-flops, hair in a sloppy ponytail, glasses. “The flames were eight feet high.” She gestured up with her hand.

This neighbor may have exaggerated—not lying but speaking from the point of view of someone startled by fire. “I’m lucky I looked out the window when I did.” An audience of five other neighbors had gathered around. Glenn Callaway, was one of them, standing alongside his oldest son, who must’ve graduated from high school by then, but still lived at home. Glenn had five kids, all older than Alice’s, three of whom were young enough to play with Rob before the high school to elementary school divide became too wide to bridge. It struck Alice that she didn’t recognize the other people there. There really had been a lot of turnover in the neighborhood.

The young couple from next door wandered over, too. The boy sleeveless. The girl still swimming in the oversized sweatshirt she’d worn two mornings before.

A firefighter focused the stream of his hose, the volume of water altogether excessive against the last, dying embers in the bush rubble.

“I could have lost everything,” the woman who lived there said. “I could have died.”

 

Peter Quinton: I got something on my Ring cam. Someone riding around on a bike when the fire started. Then someone running around.

Gabby Ganon: I think the guy running around is the first neighbor who saw the fire and tried to help

Glenn Callaway: I was out there. I don’t remember seeing him.

 

Alice barely slept that night or the next, checking and rechecking the windows on all sides of the house. The master bedroom offered a reasonable view of the street, but it got in her head maybe whoever was starting these fires would branch out from shrubbery facing the street—sacrificing ease of access for reduced visibility and a greater chance at destruction from the sides of houses or backyards. So, to look out from different angles, she crept into Cecelia’s room, and into Rob’s room—he woke up the second time to ask what she was doing, but in a deep enough fog between slumber and waking to accept it when she told him to him to go back to sleep.

Then she opened Nextdoor.

Alice had never created a post before. The people who did post about dogs barking too loudly or to share middling photography of a sunset were frivolous. But Alice couldn’t have been the only one at this point staying up nights watching for flames.

The fires are getting out of control and we need to work together stay safe. Who wants to join me for a neighborhood watch?

Alice finally got to sleep, and by the time she woke, the first responses had trickled in. An overeager young man, whose profile picture showed him clad in hunting camouflage against a snowy backdrop with a rifle over his shoulder, a child—presumably his son—standing hip high with a gun of his own. Then, old Mrs. Crenshaw who lived next door to the Porters who had a lot of logistical questions. Another woman suggested they should coordinate with the police. She was probably right, but Alice didn’t want to wait. She wanted to catch the little bastards or else offer enough deterrent to scare them off. At the least, if they started patrolling now, someone’d spotted a fire and call 911 before it turned deadly.

That next afternoon she posted again, inviting anyone who was interested to meet at the big pavilion at the playground at seven.

There was no one there when she arrived, and she was surprised with how alien the playground space felt. She and Jim took the kids there often, especially when Rob was younger. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever visited the playground when after dark.

But here Alice was. The wind blew hard, chilling her enough she regretted settling for her sweatshirt rather than a proper jacket. She thought she smelled fire, but not the fire of arson—the sweet, warm smell of someone burning leaves. A smell like coming home.

Evan and Paula Malewitz came—a comfort because, even if they were just being nice to an old friend in coming to the meeting to support her, at least they were there and easy to talk to. Then Louis showed up, an older man she recognized from his routine walks around the neighborhood, right leg dragging slightly behind the left. He wore his army vet status with pride in the form of a camouflage baseball cap. Then a young guy, who might have been one of the next-door neighbors—the boy who loaned his girlfriend the big sweatshirt. Alice was too embarrassed at the prospect she should have known him to introduce herself or ask for a name. She put on a friendly smile to say hello and hoped someone else would handle the introduction.

There were eight of them in all. They stood in a circle in the pavilion and Alice considered inviting them to sit at the picnic tables engraved with initials in hearts, band names, curse words—monuments to teen angst.

Having everyone sit might create order. More importantly, it might distract from Alice being shorter than anyone else and disarm her old insecurities about looking like a child, no matter how old she got. Maybe the same insecurities kept her from suggesting anyone sit, though, not wanting to come across like a kid on a power trip or get sideward glances from men incredulous about her taking control.

She also didn’t want to be in charge, either. But as minutes of idle chatter passed, without direction, she spoke up. “Thank you for coming out,” she said. “I wanted to make a plan to protect the neighborhood.”

Evan Malewitz gave her an encouraging nod.

“I was thinking we’d take shifts out on the street. You can drive or you can walk. Something to have a presence. Maybe we even notice someone who looks suspicious.”

