Chapter 1

October 2015

Colin sat at work in the kitchen. He delivered Chinese food but normally Monday was his day off. He was doing a favor for Mr. Zháo filling in this Monday and it wasn’t a very busy day. Autumn was generally the season that brought Colin flashbacks from his past. Tonight was his last night delivering Chinese. He was finally making enough from his books and as a teaching assistant to quit this job.

Colin’s mind traveled back to the events that had brought him to the present.

* * * *

Last Week in August 2004/ Friday of Labor Day Weekend

Colin Callahan’s family took their vacation the last week in August down at the Jersey Shore. They rented the same house in Belmar every year, surrounded by other vacationers from the New York City Irish community. His ma worked as a teacher at the Middle School for Writers and Artists in Chelsea; a school Colin hoped to attend next year because Colin wanted to be a writer. His da was a firefighter, one of New York’s Bravest. Kathleen and Rory’s great-grandparents immigrated to New York from the same town in Ireland in the early thirties, searching for a better life. His great-grandfather, Shea Callahan, became a proud United States citizen just before he became a fireman. Both Colin’s father and grandfather followed Shea Callahan’s example.

Kathleen was a practical woman. Colin wasn’t born until 1993 when Rory and Kathleen felt they were financially stable. They were already well into their thirties. Kathleen felt she had fulfilled her duty; but Colin shone like the light of Rory Callahan’s life.

However, Rory Callahan couldn’t stay away from fire. Fires mesmerized him. So when the emergency horns blasted in Belmar that Thursday in August, Rory chaffed at the bit. “Kathleen, I’m going over to the station to see if the guys need an extra hand.”

“Rory Callahan, you promised to take Colin rollerblading down on the boards this afternoon.” Kathleen put her hands on her waist and tapped her foot on the linoleum floor.

Colin begged his father, “Da, you promised.”

Colin was short for an eleven-year-old and had a lean build. He had a shock of golden blond curls and luminous green eyes. At school, they teased him and said he looked like a girl. Colin’s da was the brightest spot in his young life. Kathleen took care of Colin but she doted on Rory. Both Colin’s and Kathleen’s world revolved around Rory’s sun.

“Aye, I did promise you we’d go tonight. How about this, you come with me, and we can watch the fire together, and then we’ll go for ice cream in Bradley Beach.” Colin knew his da, and this was the best deal he was going to get, so he took it.

“Okay, Da. Let’s go see the fire.” Colin smiled. His time with his da was precious. He knew many of the boys in their Staten Island neighborhood who lost their fathers to the World Trade Center attack; Colin was glad his da made it out alive.

Whenever Rory pulled a shift, Colin worried about his safety. Rory told him his fears were foolish. “The World Trade Center was a once in a lifetime tragedy and the government established the Department of Homeland Security to make sure that it would never happen again.”

Somehow, that didn’t lighten Colin’s fears. Terrorists didn’t trouble Colin. His father did. He knew his da. The man was in love with fire, and she was a lover who could kill.

Rory took his battered old blue Chrysler, checked to make sure Colin was buckled into the front seat, then they followed the sound of the sirens.

They found the trucks at a rundown hotel now a rooming house near the border of Belmar and Bradley Beach. The residents were mostly older men down on their luck. Taking Rory aside with Colin standing beside his father, the Belmar fire chief told Rory, “This place is a dump. The wiring is shot—it has no working sprinkler system, and the residents are unruly and uncooperative. The inspectors wrote the owner up for seventy-two code violations last month.”

“A place like this in the city would already be torn down and replaced by upscale condos,” Rory told the chief, chuckling.

“The town was about to shut them down and condemn the building. It’s a firetrap, and it’s going to burn to the ground and we can’t do a thing about it. If I were a betting man, I’d say the owner hired an arsonist.”

Rory used to work with the chief in Manhattan. Jim McMann knew what he was doing. Rory inspected the perimeter of the boarding house and concluded that his former colleague was right. The fire was burning too hot and had engulfed the structure too soon. Someone had used an accelerant.