‘I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like,’ Jake murmured, and Tori shook her head, tears not far away. What was it with this man? She hadn’t cried for six months. How could she cry now?

‘I was in the valley,’ she whispered. ‘I couldn’t get back. The whole mountain was on fire. I was going out of my mind. Everyone with people we love up here was going out of their minds. It took three days before we could get back. Three days…’

He didn’t respond, just looked steadily out at the ruins, and she knew by his silence that he could see how it must have been.

She climbed out of the car, and he didn’t follow as she made her way carefully over the ruins. Jake knew instinctively that she didn’t want him to follow. Rusty came with her, limping by her side, but he had the right. This had been home for both of them.

Home.

If she could turn back time…

If only she hadn’t trusted.

She picked her way across the rubble to the chimney stack. The fireplace was almost intact. A few bricks at the corner had fallen when a roof beam had dropped across the mantel-that’s how Rusty had lost his leg.

She placed her fingers on the ledge above the fire cavity. There’d been a wooden mantel resting here, and on it an ancient clock that never kept time, pictures of her parents on their wedding day, pictures of Tori and Micki as kids, her graduation photo, Micki at some glamorous, want-to-be-model shoot.

This hearth had been the heart of their home, and in the end this small fireplace had succeeded in saving one little dog. One small thread to connect her past to her future.

At least Micki and her father had thought she was coming, she thought bleakly, letting herself think back as she so seldom allowed herself to do. That was the only thing that kept her sane-that last, frantic call from Micki.

‘Tori, the fire’s on this side of the ridge.’

‘I’ve rung emergency services,’ she’d said, as she pushed her van past the speed limit, heading into smoke so thick she knew she’d have trouble getting through. ‘The fire trucks are on their way. I’m on my way. Stay cool.’