“Or catch him in the act,” the maybe-next-door-neighbor said. Louis nodded.

“The important thing is to stay safe,” Alice said hastily. Thinking this all through, the scenario had come to mind that if someone got hurt patrolling the neighborhood at Alice’s suggestion they might sue her. She didn’t want to be responsible for making rules, though. To protect herself. To protect them. She really didn’t know what she was doing. “You should only do what you feel comfortable doing. If I saw someone starting a fire, I’d try to remember what I could, but most of all, I’d get myself safe and call the police.”

Alice had already come up with different permutations of a schedule depending on how many people helped. As it stood, they could get by on half hour shifts they were each responsible for on a nightly basis, seven-thirty to midnight assuming Jim agreed to help, too. They took their picks of time slots and Alice passed around a notepad to collect phone numbers to make a group text.

It felt anticlimactic to end on logistics, no inspirational speech or reassurance, but the group was listless. “Thanks everyone,” she said and waved from the elbow. “Have a good night.”

The Malewitzs and the maybe-neighbor walked away with Alice. “How are Jim and the kids?” Paula asked.

Alice’s mind flashed to them at home, a two-minute walk from where they stood. She had little doubt Rob would be in his room with the door closed. Jim would be absorbed in reading something on his phone—maybe Nextdoor, maybe doom scrolling Facebook. Cecelia would hopefully be playing in proximity to him, not by his design, but because at four she still had an instinct to want the protection of an adult.

“They’re good,” she said. “Jim’s home looking after the two of them. And, you know, we thought we should have someone home in case of a fire.” She realized a beat too late how the last part could come across wrong, because the Malewitzs were both there and might take it as a dig that they were irresponsible to leave their kids.

“Good, good,” Evan said. “I’m sorry this is the reason we’re talking again. We’ve been meaning to invite you all over for dinner. It’s hard with the kids’ sports schedules and work.”

“I know how that goes,” Alice said. She wanted to explain to them she wasn’t only a housewife. She wasn’t sure they’d know what freelance work was, but she could skip that and focus on the website redesign for The Way of Fire. Not that they’d care. Because who thought about martial arts besides parents sending small children off to karate classes?

As she’d found herself doing a lot the past couple days, Alice reset herself by thinking about something else. Her time in Missy’s school. Throwing a body over her shoulder. Collapsing over an arm, an elbow at her pelvis. The transition to the triangle choke. Replay the moves enough in her mind and she could feel them seeping in like muscle memory.

“Have a good night,” Paula said.

“Take care of yourself,” Evan said.

They may have been aware she’d gone somewhere else mentally. But she wasn’t sheepish when she wished them a good night, too. Let them think what they wanted. She focused on the throw. The collapse. The transition.

 

Glenn Callaway: Anybody see anything? Anyone hear anything from the police?

Angela Summers: Maybe it’s over. They got the attention they wanted. Or one of the kids’ moms figured out what they were doing and grounded the little shit.

Gabby Ganon: Don’t let your guard down. That’s what they want.

Emily Pim: My neighbor across the street heard kids running toward the playground after the last fire.

 

By the third night of patrol, Jim knew the routine. Alice came back from walking up and down the street, unspoken self-righteousness about protecting he neighborhood all but dripping off her. And it didn’t matter how long Jim’s days been or what stage the MLB Playoffs had reached or how many runners were on base. She kept checking the time on her phone until he went out. He noticed it conspicuously coincided with his shift, too, when she sent a reminder text to the group, Go down the street at least twice during your shift, and try to mix up the times. We don’t need to be everywhere every second, but we want eyes on the street.

The autumn air felt nice, though, the right temperature to flow easily in and out of his lungs. Jim looked back at the house to be sure he was out of Alice’s sight and pulled his earbuds out of his pocket, so he could at least listen to his true crime podcast The Blotter. This episode was about a serial killer who picked off husbands, then stalked their attractive widows—a pattern it took weirdly long, Jim thought, for the authorities to catch on to. He depended on folks thinking the widows were being hysterical—paranoid because they’d lost their husbands, an expert interviewee said. And he was right. No one listened until it was too late.

The notification chime sounded in his earbud. A text from Louis, an army vet who sent updates to the group text whenever he was on duty, not so stealthily driving his black Range Rover around the block. He often started early and finished late, which was fine by Jim because it removed what pressure Jim otherwise might have felt about diligence, knowing someone else was already doing his job. This text read, suspicious vehicle parked between 9145 and 9147.

