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FIVE

“STAY WITH THE KIDS,” David says, rushing out the bedroom door, but I’m right behind him down the stairs.

When we hit the first floor, we see the flames outside, on the patio leading into the backyard, the wispy orange threads just sneaking into our view through the glass french doors. Exactly what’s on fire back there? A tree? A bush? The deck railing? If it’s the deck railing, the whole thing will be in flames in a matter of seconds —

I’m racing through options — we don’t have a fire extinguisher, Why don’t we have a fire extinguisher, there’s a hose out back attached to a sprinkler, we could unhook it and use that, where’s my phone, I left it upstairs, we have to call the fire department —

David whips open the doors and bounds onto the patio, looking to his left, doing a double take. Just as I’m reaching the patio myself, David says, “What the fuck?”

I look to my left. The grill. Our Weber grill, the old-fashioned, egg-shaped, charcoal-burning kind David prefers over the fancy gas ones. The oval lid is popped open, and flames billow out from the core — charcoal, freshly lit on fire. Like …

Like someone’s starting a cookout.

“What the fuck is right,” I whisper.

David jogs down the rear walkway of our house, then pivots and heads into the backyard. Me, I can’t take my eyes off the grill, the flames already subsiding as the charcoal begins its slow sizzle to a white-hot char.

David hustles back to the patio, out of breath. “Whoever did it took off,” he says.

“But why — who would …” I look at him. “Should we call the police?”

David shrugs. “And say what? Someone snuck behind our house and started a barbecue?”

“It’s a trespass,” I say, but David’s right. The cops would chalk it up to a teenage prank, a modern-day version of the ding dong ditch game we used to play as kids, ringing someone’s doorbell and running. And they’d probably be right.

“Well, I’m sure Kyle would be happy to rush right over,” says David.

“Oh, stop. Seriously, what is this — just stupid teenagers?”

“I mean, I guess so.” David paces around the patio, our table and chairs still intact, undisturbed. He walks along the rear walkway again, returns to the backyard. “It’s kind of … hostile, though, y’know?”

“I was going to say creepy. We’re upstairs putting down the kids, and they’re out here dumping charcoal into the grill, pouring lighter fluid, and lighting a match?”

“Weird and hostile and creepy, all of the above,” he says. “But at least — I mean, at least it was never a threat. It’s a fire, but it’s contained inside the grill. It’s not like it was going to set the patio on fire or anything.”

That’s true. It wasn’t malevolent in that way. “So … what do we do?”

He shrugs. “You hungry? I could throw some burgers on.”

I shoot him a look. “It was meant to spook us, David. And as far as I’m concerned, it worked.”

David plays with that thought and checks his phone. “Well, it’s only two and a half hours till Halloween. Maybe someone was just getting a head start on the creepy, spooky stuff. I’m sure that’s all it was.”

But his face reads otherwise. That brain of his is turning over and over, trying to connect all the bizarre things that happened today. None of them, individually, cause for alarm. Collectively, maybe another story.

But if something has come to mind, David doesn’t say so. Maybe he has no answers, and maybe there’s nothing to answer.

Or maybe he does, and there is.

We all have our secrets, after all. Spouses don’t tell each other everything .