Doubt

Baxter Holmes: Flames licked at the vinyl paneling and the plywood boxed around a stovepipe. They crept skyward, toward scattered clouds hung late in the frigid North Shore night.

Finally, near the roof of the two-story Colonial home in Hamilton, they found a way inside.

Christmas ornaments, family photos, and more were collecting dust in the attic, but the fire was blind to heirlooms that measured Michael Carter-Williams’s family through time. It saw only fuel.

Quickly, the flames swept into his upstairs bedroom, where they devoured the game jerseys in his closet that his mother had planned to frame: the one from the McDonald’s All-American Games, from the Jordan Brand Classic. Others, too. Gone.

But the flames also destroyed a nondescript piece of paper taped to the wall above the desk near the point guard’s bed, one that hung there for the past six years.