Jim couldn’t go home, though. Alice wouldn’t let him hear the end of it. So, he walked. He passed the house that had its Christmas tree up but unlit and wondered if they’d gotten a jump start on the holidays or if they’d never bothered to take it down the year before. He passed the Davenport house, where he spied their three boys’ heads running, the father, Bill, bobbing from side to side. A foam soccer ball hit the window, making the game clear. Bill checked the glass and spotted Jim. They exchanged waves.

Jim had asked Alice what he was supposed to do if he actually did find someone setting a fire. He imagined some scrawny teenager, struggling to keep a match lit in the wind, maybe fumbling with a Bic lighter. It wouldn’t seem right—he was certain he could get in trouble, even—tackling a minor. Record a video, Alice had said. Broadcast it to Facebook live so the evidence won’t disappear, and maybe someone will recognize them. Worse, he imagined a group of teens—because it was probably a social thing, right? Maybe an initiation into some sort of club? He remembered his own mentality as a teenager when he’d fold pretty quickly, one-on-one, at the authority of a parent or a teacher, but emboldened by his friends, he’d make a smart-aleck comment in class or to his basketball coach.

As Jim approached home, he passed a girl on a ladder next door, screwing a mount into the side of her house. She wore a tank top that exposed her pale, thin arms and rode up behind her to reveal a tattoo on her lower back—maybe the sun, maybe a more general ball of fire, he couldn’t tell for sure, only that hints of yellow and orange were clear by whatever combination of street and houselights lit her body.

He went to her. “Aunt Penny, right?” he asked.She stayed focused on what she was doing. “It’s usually only my nephews who call me that,” she said. “Penelope’s fine.”

She had a certain swagger to how she spoke. The kind of girl accustomed to unwanted attention, clumsy attempts at flirtation. Jessie was like that, and it had always sent Jim chasing after her. He liked the way Penelope wore a tool belt around her hips, fastened as tight as it could go but still hanging loose around her waist.

“Can I give you a hand?” he asked.

She turned the screwdriver tight and pulled the next screw from her belt. “I’ve got it.”

Jim and Alice had their own Ring camera, attached to the doorbell, something they’d installed years earlier to make Alice feel better about answering or not answering the door when Jim wasn’t around, and a way to watch in case Amazon packages went missing. Nextdoor made it sound like thefts were rampant, a less urgent concern than burning bushes, but nonetheless, another sign the neighborhood had changed.

“Security camera, huh?” he said. “Probably a good call with the fires.”

“That’s the idea.”

Jim noticed Alice was coming a beat later than he probably should have, a beat too late to make it clear he wasn’t flirting or looking at the young neighbor in a dirty older man sort of way. She walked with her arms crossed, wearing Jim’s old Bills sweatshirt.

“Your wife organized the neighborhood watch, right?” Penny was still focused on her task at hand. “That’s cool.”

“She did.” Jim said as Alice arrived. He put an arm over her shoulders and was surprised at how awkward the motion felt—how, after so many years, they felt like two jigsaw puzzle pieces with knobs and holes misaligned any way he turned them. He turned his attention to Alice. “I was talking about the neighborhood watch. Trying to convince Penny she should join.

“We’re on it,” Penny said. “My boyfriend and I trade out nights, but we’ve got the six-thirty to seven round.”

Jim should have known, he supposed, but all the numbers in the group text were just that—numbers, no names attached to them. Alice messaged a lot the first couple nights. Louis was the only other one who stood out for the regularity of his texts and using military time.

“I came out to check on you,” Alice said. “I hadn’t seen you circle past the house. You know I worry.”

“I know, “Jim said.

A pair of bright headlights turned onto their street. The black Range Rover rolled past, Louis’s window down as he stretched out his hand and pumped a fist up and down twice as if he were pulling the horn on a big rig. Some sort of signal, Jim supposed, maybe something the rest of the watch had agreed on that Jim was oblivious to.

 

Jim was fast asleep on the couch. Alice wiped down the kitchen counters when Louis sent the text the very next night. Suspect apprehended by police at 22:23. Officer confirmed arrest is related to arson. Protocol dictated no further details be disclosed. Appears to be a middle-aged white male, resident of the street.

The group text blew up. First, asking for more details like whom was arrested and how he got caught, and if Louis had a name—all information Louis surely would have volunteered if he had it. When Louis didn’t answer, the conversation took an abrupt turn to talk about the group of them going out for a celebratory beer, maybe the next night?

