Read Online What Burns Away by Melissa Falcon Field - Free Book Online

Medicine.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo we have a two-year obligation, Claire. That’s the absolute minimum before we can even begin to discuss other options. You know that. Anyway, her husband came up to me in the lab and asked if I was already looking at other jobs. My reputation is important, babe, especially if we should ever want to make a change, which right now I don’t. I can see this place being really great for us. Madison is a beautiful city. And, my colleagues need to know I am committed to the department and the research at hand.”
    I sipped from my wineglass. “Sorry,” I said.
    â€œAnd by the way,” Miles told me through his final mouthful of cookie crumbs, “you left the oven on. I turned it off. I smelled something burning. Same thing happened yesterday after you went to bed. Could you be more careful? Maybe you’re distracted. But just, please, honey, take more care.”
    â€œYup,” I said, nodding. Wanting him to leave me alone. “I’ll be more careful.”
    He leaned in to kiss my forehead and stood. “I’m going to work on my grant a while. Don’t wait up on me.”
    â€œOkay. Good night.”
    Miles shuffled off in his slippers, and as he went, I read the last bit of Dean’s correspondence, queued in our thread.
    Claire, don’t you wonder what it would be like with us now? As grown-ups? Hopefully, this isn’t saying too much. But I wonder. In fact, I’ve wondered about that for a long time.
    Since he was no longer on chat after Miles left the room, I sent Dean a brief email before logging off and heading up to bed, hesitating momentarily before delivering my own restrained confession.
    Dean—
    You can’t say too much after all we shared. After all you did for me. And thank you for the compliments. I’ll admit, I’ve wondered too. And I’ve imagined it some. In any case, I hope you’re happy and well.
    Love,
    Claire
    Closing my laptop with my feet stretched out toward the hearth, I thought then about fire and its scientific definition—“a high-temperature, self-sustaining chemical reaction, resulting in heat and often casting flames”—quite certain that Dean and I still had that old fire between us, in every sense of the term.

CHAPTER FOUR
Fire
    Mr. Barnet, my ninth-grade science teacher, wore the same green-and-black flannel shirt every day of my freshman year, cuffing his sleeves to reveal a periodic table tattoo on his forearm. I’ll never forget his lessons in fire, as they influenced most who I would become that year—and who I would become again so much later in my life.
    Mr. Barnet began the first unit on combustion by announcing: “Fire is one thing in nature that is not matter.”
    I can still hear the force of his chalk striking the blackboard as he wrote in block letters:
    Fire = Combustion.
    Fire = The visible, tangible side effect of matter changing form .
    He turned to face the class, rubbing his goatee.
    Someone let out a belch.
    Norwell Jackson, the captain of the basketball team, was tipping back in his chair, playing with a Rubik’s Cube. Mr. Barnet pegged Norwell in the shoulder with his eraser, a warning.
    Then, he turned to me. I was snapping my gum when he said it, the words I still hear every time I see flames: “Fire is a weapon with unlimited power.”
    Onto the overhead projector, Mr. Barnet placed an artist’s sketch originally printed in an old Harper’s Weekly , rendering the Great Chicago Fire that we were reading about in history class, the sky dark with smoke, masses of people running from towering flames.
    â€œHere’s an example of a fire that burned for two days, from October eighth through October tenth, 1871, after either Catherine and Patrick O’Leary’s cow kicked over a kerosene lantern or, more likely in my scientific opinion, fragments from Biela’s comet ignited a spark that started a