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Speaker 1: Hey, Family Secrets. Family. I'm here with a special treat

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Speaker 1: for you, my way of thanking you for being such

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Speaker 1: a wonderful, supportive and inspiring community. I couldn't do what

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Speaker 1: I do without you. So without further ado, here is

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Speaker 1: a special sneak peak of the first chapter of my

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Speaker 1: new novel, Signal Fires. The book doesn't come out until October,

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Speaker 1: but I wanted you to get a taste of it

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Speaker 1: before anyone else. Everything I know about Family Secrets is

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Speaker 1: in the story I'm about to tell. I hope you

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Speaker 1: love it. August Sarah and THEO. And it's nothing really,

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Speaker 1: or might be nothing, or ought to be nothing. As

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Speaker 1: he leans his head forward to press the tip of

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Speaker 1: his cigarette to the car's lighter, its sizzles on contact,

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Speaker 1: a sound particular to its brief moment in history in

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Speaker 1: which cars have lighters and otherwise sensible fifteen year old

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Speaker 1: choke down Marlborough Reds and drive their mother's Buicks without

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Speaker 1: so much as a learner's permit. There's a girl he

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Speaker 1: wants to impress. Her name is Misty Zimmerman, and if

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Speaker 1: she lives through this night, she will grow up to

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Speaker 1: be a magazine editor or a high school teacher or

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Speaker 1: a defense lawyer. She will be a mother of three

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Speaker 1: or remain childless. She will die young of ovarian cancer,

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Speaker 1: or live to know her great grandchildren. But these are

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Speaker 1: only a few possible arcs to a life. A handful

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Speaker 1: of shooting stars in the night sky change one thing,

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Speaker 1: and everything changes. A tremor here sets off an earthquake there,

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Speaker 1: A fault line deepens, A wire gets tripped, his foot

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Speaker 1: on the gas. He doesn't really know what he's doing,

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Speaker 1: but that won't stop him. He's all jacked up, just

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Speaker 1: like a fifteen year old boy. He has something to

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Speaker 1: prove to himself, to Misty, to his sister. It's as

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Speaker 1: if he's following a script written in brail, his fingers

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Speaker 1: running across code. He doesn't understand THEO slow down. That's

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Speaker 1: his sister, Sarah from the back seat Misty's riding shotgun.

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Speaker 1: It was Sarah who tossed him the keys to their

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Speaker 1: mother's car. Sarah aged seventeen. After this night, she will

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Speaker 1: become unknowable to him. The summer sky is a veil

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Speaker 1: thrown over the moon and stars. The streets are quiet,

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Speaker 1: the good people of Avalon long since tucked in for

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Speaker 1: the night, their own parents are asleep in their queen

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Speaker 1: sized bed under the plaid afghan knitted by one of

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Speaker 1: their father's patients. His mom is a deep sleeper, but

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Speaker 1: his dad has been trained by a lifetime as a

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Speaker 1: doctor to bolt awake at the slightest provocation. He is

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Speaker 1: always ready. The teenagers aren't looking for trouble. They're good kids.

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Speaker 1: Everyone would say so. But they're bored. It's the end

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Speaker 1: of summer. School will resume next week. Sarah is going

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Speaker 1: into her senior year, after which she'll be gone. She's

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Speaker 1: a superstar his sister varsity. This honors that bristling with potential.

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Speaker 1: THEO has three years left and he's barely made a mark.

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Speaker 1: He's a chubby kid whose default is silence and shame.

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Speaker 1: He blushes easily. He can feel his cheeks reddened as

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Speaker 1: he holds the lighter and inhales. Here's the sizzle, draws

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Speaker 1: the smoke deep into his lungs. His father, a pulmonary surgeon,

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Speaker 1: would kill him. Maybe that's why Sarah threw him the keys.

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Speaker 1: Maybe she's trying to help get him to act. God

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Speaker 1: damn it, to take a risk. Better to be bad

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Speaker 1: than to be no thing. Misty Zimmerman is just a

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Speaker 1: girl along for the ride. It was Sarah who asked

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Speaker 1: her to come. Sarah doing for THEO what THEO cannot

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Speaker 1: do for himself. Change one thing, and everything changes. The

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Speaker 1: buick speeds down Poplar Street. Misty stretches and yawns in

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Speaker 1: the passenger's seat. THEO turns left, then right. He's getting

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Speaker 1: the hang of this. He flicks the directional then heads

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Speaker 1: onto the parkway. As they passed the mall, he looks

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Speaker 1: to see if Burger King is still open. Watch it,

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Speaker 1: Sarah yells. He swerves back into his lane, heart racing.

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Speaker 1: He almost hit the guardrail. He gets off the parkway

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Speaker 1: at the next exit and eases up on the gas.

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Speaker 1: This was maybe a bad idea. He wants to go home.

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Speaker 1: He also wants another cigarette. Pull over, Sarah says, I'll drive.