Alice hadn’t programmed all the names into her phone, and only knew most of them by numbers.

We have plans tomorrow night but maybe this weekend?

Unlucky Ned’s on Saturday?

Too crowded.

what about the place on Windsor?

The hipster place? $10 pints? No thanks.

It’s like they charge more b/c all the beer names are puns like Hoppy Trails To You

They have one called You Make Me Wanna Stout that’s pretty good

oooh… i like a good stout

On and on it went. Alice couldn’t understand how Jim slept through it all, his phone vibrating repeatedly, rattling across the coffee table.

Alice didn’t text back, but rather put on a pair of Jim’s old Birkenstocks. She closed the front door behind her gently and didn’t bother to lock it. She only had to wander to the edge of the driveway to see the flashing lights of two police cruisers.

The cars were parked closely enough for their lights to blur together. Police milled around, but Alice couldn’t see the person who was arrested, or spot any other neighbors out.

She gravitated to the only female police officer on the scene. She was about Alice’s height, her shoulders broader, her blond hair tied back in a high ponytail. Alice asked, “Is this about the fires?”

Another officer intercepted the question. Portly and gray-haired, much taller. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s an active investigation. We can’t discuss it.”

She left them in a daze of relief at the arrest and embarrassment at how she might have come across and thinking what she might add to the group text from her brief time outside. Alice turned the knob of the front door, but it wouldn’t budge. Maybe Jim had roused himself, noticed the door unlocked, and done his due diligence, thinking everyone else was asleep upstairs.

She hadn’t brought her phone out with her. She knocked, harder than she meant to, the adrenaline of the night still pulsing through her.

The door rattled a moment later, though, the lock turning. Her sleeveless neighbor answered the door.

Alice realized her mistake right away. The damn houses looked so much alike, in all her excitement, her attention split, she’d walked to the wrong door. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“No worries.” The boy scratched the back of his head and when he lifted his arm, Alice was at least close enough to read his tattoo. Penny. “Can we help you?”

The girl was there behind him, seated cross-legged on the living room floor, her back leaning against a thread-worn tan sofa. She had a fleece blanket draped over her shoulders, an array of index cards spread out in front of her. A thick, hardcover book rested open over her lap, and another at her side, Classical Electrodynamics. A pizza box rested on the floor, too, a half-eaten pepperoni pie, glossy with grease. Alice wasn’t sure why she’d never thought the girl—maybe the boy, too—were college students.

Alice said she was sorry again and pointed out at the flashing lights of the police car, as though she’d knocked on their door to spread the news about the arsonist getting caught.

The boy smiled kindly. His teeth were very white. “It’s fine,” he said and explained they used to pull into the wrong houses all the time when they first moved in. “You’ll get used to it.”

It took Alice a beat to register what he’d meant. She didn’t correct him, that they’d lived there for nearly two decades, possibly since before these neighbors were born.

“I’m glad the guy setting the fires got caught,” the girl added. “We were worried.”

A worn paperback rested with its spine bent, pages down on the couch. Alice must have interrupted his quiet reading. She imagined he kept the TV off while she studied. Maybe he balanced his book on his lap, a slice of pizza in one hand, the other rubbing her shoulders, reassuring her she’d get through her next exam, telling her he loved her.

 

Two nights after the arsonist was caught, Jim found the bedroom door open, Alice’s reading lamp on. She had the covers pulled up to her waist and a book open. Rather than reading, she parted the blinds and peeked outside, surely looking for fire.

The glossy cover of one of Cecelia’s books on the floor caught the light of the reading lamp. Next to it, the fortune from the last time they’d ordered Chinese– Some things must be broken before they can be mended. How did a scrap of paper migrate so far through the house? Happenstance, caught on the bottom of someone’s sock, or maybe Cece had liked it enough to carry it alongside her book. Maybe Alice planted it as some sort of message about Jim cleaning up after himself—he had, after all, eaten the corresponding fortune cookie—or a hint to remind him of some home repair he’d promised and since forgotten.

Two cartoon elephants played jacks on the cover of Cece’s book, and the words Can You Spot the Differences? splayed over them in bubbly letters. These books were a recent obsession. Alice brought one home from each trip to the store, so now they littered the house. A mess, but, as Alice had pointed out, they’d reliably keep Cecelia entertained for a few minutes.

Jim climbed into bed, opened the Spot the Differences book and pretended to read alongside her. At one point in life, that would’ve made her giggle; there was also a time when that proximity in bed meant sex.

