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It's silent on the second floor of the Tunt family manor as Cecil lies awake in his bed listening for any sign of life coming from the next room over: Cheryl's room. A thick wall separates the two rooms, but he's able to hear the smallest sounds after having repeated this routine so many times. Not every night only because their grandfather doesn't creep into Cheryl's room every night; only after he's had a few drinks at dinner. From the children's corner of the dining table, Cecil will steal glances at him to keep track of the empty glasses as Cheryl shifts her food around her plate with her fork. One or two, she's safe. Any more and Cecil prepares to get less sleep than is healthy for a boy his age.
How much their grandfather drinks is unpredictable, but not what happens when he's drunk. They have a few hours to kill before bedtime and they spend it trying not to think about what will happen later. They play cards or a board game, or they do their homework, or they pace around the weapons room, where Cheryl aims the unloaded guns at the taxidermied animals. Finally, the latest nanny shuffles them off to bed. They climb the stairs. They brush their teeth in Cecil's en suite bathroom, even though Cheryl has one of her own. They go to their rooms. And they wait.
Eventually, the secret door at the end of the hallway creaks open and their grandfather slowly stumbles to Cheryl's room, his footsteps slow and stumbling. Her door opens and shuts. It usually lasts around fifteen minutes. Then her door opens and shuts again and it's over. A few minutes pass and Cheryl comes into Cecil's room without knocking. Sometimes the moonlight coming through his window illuminates her face and he watches her use her nightgown's collar to wipe tears off her cheeks and snot off her lip.
As she crawls into his bed, he reaches under the mattress for his stash of books and pulls one out. And she rolls over onto her back alongside him and settles in for a story. Alien invasions and vampire covens and sea mermaids and magicians casting spells — anything's good as long as it happens far, far away from their house. She gives a running commentary, always asking, "And then what?" She has her favorites, ones she asks to hear over and over. On nights when she eventually gets up to sleep in her own bed, she squeezes his hand hard as she rises, and if the story had been especially good, she mutters thanks. Other nights, she falls asleep next to him. Those mornings, the nanny gently wakes them up and runs out of the room before Cheryl can fling the book at their head.
But she hasn't come in yet tonight. Her door opened and shut a few minutes ago. Cicel pictures her on her bathroom floor hunched over the toilet, the same way he found her once last month; they sat there for a long time before she had the strength to stand. But that time, she had knocked on their shared wall to call him. He resists the urge to go knock to signal that he's here if she wants him.
Five, ten, fifteen minutes pass. Cecil's stomach aches with anxiety. He stands and paces to calm down, focusing on controlling his breath. As he crosses the room, a distant orange light streams through the window. His heart stutters when he gets closer and sees that the gazebo is on fire; it almost stops beating when he sees that Cheryl is out there.
Fifteen minutes is enough time for her to tiptoe outside, get gas and matches from the toolshed, and have fun with her new hobby: arson. She first lit something on fire three weeks ago with a quick touch of their father's lit cigar to a dinner napkin. She giggled as Cecil stomped on it. She escalated from napkins to papers to books, always out of sight of any adults, but she promised him that she wouldn't do anything dangerous. Hot panic rushes through his chest and head as he throws his door open and runs out into the hall.
He takes the stairs two at a time and runs faster than he thought he could down corridors and behind parlors. He hurries across the dining room, through the kitchen, and past the walk-in freezer before finally reaching the servants' quarters and the door to the backyard. It creaks as he pushes with his entire body weight to budge it open.
Across the grass, there she is in her pink nightgown, barefoot in the snow, holding an empty gas can. The fire casts a warm glow over her as he runs over, ignoring the winter wind stinging his eyes and burning his cheeks.
All he can think to say is, "What have you done?"
"Take that, gazebo!" Her lips are curled in a smile and her eyes are wide with thrill and satisfaction.
Cecil knows her well enough to see why she chose the gazebo to satisfy her appetite: their grandfather made it. Every summer, whenever their family and the relevant socialites come together for an ostensibly friendly croquet game, he tells anyone who will listen how he built it himself when he was a young man. He calls it his pride and joy and his adult children dutifully supply fake laughter. Cheryl climbs trees and rips up flowers until he beckons her over to have a glass of lemonade with him.
Never again will she be forced to sit in the gazebo with that dry hand on her knee. No more glasses of lemonade. No more croquet games. Cecil knows that if Cheryl had it her way, there would be no more grandfathers or lemonade or croquet games in the world. If she had it her way, she would be able to light anything on fire just by looking at it, and then nothing and no one but the two of them would be safe.
Cecil tilts his head up and watches a dark plume of smoke rising into the sky. The snow is picking up, bringing down bigger flakes faster and dampening the crackle and snap of crumbling oak. When he looks back down, Cheryl is so close to the fire that he sucks in a sharp breath. Smiling like she's about to do something wonderfully forbidden, she stretches her arm out.
"Wait, don't," Cecil begs.
She pretends not to hear him.
"Don't! It'll hurt!"
"Shh, Cecil. This is so cool." She closes her eyes and slowly breathes in deep through her nose. "It smells good, right? Smell it."
He jolts forward and grabs her around the waist, pulling her away. She goes rigid and digs her nails into his wrists like their mother does when she catches them sneaking chocolates.
"Let go! Let go!"
The force of the snow is putting the fire out and dimming its light. She thrashes against Cecil's chest before finally going limp in defeat.
"We have to go inside," he says. She only sniffs her runny nose in response.
He leads her away by the hand back to the mansion, tugging gently when she slows down to look back over her shoulder at the charred wreckage. She rubs the goosebumps on her opposite arm.
"Do you want a story?" he asks when they reach the door.
"Mhm." She drops the gas can on the ground. Cecil wonders who will take the blame for the fire but purposely forgets it. He's learned to not think too hard about people besides himself and Cheryl.
In the morning, the nanny will find them huddled together in Cecil's bed as snug as if they had been there all night. He'll say that they'll come downstairs for breakfast in a few minutes, and when the door closes, he'll hold his sister's hand for as long as she'll let him.