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Speaker 1: THEO looks for a good spot to stop. He has

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Speaker 1: no idea how to park. Sarah's right, this is stupid. Actually, no,

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Speaker 1: forget it. I shouldn't, She says. They're almost home. It's

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Speaker 1: like a song in his head. Almost home, Almost home,

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Speaker 1: Almost home, just a few blocks to go. They pass

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Speaker 1: the Heller's house. The church offs as he leans forward

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Speaker 1: The lighter slips through Theo's fingers and drops into his

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Speaker 1: open shirt collar. He lets out a yelp and tries

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Speaker 1: to grab it, which only makes matters worse. He arches

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Speaker 1: his back to shake the burning metal sing loose, but

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Speaker 1: it's wedged between his shorts and his belly. The smell

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Speaker 1: of singed flesh, a perfect shiny half moon, will remain

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Speaker 1: years from now. When a lover traces the scar on

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Speaker 1: his stomach and asks how he got it, he will

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Speaker 1: roll away. But now now they're futures shoot like gamma

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Speaker 1: rays from the moving car. Three high school students. What

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Speaker 1: if Sarah had got out with her friends instead that night?

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Speaker 1: What if Misty had begged off? What if THEO had

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Speaker 1: succumbed to his usual way of being and fixed himself

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Speaker 1: a salami sandwich with lots of mustard and taking it

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Speaker 1: with him to bed. The wheel spins the screams of

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Speaker 1: teenagers in the night, THEO no stop, Jesus, fuck, Help God.

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Speaker 1: And there is no screech of brakes, nothing to blunt

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Speaker 1: the impact. A concussion of metal and an ancient oak,

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Speaker 1: the sound of two worlds colliding. The fender and right

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Speaker 1: side of the buick crumpled like it's a toy, and

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Speaker 1: this is all make believe. Upstairs, on the second floor

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Speaker 1: of Benjamin and Mimi Wolfe's home, a light blinks on

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Speaker 1: a window opens. Ben Wilf stares down at the scene

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Speaker 1: below for a fraction of a second. By the time

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Speaker 1: he's made it to the front door, his daughter Sarah

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Speaker 1: is standing before him. Thank god, thank god, thank god,

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Speaker 1: her t shirt and her face splattered with blood. THEO

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Speaker 1: is on all fours on the ground. He seems to

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Speaker 1: be in one piece, thank God, thank god, thank god.

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Speaker 1: But then there's a girl in the car. Dad, miss

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Speaker 1: Tis and Ramann is unconscious. She isn't wearing a seatbelt

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Speaker 1: who wears seatbelts, and there's a gash in her forehead

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Speaker 1: from which blood is gushing. There's no time to call

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Speaker 1: an ambulance. If they wait for E. M. T. S

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Speaker 1: To get here, the girl will be gone. So Ben

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Speaker 1: does what's necessary. He leans into the driver's door, hooks

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Speaker 1: two hands beneath the girl's armpits, and drags her out.

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Speaker 1: Your shirt, THEO. He barks Theo's belly royals. He's about

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Speaker 1: to be sick. He pulls his shirt off and throws

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Speaker 1: it to his father. Ben lifts Misty's head, then wraps

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Speaker 1: the shirt tightly around her skull in a tourniquet. His

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Speaker 1: mind has gone slow and quiet. He's a very good doctor.

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Speaker 1: He feels for the girl's pulse. Mimi is on the

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Speaker 1: front steps now, her nightgown billowing in the wind that

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Speaker 1: seems to have kicked up out of nowhere. What happened,

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Speaker 1: Mimi screams, Sarah THEO It was me, Mom. Sarah says,

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Speaker 1: I was driving. THEO stares at his sister. That doesn't

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Speaker 1: matter now, Ben says softly. Up and down Division Street.

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Speaker 1: Their neighbors have awakened. The crash, the voices, the electricity

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Speaker 1: in the air. Some one must have called it in

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Speaker 1: in the distance, the wail of a siren. Ben knows

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Speaker 1: before he knows, in that deep instinctual way he couldn't

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Speaker 1: see in the dark. When he dragged the girl out

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Speaker 1: of the car, he registered only the head wound, the

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Speaker 1: uncontrollable bleeding. He now knows her neck is broken, and

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Speaker 1: he has done the worst thing imaginable. He has moved her.

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Speaker 1: In the day is to come, he will tell the

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Speaker 1: story to the authorities, to the life support team, to

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Speaker 1: Missy's parents. The story that Sarah was driving with Misty

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Speaker 1: riding shotgun and THEO in the back seat will not

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Speaker 1: be questioned, not this night, not ever. It will become

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Speaker 1: the deepest kind of family secret, one so dangerous that

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Speaker 1: it will never be spoken. This audio was exerted from

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Speaker 1: the audiobook of Signal Fires by Danny Shapiro, who was

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Speaker 1: read by the author, and courtesy of Penguin Random House

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Speaker 1: Audio