Alice sighed, which wasn’t a great sign, but also set down her book on the nightstand. He took it as an invitation to cast the elephant book behind him and pivot his body over hers. He slid a hand under her t-shirt, pressed to the bare skin, and slid his other thumb beneath the waistband of her pajama pants.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not in the mood.”

He rolled off, breath heavy, face hot.

“Another time, though.” She touched his arm. “Thank you for trying.”

It was Jim’s turn to sigh, but not too loudly. Better to move on. It felt like every conversation they had about sex—especially about why they hardly had it anymore—only made the prospect of sex less appealing. It gave him a headache thinking about it. He wished sex were as easy as when they were young and couldn’t put his finger on why it wasn’t.

He got up to change into his pajamas. Cool down. Create space. Approach the situation with fresh eyes. Wasn’t that what the video about Conflict Resolution in the Modern Marriage Alice had made him watch with her one night had all been about—after she’d conceded they didn’t have time to go to proper marriage counseling, but she’d prodded, come on, we have fifteen minutes for a video.

Jim changed in the doorway of the bedroom closet, then fetched his toothbrush from the bathroom. When he turned back to Alice, she was on her phone, pretty in the glow of the screen.

“Someone found out more about the arsonist,” she said. “Do you know Darryl Fukes?”

Jim didn’t. Alice summarized the composite Nextdoor had assembled. Not a teenager, but rather a parent to two small children, who did live on their street. “Somebody here says the whole family’s trash. Something about an incident when he was day drinking in his driveway and let his kids ride their scooters into traffic.” Someone else said Fukes was caught in the act of setting a fire. Someone else offered a screenshot of a public arrest record, Fukes booked for fourth-degree arson. Someone else posted about his priors they’d dug up somehow—speculating that’s why the police were out on the street watching for him to leave his house and catch him red-handed. He’d served a stint in prison for setting a dumpster on fire outside his old high school in Floboro, a town over, when he was twenty-five.

“Probably another sob story,” Alice read aloud from the comments. “A kid gets bullied, so then he thinks he’s justified in destroying something because of his snowflake trauma.”

Then, Sounds like he’s a pyromaniac. Maybe a methhead.

Then, Alice said, “Look,” and turned the screen to Jim. “Someone found him on Facebook and shared his picture.”

The guy did look familiar, someone Jim must’ve seen mowing the lawn at some point. He caught something else about the photo. The close-cut beard, the color of his hair, the narrow oval of his face.

“Do you see it?” Alice asked. “Don’t you think he looks like you?”

 

Alice wasn’t focused on business when she drove back to The Way of Fire. Some of the old guilt from her schooldays about not finishing the reading for school seeped in because, although she’d done the work she was tasked with between meetings, her focus wasn’t on website design. Each red light, she stopped to look at Nextdoor for updates about Darryl Fukes. More speculation. More condemnations. Then, a bit of practical information from Tom Porter. Keep the security cameras up. The psycho’s bail was only set at $3,000. He could be back on our street tonight.

Alice had regretted showing Jim the picture of Fukes and pointing out the similarities in how they looked. It sent him tail spinning, talking about if neighbors would think it was him, and once he heard Fukes might be back around, Jim was only going to obsess about it more, another problem Alice had no way of solving.

She was still looking at her phone when she locked her car, walked right past the poorly designed banner for The Way of Fire, and through the door. The screen absorbed her attention enough not to notice Missy standing in the middle of the mat waiting for her.

“You’re distracted today.”

Alice was usually better about this, about being present, not like Rob. Not like Jim. “Sorry, there’s a lot going on at home.” She sighed, more frustrated with herself for bringing her personal life into the meeting. She swung her laptop bag around, so she could pull out the computer and start showing Missy designs. “Let’s forget that. I have updates.”

Missy cut her off. “Shoes off. Show me what you remember.”

Alice made the conscious decision not to wear workout clothes this time. This was a business meeting about graphic design, after all, not a training session in The Way of Fire, and she’d done plenty to humor the client, getting thrown around on the mat.

And yet, as much as she’d made these decisions before she left the house, here, in Missy’s domain, it felt impossible to deny what the teacher asked of her—as if it would be childish of her not to get on the mat.

She took off her shoes.

“Show me,” Missy said.

Alice positioned her back to Missy, a deliberate placement that Missy even corrected so her back wasn’t completely square to her chest, but at a slight angle before Missy fed her arm over Alice’s shoulder. Alice had control then, though. More fluidity than she ever would’ve guessed at as she grabbed Missy’s wrist and sent her flying forward, onto her back, then collapsed into the armbar.

