Peering down his street past the yellow police tape, he sees that the fire's devastation was nearly complete, incinerating house after house where Christmas lights once hung from rooftops and his children played in neighbors' backyards. Yet when he looks the other way he can almost pretend nothing happened. His house, with its telltale heat bubbles on one side, was some kind of a turning point.
Maybe the wind shifted just enough. Maybe salvation came when firefighters pulled down a burning split-rail fence between the two properties. Or maybe it was that awful choice firefighters sometimes make to let one house burn so another can be saved.
