Heaven's Bones by Samantha Henderson

gnarled pile of blackened wood, shards and boards, some tumbled to the ground, some reaching up to the sky as if in appeal. It took her a few seconds to realize what it was.
    It was the charred remains of a plantation house. She recognized the burnt rounds that had once been proud pillars, the hollows, still studded with broken, melted glass where windows once looked out. Around the house was a dead zone where the grass had burned and where a few privets stood, their leaves brown and curled. There was a haze over the structure, as if smoke still rose from its entrails and Fanny wondered if embers still glowed deep underneath.
    Another shock of recognition, close upon the first when she realized the ruins had been a house. It was
her
house.
    The gutted hulk was Riverbend. She could see where the pillarsonce stood, the wide porch steps, a heap of charred timber where the central staircase had collapsed. It was nestled in the bend of the river for which it was named, and the water flowed and sparkled and chuckled as before, as if nothing at all had happened.
    Fanny whirled around, looking for her father behind her, looking for some kind of explanation. No one was there, not even the mist. The day was clear and transparent: the sun shone down out of a clear sky and glittered on the water, and birds chattered in the woods that were unshrouded by fog. Her father and the strange man were nowhere to be seen.
    How had the house burned down so completely and quickly?
    And her mother?
    Was her mother inside when it happened?
    Was she inside now, somewhere underneath the rubble?
    Reluctantly, Fanny walked closer. The bottom-most porch step was somehow undamaged; the paint looked weathered, as if by a hundred rainy days, but not burned. The next step looked complete and solid, although the paint was blistered away. The third was ruined.
    She stepped tentatively on the first step, which gave slightly beneath her, and listened.
    Nothing but birdsong and the splash of the river.
    She noticed something else. Although the trees to either side of the ruins were just charred hulks, the grass grew, strong and green, up to the very step where she stood. Vines, some young and pale, others thick and spiny, wound here and there over and between the blackened wood.
    This house had not burned down this morning. Not this week, or this month. This had happened years ago.
    Fanny sat on the bottom step and wondered whether to cry.

    â€œThere are better places to sit on a fine day like today.”
    She started at the sound of the voice, with no idea how long she’d been there. Surely the sun had moved in the sky.
    The speaker was a man who hovered somewhere between being middle-aged and elderly. His skin was dark and leathery-looking, as if he’d been in the sun for much of his life, and he wore a broad-brimmed straw hat. He wore what looked like work pants, and a maroon shirt, and a cheerful yellow paisley vest, and she was so startled to see another human that she looked at him with her mouth open.
    His face was cheerful, but there was sadness about his eyes when he looked down at her, and she had a feeling that he knew far more about her than a stranger should.
    â€œWhat happened here?” she blurted out before she thought, then blushed fiercely at her forwardness—although whether this man was servant, slave or landowner, it was impossible to tell.
    â€œI mean—what happened to the house? When did it burn?” She indicated the charred remains of the plantation house with a small wave of her hand, although there could be no doubt of what she meant.
    â€œAh, missy,” said the man, hands on hips and feet apart, regarding the ruin. “ ’Most twenty years ago, it would be.”
    â€œTwenty years?”
    Fanny stared ahead, frowning.
    â€œThen this can’t be Riverbend Plantation,” she concluded, puzzled but relieved.
    â€œOh, yes.” He took off his hat, revealing a shiny pate surrounded by a