Alice worried she’d thrown her too hard, but Missy directed her, “Now the choke.”

Alice slid around, collapsing a figure-four of her thighs around Missy’s neck and arm before she tightened by degrees. Missy tapped. Alice released.

“Good. Now do it again.”

Before Alice could think about it, they’d gone through the movements a second time, then a third. Missy taught her to punch next, fingers curled tight, thumb on the outside, deriving strength from a full body twist, swinging at air, then the heavy bag in the corner.

Alice hit the heavy bag, which hurt her hand, but she nonetheless marveled at how hard she’d hit, as if she were someone who would actually know what she was doing in a fight.

“If someone bigger comes at you, you’re aiming for his nose or his throat.” Missy demonstrated on a white dummy next to the bag, hitting with speed and accuracy Alice could barely begin to register. “If he can’t breathe, he can’t chase you.”

Alice thought to thank her, or to ask if she’d had to use these skills on her ex-husband. She remembered how she’d felt on her first visit to Missy’s school, so far outside her ordinary experience, at once overwhelmed, surprised at how she handled herself.

“Is your mind clear?” Missy asked.

Alice wasn’t sure how to answer the question, but nodded.

“When you’re on the mat, there’s only you and the person you’re fighting. No cell phones. No stressors,” Missy said. “Enough from me, though. You had things to show me.”

It occurred to Alice Missy was something like an over-eager participant in conversation who had too much to say, who had to remind herself in some structured way to give others the opportunity to speak. Nothing in their first meeting or the email correspondence since had suggested Missy was overly interested in the website or branding, all necessary evils, things Alice would fundamentally be more interested in discussing.

Alice bore this in mind when she showed her mockups of the logo, the website navigation, how they might organize the class schedule page in an easier to follow fashion. Her knuckles gently ached from punching, but it was easy enough to click through, highlighting choices it would be important to make now versus ones that could wait.

This part of the meeting moved quickly—quicker even than the throws and punches. Maybe it was the efficiency or memories of what Missy’d said about a clear mind that led Alice to open up to her.

“It’s funny your school and your method are all called The Way of Fire.” Alice explained Fukes and his fires, the information the neighbors pieced together, the source of her distraction.

Missy stood by, frizzy hair a little mussed from their engagement on the mat, but otherwise composed. The word centered came to Alice’s mind. “There are no coincidences,” Missy said. “The teacher arrives when the student is ready. The student arrives when the teacher is ready.”

It all sounded like fortune cookie wisdom, like having to break things to mend them. One of the few lessons Alice remembered from her college psychology course was a research presentation her group gave about apophenia—the phenomenon of people drawing causal connections, finding patterns between unrelated events, because the human mind craved order.

“There is only one nexus point,” Missy went on. “Do you know what that is?”

Alice’s knuckles hurt. She dreaded the drive home and almost asked for ice. Doing so felt as though it might distract from what Missy was trying to teach her, though. Alice got the sense this was part of Missy’s identity—as a teacher, as a mother, as a person who’d asserted her place in the world after being quiet in school, a victim of her marriage.

Missy said, “You.”

 

Emily Pim posted a photo to Nextdoor. Went through all our Ring footage. I think this is Fukes. He was out walking the street in between nights of the fires.

Jim sat in his office at work and zoomed in. He recognized himself, without question. The sweatshirt he’d worn outside, the rip at one knee of the jeans, the old sneakers that, in a security camera’s gaze, one could’ve mistaken for fresh-out-of-the-box bright white.

Angela Summers commented, It’s so creepy to think he was walking around, probably scheming which house he’d target next.

A small part of Jim felt vindicated in his paranoia that someone in the neighborhood might confuse him with Fukes. A larger part of him didn’t like those implications, though, that anyone in their right mind might cross to the other side of the street if they saw him coming, or someone who recognized the picture and the house where Jim lived, but didn’t know he was a separate person might show up at his door to threaten him or even set fire to his bushes as retribution on behalf of the neighborhood.

Jim started to compose a reply. Something that wouldn’t sound defensive. Something to condemn Fukes and also make it clear, while they had a neighborhood criminal, there was also a doppelganger who hadn’t done anything wrong and was as fearful for his family as anyone.

Before he could finish, Gaby Ganon wrote, It’s definitely him.

 

Alice clicked save to pause working on the Way of Fire website. Now that she had a direction, every step was forward motion.

She exhaled. She opened Nextdoor.

