It was Delia who found the final piece — the thing that explained the desperation I had glimpsed under Derek’s anger in the kitchen, the reason a man would burn his own pregnant wife over a modest brick house.

Months before that Sunday, Derek had signed a private agreement with a predatory lender, promising that my father’s property would secure his repayment the instant the title transferred into his name.

He had gambled away nearly ninety thousand dollars on a restaurant investment that had collapsed, and the people he owed were not the kind who send polite letters.

My father’s house was never Derek’s dream, the way he had once pretended when he admired it aloud to charm me.

It was his escape route.