Parker removed her phone from her back pocket and started to record. A habit from when she was in college and recording life events was a part of her daily life. “I don’t like this,” she said to her recording. Her video caught the way the sky started to move from gray to black and the wind started to pick up. The view landed on the barn that only housed a half a dozen chickens.

The guesthouse stood several feet from that, her father’s flags waved proudly in the wind.

Shoving her phone back in her pocket, she ran to the barn and opened the chicken coop door. She wouldn’t try and gather the birds. If the fire moved in, they would just have to run for themselves.

From across the property, the sound of wind chimes slamming against each other screamed like an omen in her head.

Still, denial sat in a far corner of her brain.

This isn’t happening.

The desire to sit idle and cry was huge.

Back inside the house, she grabbed a quilt her grandmother had made and ran down the hall removing family photos from the walls, dropping them on the blanket until it was too heavy to pull.

She filled the back of her brother’s car.

Scout ran beside her, smart enough to stay close. The same couldn’t be said for the family cat.

Sushi, the cat, was nowhere to be found.

Austin ran into the house. “Parker! You have to see this.”

She hadn’t been in the house ten minutes, yet walking outside was like walking from daylight to midnight. Air swirled like a hurricane. The noise the fire was generating was deafening. They ran down the driveway and took in the ridgeline.

It was as if someone had poured a massive spray of accelerant and a wall of fire exploded as a result.

The captain of the fire department she’d spoken with most of the morning stood looking at the flames. “You have a defendable house,” he told her.

“That doesn’t look like a fair fight,” she told him.

He looked around with strange excitement in his eyes. “Now would be when I need to tell you to leave.”

Not that they had much of a warning.

“Would you? If this was your home?” Austin asked.

The captain blinked. “I’m a firefighter.”

She saw her father’s fighting look in her brother’s eyes.

Mallory appeared more like their mother, ready to flee.

“The road leaving the neighborhood is already backed up,” the captain told them. He stared directly at Parker. “I’m going to save your house.”

Bits of hot ash started to rain down on her skin. “What’s going to happen now?” she asked.

The firefighter looked to the streaks of flames that started to surround them. “It’s going to get really interesting, really fast.” His crew had already backed their truck up the driveway and were running around laying out hoses.

The three of them moved back into the house and watched the fire as it crept closer, for less than a minute.

“I want to stay,” Austin told them.

“And do what?” Mallory yelled at him.

“Dad would stay.”

“Dad isn’t here.” Parker kept her voice even.

“I don’t want my car to fry,” her sister told them. The cars were outside the house and filled with anything worth saving.

Scout barked at their feet as if adding his two cents.

Leave or stay?

Outside, the flames crept closer. The hillside next to the barn was starting to go up.

Before she could make a sound, the fire alarm in the house went crazy. Without thought, Parker ran through the house to see if the fire had somehow gotten inside.

The phone rang. She knew without looking that it was the alarm company calling to ask about the fire alarm.

There was nothing in the house worth their lives. And the path for them to exit the canyon was starting to catch fire.

Parker grabbed the leash for the dog and hooked him in. “We’re leaving.”

“I want to stay,” her brother argued.

She grabbed her sister’s hand, stared her brother down. “We already lost Mom and Dad. And none of us can do anything to save the house.”

He blinked. The boy he once was, looking more like the man he would become. “Okay.”

Parker sighed in relief as they fled the house.

Outside was a war zone. Flames were so close that the heat of them was a sunburn on her bare arms. Smoldering ash dripped from the sky, making it impossible to breathe without coughing.

Scout jumped in Austin’s car and one by one they drove down the quarter-mile driveway as they exited their family ranch.

The last thing Parker saw before leaving her childhood home was an orange glow of flames catching one of the heritage oaks on fire.

CHAPTER TWO

Parker rocked, her phone in hand, while the news slowly revealed the fire coverage as it happened.

It had taken over an hour and a half to leave the canyon. The captain hadn’t been kidding when he said the exit was congested. A standstill would be a better definition.

Now she and her siblings were with friends across town, but not too far that they couldn’t see flames in the distance.

Slowly, one text at a time, Parker watched as the alarm system at their home pinged on her phone.

Front door intrusion.

Glass break living room.

Motion detection family room.

Glass break dining room.

Parker rocked.

This wasn’t happening. She’d taken care of their family home every day since her parents’ death. Keeping it together so that once Austin graduated from high school she could sell the ranch and they could all start a new life.

Two days ago that’s all she had wanted.

A new life. One without the responsibilities of raising her siblings and taking care of all the bills her parents left behind with the money that came with their deaths.

A life where she could return to school herself, instead of keeping the go-nowhere job she’d taken, to follow a traditional school schedule so she could be there for Mallory and Austin.

A new life where she might even try and go out on a date.

Only now, none of that mattered. Parker watched her phone as their home presumably exploded, until the alarm system finally gave out and stopped texting her altogether.

“That’s the house above us,” Austin exclaimed, pointing at the TV.

Parker glanced up, her friend Jennifer kept her arm around her.

The home above theirs flashed on the screen.

It was entirely engulfed.

The pilot in the news helicopter said the smoke was too thick to reach the other side. At the same time, he told the people watching that several structures in the area were complete losses.

Parker stared at her phone and the alerts from the system at the house.

The system that had stopped talking to her.

She thought of her mother standing on the porch of the house, waving them in for dinner. Her father digging a hole for yet another tree he wanted to plant.

Gone . . .

All her denial that this was happening started to take hold, and her eyes swelled with unshed tears.

“Do you think it’s still there?” Mallory asked.

Parker couldn’t say yes, wouldn’t say no.

By now, it was all over . . . one way or the other.

The fire had moved in so quickly that they either had a home to go back to or they didn’t.