A post from Violet Fukes read, listen, i’m darryl’s wife. i know u all think he’s sum kinda monster. i’m telling u he’s a good man and he says he didn’t do it so he didn’t do it. he’s a father. we go to church. u dont have 2 believe us but know we r. we don’t want no trouble

The post had gone up hours before. No comments yet, but the first four reactions were up, all of them angry emoticons. Reading it all made Alice angry, too, but not at Violet Fukes—liar or simpleton that she was.

Alice was mad at Darryl. A husband leaving a mess for his wife to clean up. A man who had this poor woman doing mental gymnastics to try and make sense of him, posting to Nextdoor, exposing herself to the vitriol that would come sooner or later. Alice felt herself growing hot and wished she had a heavy bag of her own to hit as hard as she could.

 

When Jim rolled the trash bin to the curb, he spotted Darryl Fukes.

It felt surreal to encounter the neighborhood boogeyman in the flesh. Jim was certain a pair of speed-walking old-timers had watched him at the playground with Cecelia in the afternoon, trying to discern if he were Fukes. He’d come across another woman Jim could’ve sworn glared at him, their cars stopped kitty corner at a four-way stop, before she deferred to him, motioning him to go even though she’d gotten their first, not wanting to piss off a psychopath who might trail her car and set fire to it.

Fukes leaned against his own blue plastic rolling can for his recyclables, chatting with another man—another neighbor, Jim assumed, but not one he recognized.

Jim went back to fetch his own recyclables. Alice had left the cardboard box from a play kitchen they’d bought Cecelia for her birthday months back. He’d probably said he would take the box out months before and forgotten. He ripped into the thick cardboard with vengeance.

The box wouldn’t give at a certain point. Jim pulled harder, until his hand tore straight through the staple he’d failed to notice at the seam. A thick line of blood quickly materialized over his right palm. He should’ve gone inside right away to wash it out, but he hated the idea of leaving his garbage duties half-done. He might forget to finish the job and be left to pile the new week’s recycling on top of the old, overflowing by the weekend. So, he clumsily flung open the recyclables can one-handed, then hauled the mostly broken-down box up into it, careful to avoid the staple this time. The lid wouldn’t shut over the crumpled cardboard, but it was close enough he didn’t imagine the garbage men would give him a hard time about it. He wheeled out the can, steering with his left hand, his lower torso pressed where he ordinarily would have put his right.

Some combination of the sight of blood, the frustration at hurting himself, and the stress of the last two weeks boiled over. Finally, Jim had a place to channel it all.

Jim went to Fukes.

“If we don’t get some industry going, this is going to a ghost town by the time you have kids,” Fukes said. It was a narrative everyone in town had heard or told at some point. “We’ve got good schools. But we get kids off to college, and there’s nothing to come back to.”

The other neighbor was a kid, it turned out. A teenager, sent out to take out the trash as part of his chores, roped into conversation with a middle-aged man whom he may or may not have recognized as a criminal. Uncomfortable regardless. In need of rescuing the way Jim still imagined Rob could use saving now and again.

“There won’t be anything to come back to if somebody burns it all down,” Jim said.

They both turned to Jim. The teen took a step back. Good. This wasn’t his fight.

“You talking about the fires, man?” There was a change in Fukes’s tone. Maybe switching from playing some sort of father figure, to talking to someone his own age, someone he could sense a confrontation brewing with. “That’s messed up.”

“Maybe you should make yourself scarce here on the street until your next court date.”

Fukes had the nerve to chuckle. He was broader across the chest than Jim, but an inch shorter, too. “You’ve been following the chatty Cathys on Nextdoor, huh? I’ve read it all, man. Look, I was out for a walk and the police took me in for questioning. I didn’t have anything to do with the fires, though.”

Bullshit. Jim had seen the arrest record, had read about the bail. A firebug and a liar.

“Fair warning,” Jim said, “you pissed off a lot of people. We’re watching for you now.”

Something in Fukes’s face darkened a degree. “I’m watching, too. Because whoever set the fires is still out here.”

He had a lot of nerve to deny what he’d done. Not to mention the subtle acknowledgment of the truth, too, the arsonist was out there, right in front of Jim.

“Let’s start over.” Fukes put out his hand. “My name’s Darryl.”

Jim looked him in the eye and put his hand to Fukes’s. Firm grip, strong shake, not backing down.

When they separated, Fukes studied his palm, coated in Jim’s blood.

