“Thank you for the advice. And I appreciate your getting those records to me.”

Lily walked out of the police station with her stomach a-jangle and her mind all tangled up. In principle, she knew the sheriff was right. Her sisters had managed to move on, find great guys, get over the past just fine. She should be able to do the same thing. She loved her job, teaching ultra-bright, challenging kids; loved her apartment in a historic part of Virginia, had many friends and things she loved to do.

But something inside her just couldn’t rest. A lot of it was about her dad. She never believed he’d started that fire. Every memory of her dad was wonderful and loving, including the very last one, when he sacrificed his own life to save hers. He was no coward…yet that’s what they’d always said. That he’d set the fire for insurance money, the act of a coward if ever there was one.

Her dad was a hero, not a coward.

She knew it in her heart.

She just had to find some impossible way to prove it.

Chapter 2

Two nights later, Griff heard the rare sound of fire engine sirens, followed by a rush of cop cars down Main Street. It was just nine, the sun thinking about dropping and the air drowsy with heat.

He was just shutting down the place. Jason had stuck with him, was pretending to do extra clean-up while Griff hunched over a table with the day’s receipts. The day’d been busy. Everybody stopped for ice-cream on a summer day. Even so, the ice cream parlor couldn’t support a cat, so it occasionally amazed Griff that folks actually believed he had no other source of income.

Of course, it had always worked well for him to be seen as a generic lazy scoundrel and a womanizer. Nobody pried any deeper. Why would they?