Before the Storm. Diane Chamberlain

he asked. “Did you drink or take any substances tonight?”

      “No, sir,” Andy said. “I’m not allowed.”

      The agent stopped writing and gnawed his lip. “Do you get it?” he asked me. “The long thing? The bald man?”

      I shook my head.

      “Are you still talking about being inside the church, Panda?” Maggie asked.

      “Yes and the boys caught on fire, but there were no ladders, so I told them to Stop! Drop! Roll! and some of them did. Keith was there.” He looked at me. “He was mean to me.”

      “I’m sorry,” I said. Sara was my best friend and I was worried sick about her son, but Keith could be a little shit sometimes. “You mean there were no ladders to escape the fire, like the ladder we have in your room at home?”

      “Right. There weren’t any,” Andy said.

      “Okay,” Agent Foley said. “So while this was happening, where were you?”

      “I told you, at the baptism thing.” Andy furrowed his forehead at the man’s denseness.

      The agent flipped a few pages of his notepad. “People told me you got out of the church and—”

      “Right,” Andy said. “Me and Emily went out the boys’ room window, and there was a big metal box on the ground, and we climbed onto it.”

      “And then what happened?”

      “We were outside.”

      “And what did you see outside? Did you see any person out—”

      “One question at a time,” I reminded him.

      “What did you see outside, Andy?” Agent Foley asked.

      “Fire. Everywhere except by the metal box. And Emily was screaming that nobody could get out the front door because fire was there. I saw somebody did get out the door and they were on fire. I don’t know who it was, though.”

      “Oh God.” Maggie buried her face in her hands, her long dark hair spilling in waves over her arms. I knew she was picturing the scene as I was. Sitting there with Andy, it was easy to forget how devastating the fire had been for so many people. I thought again of Keith. Where was he?

      “Did you see anyone else outside beside the person on fire?” the agent asked.

      “Emily.”

      “Okay. So you went back in.”

      “You went back in, Andy?” I repeated, wondering whatever possessed him to reenter the burning church.

      Andy nodded. “I climbed on the metal box and got into the boys’ room and then called for everyone to follow me.”

      “And they did?” the agent asked.

      “Did they what?”

      “Follow you?”

      “Not exactly. I let some of them, like my friend Layla, go first.” He pulled the cannula from his nostrils and looked at me. “Do I still have to wear this?”

      “A little longer,” I said. “Until the nurse comes back and says you can take it off.”

      “So you let Layla go out the window first?” Agent Foley nudged.

      “And some other kids. Then I followed them. But some were still following me, too.” He wrinkled his nose. “It’s hard to explain.”

      “You’re doing fine, sweetie,” I said.

      “How did you know the…metal box was there?” the agent asked.

      “I don’t remember.”

      “Try to remember,” I said.

      “I saw it when I went to the bathroom.”

      “When was that?” the agent asked.

      “When I had to pee.”

      Agent Foley gave up, closing his notepad with the flick of a wrist.

      “Sounds like you are a hero, Andy,” he said.

      “I know.”

      The agent motioned me to follow him. We walked outside the curtained cubicle. He looked at me curiously.

      “What’s his, uh, disability?” he asked. “Brain injury?”

      “Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder,” I said, the words as familiar to me as my own name.

      “Really?” He looked surprised, glancing over my shoulder as though he could see through the curtain. “Don’t those kids usually…you know, have a look to them?”

      “Not always,” I said. “Depends on what part of them was developing when the alcohol affected them.”

      “You’re his adoptive mother then?”

      The police on Topsail Island know me and they know Andy and they know our story. An ATF agent in Wilmington, though, was a world away.

      “No, I’m his biological mother,” I said. “Sober fifteen years.”

      His smile was small. Tentative. Finally he spoke. “You’ve got a year on me,” he said. “Congratulations.”

      “You, too.” I smiled back.

      “So—” he looked down at his closed notepad “—how much of what he says can I believe?”

      “All of it,” I said with certainty. “Andy’s honest to a fault.”

      “He’s an unusual kid.” He looked over my shoulder again.

      “You don’t need to tell me that.”

      “No, I mean, in a fire, seventy-five percent of the people try to get out the front door. That’s their first reaction. They’re like a flock of sheep. One starts in that direction and they all follow. The other twenty-five percent look for an alternate exit. A back door. Bash open a window. Who’s the bald-headed guy he was talking about?”

      “I have no idea.”

      “Anyway, so Andy here goes for the window in the men’s room. Strange choice, but turns out to be the right one.”

      “Well,” I said, “kids like Andy don’t think like that first seventy-five percent, or even the twenty-five percent. It was sheer luck. He could just as easily have gone for…I don’t know, the ladies’ room window, let’s say, and still be stuck there.” I hugged my arms across my chest at the thought. “Do you know if everyone got out okay? I heard rumors that some didn’t.”

      He shook his head. “This was a bad one,” he said. “Last report, three dead.”

      I sucked in my breath, hand to my mouth. “Oh, no.” Some parents wouldn’t have the luxury of hearing their children tell what happened tonight. “Do you know who?” I thought of Keith. Of Marcus.

      “No names yet,” he said. “Two of the kids and one adult is all I know. A lot of serious burns and smoke inhalation. This E.R.’s packed tight as a can of sardines.”

      “What’s the metal box?” I asked.

      “The AC unit. Whoever laid the fire skipped around it.”

      “Whoever…You’re saying this was arson?”

      He held up a hand as if to erase his words. “Not for me to say.”

      “I know there was an electrical problem at the youth building. Could that have affected the church?”

      “There’ll be a full investigation,” he said.

      “Is that why you asked Andy if he saw anyone else outside the church?”

      “Like