"Don't you turn guests away just because you're tired, Sabi," her grandmother had told her once, warm and firm, her voice carrying the particular authority of a woman who had raised three children and buried two husbands and still got up every morning to make biscuits from scratch."People come here because they need rest.You don't know what they walked away from to arrive on this porch."
Sabrina blinked hard.The image wavered, replaced by the ugly truth of char and ruin.
She swallowed against the thickness in her throat."She used to stand right there.Every afternoon, she'd go out and sweep the porch, like it was a stage she didn't want dusty.Said the house deserved to look its best for company."
Colby didn't interrupt.Didn't offer empty comfort.He just listened.
"She would've hated this."Sabrina's voice came out thin, scraped raw by smoke and grief."She used to say the inn had good bones.'Normans built things to last,' she'd tell me.Said our family knew how to put down roots that held."Her lips pressed together."She wasn't wrong.It survived a hundred and thirty years.Just not this."
The last of the standing posts gave a small, cracking groan.One of the firefighters, still moving equipment, paused, eyes flicking up.The post shifted, tilted, then fell in on itself, sending up a puff of ash that scattered on the morning breeze.
Her chest squeezed painfully, as if a hand had closed around her lungs and forgotten to let go.
"There it goes," she whispered.
Colby stepped closer, not touching her, just filling the space beside her shoulder.He didn't say he was sorry.Didn't pretend the loss was just a building, or that insurance would fix it, or any of the other useless things people said when they didn't know what else to offer.He stood and let it be what it was.
Her home.Her history.Her second chance in life.
Fire Chief Anderson walked past them, helmet under his arm, still in his turnout coat despite the morning warmth.Soot streaked his jaw in dark smudges that made him look like he'd aged ten years overnight.Diaz matched his stride a moment later, notebook out, expression serious.
Sabrina instinctively stiffened when she saw the sergeant.Her fingers curled tighter around her own arms, nails pressing crescents into her skin through the thin sweater the hospital found for her to wear.She didn't have any clothing anymore.The dirty, burned clothing she'd had on yesterday was tossed in the garbage now.
Colby noticed; she felt him register the shift in her posture.His voice stayed even."You okay if they talk near you?"
"I don't want to leave," she said quietly.
"Then you don't."
Anderson stopped a few feet away and gestured toward the remains of the building with the hand holding his helmet."We'll have the full report once the investigators are done, but the initial assessment hasn't changed."
Diaz flipped to a fresh page."Which is?"
"Fire originated near the back corner of the lobby, close to the old service entrance.Burn pattern's inconsistent with an accident.We've got multiple points of intense heat that suggest an accelerant was used."Anderson's gaze shifted to Sabrina for only a second, something like sympathy flickering there before his professional mask slid back into place."I'd call it suspicious at minimum, leaning hard toward deliberate."
Diaz's pen moved quickly across the page."You pulled samples?"
"Already sent to the state lab.Priority flagged.We'll know exactly what accelerant was used once they get their hands on it."
Sabrina stared at them, each word landing like a physical blow.Origin point.Accelerant.Deliberate.It was one thing to think it, half-conscious and terrified in a hospital bed with machines beeping and Colby's steady voice cutting through the panic.Another thing entirely to hear a man who did this for a living say it out loud in the clear light of morning.
Her ex's face flashed in her mind, the way he had looked at her across the street outside Maggie's Bakery two days ago.That flat, assessing stare she knew too well.The one that had always preceded something bad.
She dragged in a breath that tasted like ash and old water.
Diaz wrote another line, her handwriting small and precise."Cause of ignition?"
"Too early to say for certain," Anderson said."But I can tell you this didn't start from bad wiring or a forgotten candle.The spread was too fast, too hot, too coordinated.Someone helped it along."
Sabrina's fingers dug into her own arms hard enough to bruise.A small tremor moved through her shoulders, working its way down her spine.
Colby's voice was low, pitched for her ears alone."Take a breath, Sabrina."
She tried.The air caught halfway, her lungs refusing to expand."They're sure," she said.
"What?"
"They're sure it wasn't an accident."Her eyes stayed on the ruins, cataloging each new detail of destruction—the collapsed staircase visible through a gap in the debris, the twisted remains of the chandelier her great-grandmother had brought over from Ireland."I kept telling myself maybe...maybe something faulty, something old, finally gave out.That I'd missed a warning sign.That it was my fault for not paying closer attention."Her lips pressed together until they went white."I can live with my own mistakes.I don't know how to live with someone doing this on purpose."