The threat, the neighborhood watch, Alice peeking between blinds, Alice not wanting to sleep with Jim even when they had the chance, Alice giving him a hard time about not fighting for them. It all pulsed through him, his heart pumping hot, heavy blood to his hands and before he made any conscious choice at all, he’d shoved Fukes, so he tripped over the curb behind him and landed on his ass against the sidewalk.

Fukes sprang to his feet, assuming a fighter’s stance, a boxer’s fist cocked up by his ear, knees bent, other hand open like a wrestler. The reality struck Jim. Not only the broader chest but the more muscular frame on Fukes. He’d survived at least a short prison sentence before.

Jim put his hands up. He could feel the adrenaline trailing off, though, the fear settling in, more flight than fight in him.

But Fukes softened, too. Maybe thinking better of the fight.

“You guys doing all right?”

Tom Porter had arrived. He was a kindly old man, but whether it was having his bushes torched or reading the situation, he arrived straight-faced, stepping up to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jim.

Evan Malewitz was there, too, and behind Fukes, another man stepped out, a chatty old timer who had talked Jim’s ear off more than one trash night. Glenn Callaway and his eldest boy, too. Louis climbed out of the Range Rover, as if he’d still quietly been on patrol. Maybe he had, not trusting the job was done as long as Fukes was still on the street.

Jim’s fear evaporated. He felt like he might cry at this sense of a united front. He wouldn’t get his ass kicked, but also, his neighbors all could tell the difference between him and the bad guy. Even Aunt Penny—Penelope—and her boyfriend turned up and Jim imagined himself absolved of coming across as a creepy older man. Maybe he was older, but he was a role model. He was a damn neighborhood hero.

Fukes put his hands up and backed away, retreating all the way back to his home.

 

Jim spoke in fits and starts as Alice struggled to keep track of the story—he’d seen Fukes taking out his trash, he’d shoved him to the ground and a mob of neighbors had backed him up.

“I fought for us.” Jim’s eyes gleamed. He reminded her of the way Rob looked when he was proud of himself for waking up on his own in the morning when or when he was younger and squashed a bug himself.

“You picked a fight with Fukes?”

Jim hesitated. “I wouldn’t say I picked a fight—”

“And you walked straight over from our house.” Alice could feel her pulse pounding in her neck. “So, he knows where we live now.”

Jim wilted, the way he would when she called him on forgetting to change a light bulb in the garage he’d promised to tend to weeks earlier. He moved to the sink, shaking his head as he did and started washing his hands.

“He lives on our street,” he said at last. “He’s been terrorizing us.”

“But he hasn’t gotten to every house. You practically put a target on us if he wants one last hurrah before he goes to prison. Do you really think it’s going to affect his sentence if he torched the bushes outside four houses or five?”

He kept washing his hands. “And you didn’t put a target on our backs first when you started your neighborhood watch?”

Alice turned her back to him. She had to get away. She didn’t understand how she could start the day at such peace—the arsonist arrested, her work in check, a good night’s sleep at last behind her—only to feel rage again. More rage at the living room, two Spot the Differences books on the floor, more of Cece’s toys, a remote control no one but Alice would bother to put back on the entertainment center. A scrap of paper, too. She swore, if it were the fortune from the Chinese food she was going to lose it.

Jim hugged her from behind. One arm over her shoulder. He was strong. Solid. She remembered a thousand other hugs like this. Jim her protector. Jim consoling her. Jim apologizing by way of physicality when they were fighting over nothing at all. Years back, an embrace like that would all but inevitably mean she’d turn and kiss him. Maybe they’d wind up sleeping together, those days before they had kids, when they were young and palpably in love, any gesture at all might lead to intimacy upon intimacy, the surfaces of their bodies hot, no regard for whether the window blinds were open, or if their bodies landed on the floor.

Jim held an ice pack wrapped in a paper towel for reasons she couldn’t fathom. Unless he’d taken a swing at Darryl Fukes and hadn’t gotten to that part of the story yet. Alice couldn’t bear his touch. She couldn’t bear to be close to him.

One fluid motion. She took hold of his wrist, bent, and twisted, sending his body crashing to the carpet in front of her. She collapsed on him, legs crossing over his chest, his elbow at her pelvis, arm locked straight. Enough pressure and she could break it. For a moment, her mind went back to the grappling the two of them used to do, always Jim on top of her, pinning her down, teasing her until the play gave way to a make-out session or screwing.

She snapped back to focus when she noticed Jim’s hand was bleeding in hers.

A film of sweat layered his forehead. He looked much younger then. She recognized fear in his eyes because he didn’t know how mad she’d felt or how much more pressure she’d apply or what would come next.