House on Fire by AK Weller

Author:AK Weller [Weller, AK]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

Saturday, January 2, 2021

Argentina

Long after the sun rose the next morning, we still hadn’t made it out of bed. After Jim woke me up around dawn for round five, we finally started to talk. I would just as soon have skipped it for the time being; but he was in an indulgent mood, so I took full advantage.

“So, what do you want to know?” he asked, when I was still thinking over how to start prodding him for answers. Surprised, I propped myself up on one elbow to get a good look at his face.

“Everything,” I said eagerly.

“Can you point me to the starting line?”

“Hm,” I mused, running my fingers through his hair. I was sidetracked by a few grey hairs peeking out on his temples. “Hey, you’ve got greys.”

“I didn’t when I met you.”

“Har, har.”

“Don’t you want to know why I brought you here?”

“I want to know who Fernando is. You only told me he’s your cousin.”

“He’s my second cousin, actually. Fernando’s and Marisol’s grandmother, my grandmother’s sister, changed her last name when she married their grandfather. Even if she hadn’t, she was supposed to have died in the house fire in nineteen forty-five. My uncle still has the death certificate.”

My fingers paused, mind suddenly racing so fast I couldn’t do anything but try to keep up with it. “Nineteen forty-five?” I repeated.

“I can tell you’re skipping ahead. That fucking true crime podcast…”

“Alice picked it out.”

“Well, the damage was done. I had to tell Fernando you were putting it together. I’m sorry, Anna. He convinced me to bring you here.”

“I’m glad he didn’t convince you to punt me out of the plane over the Gulf of Mexico. What exactly was I putting together?”

“My grandmother, Bettina, was one of the seven children, one of the four who made it out. She married a Camposanto. You’d have gotten to the Barbato-Barber connection in a day at most, if you were curious enough.”

“So I might have figured out your great grandfather was Donald Barber? The FBI already knows that. How does that lead to Fernando?”

“Paolo Barbato. Marcel shoehorned you into that meeting with the Italians, and you heard the name Barbato not a week later, drawing a line right back to the Barbers and their descendants. You would’ve told someone at the FBI about the connection, and they would’ve done the rest.”

“I didn’t even know Fernando existed until you dragged me here! Is Barbato even his last name?”

“It’s Serna.”

“So you’ve explained nothing!”

“The FBI has closed the Barber case. The presumption is that if any of the missing kids survived, they’d have surfaced by now. The FBI isn’t looking for them anymore, let alone their descendants. That’s what Paolo Barbato and Fernando have in common. The existence of one allows for the existence of the other, and Fernando’s and Marisol’s survival depends on no one making that connection.”

Doggedly, I argued, “How in the world was I ever going to find out Paolo descended from one of the survivors? I know nothing about him, except that Marcel was interested in him for some reason.

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