Dad glances at Dahlia and pauses. When I look at her, she’s wiping tears from her cheeks.
“Oh, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking like this,” Dad says.
“I’m so sorry,” she cries.
“You have nothing to be sorry about.” He squeezes her shoulder. “This is not on you, and no one here is going to hold what your dad might do against you.”
“I’m sure he’s behind it,” she says, wiping her face. She looks at me, and her expression is defeated. “This is why I was so worried about him finding out about us. I just didn’t know how far he would take it.”
I pull her close and kiss her temple. “We’ll get to the bottom of it. But no matter what, even if you’re right and he is behind it, please don’t carry any of the blame for this.”
She nods, but I can tell the words aren’t sinking in.
The flight to California is a blur of turbulence and exhaustion. This has been the longest day in the history of days. Chloe is such a trooper. When we get to my house, I check everythingthoroughly, but there’s no sign that anything’s been tampered with.
I text Rudy that we’re heading to the shop, and he says he’ll meet me over there. He wanted to be there when I see it.
It’s almost midnight when we get to the shop. Chloe is asleep in Dahlia’s arms, and I feel bad that they’re here, but Dahlia insisted on it. She’s put a mask on Chloe and has her covered with a light blanket. The air smells like charred, wet drywall. A chunk of the storefront is boarded up. My gut takes a nosedive.
Rudy is inside, and the second he sees me, he pulls me into a hug that nearly cracks my ribs.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” I tell him. Something I’ve repeated over and over every time we’ve spoken.
“Dude, if I’d stayed… I keep thinking about the back office, how I usually shut that down last, and if I had?—”
“Thank God you weren’t here,” I say, gripping his shoulders.
He nods, swallowing hard.
“Hey, Dahlia,” he says, hugging her carefully around Chloe.
We go inside. It’s jarring to see it in this shape. Burned boards. Melted wax displays. Charred wet suits hanging like Halloween costumes.
The fire department contained the fire before it consumed the whole shop—which is something.
Rudy rubs the back of his neck. “The cops suspect it’s arson.”
“Really?”
Before I got on the plane, they were checking the cameras, but one of them had been smashed. Rudy and I both can access the surveillance from our phones, and I saw a littlebit of footage from one of the cameras that the arsonist must have missed. But I didn’t see anything definitive from it.
“A customer came forward. His name’s Justin. You’ll meet him. He came in for the first time the day before yesterday. He’d been out surfing super early, and on his way in, he saw a guy acting weird by the shop before it was fully light out. He started recording him on his phone, thinking he might be trying to break in, but the guy poured accelerant and lit a match. There was another guy out taking a walk, and Justin waved him over to call the police.”
“Do you have the video?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He pulls out his phone, finds the video, then hands it over.
The footage shows a guy in a hoodie and gloves. He walks confidently up to the shop and pauses.
“I almost thought he was about to take a piss on the back wall there,” Rudy says, pointing at the video.
“Yeah, I thought the same.”
But then, he pulls a can out of his hoodie and pours liquid along the back wall of Surf Culture. It’s not clear enough to see a match being lit, but it’s obvious when the fire catches. He stands long enough to watch the flare grow for a few seconds before jogging away. And just when I think the video is going to end, the guy turns and looks back. He’s under a streetlamp, and it’s like a spotlight on him, revealing his face.
Dahlia lets out a sound, and when I see her face, she looks like she’s been punched.
“Doll?” I whisper.
