Lazy line painter

I cut off the story again, my brother says. I guess he's learning how to copy edit properly, so I should be happy.
The television was on CP24 constantly during the holidays, since they ran sports scores and highway updates. On Boxing Day, when my mother and grandmother were out shopping and my father was out shopping somewhere else, Charles Wallace was watching the news on CP24 and started trying to get my attention. I was reading the mystery my mother left, Death Takes a Time Share in the Cariboo, and it was really easy to drop it.
"A fire? Are you sure this isn't the Buffalo news?" Charles Wallace nodded.
"It's in Toronto. They must have had cameras around for the whole thing." He was right. It was an apartment building, converted from a 1950s house, and first the downstairs flared up, then the upstairs. Some toddlers in full snow gear (why? wasn't the house on fire? Toronto had been warm for weeks by then, too) got pulled down the wooden fire escape by their parents, then for some reason the father ran back into the fire and came down gasping.
"Is that a really small, flat child?" Charles Wallace asked.
"No, looks like a laptop. Maybe the guy's in CSIS and he had to save the data or lose his job. That's the only reason to run back towards the danger." Then a fireman went up the stairs and picked up another small, quilty, child. "Why are they running this? The fire was two days ago."
"The announcer said it was part of Toronto Fire Services holiday awareness campaign, and that this family was lucky to be alive, considering that they did everything wrong and lived in a firetrap waiting to go off."
"So it's a public service tragedy," I said. My mother and grandmother came back around then. My mother had been to Chapters and was settling down to read Death Makes a Contribution To An RRSP. I had a look on Charles Wallace's Blackberry to see if Duncan had written anything recently. All his messages to me so far had been either incoherent or cut short. I sent Jeremy Jones a postcard since he seemed to be the only one who'd sympathize with me right now (Duncan having made it clear he was doing what he liked best all the time, and was extremely happy and mostly busy or drunk).
Things between my parents were still a bit strained when we drove back to Milborough. I went with my mother, and Arne took my father and Charles Wallace and Wilco. I made plans to go out New Year's Eve with Enid in Toronto, and then my mother made arrangements for my aunt, uncle and Enid to spend New Year's Day with us in Milborough. My father must have done something uncharacteristically over the top and romantic for New Year's Eve, since my mother was in a great mood when I got back from Toronto and Charles Wallace was disgusted. He cheered up when I took him outside to light some fireworks at dark.