They assessed each other. She said, “Mr. Plummer.” Clearing her throat of self-conscious scratchiness, she added, “Pleased to meet you.”

“Laurel, he said?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’re kin now, so I ’spect you ought to drop the sir and call me Irv.”

She gave him a faint smile, and some of the tension in her chest eased. Pearl squirmed inside her coat, drawing his notice.

“That the baby? What’s its name?”

Laurel unbuttoned her coat, lifted Pearl out, and transferred her to the crook of her elbow. “Her name is Pearl.”

He didn’t step closer, but tentatively leaned forward and inspected what he could see of Pearl, which wasn’t much, swaddled as she was, and considering the meager light provided by a kerosene lantern that hung from a hook in the low ceiling.

He appeared to be pleased enough with his granddaughter, because he smiled. But all he said was, “Well, how ’bout that?”

Then he turned away and went over to a potbellied stove. Laurel noticed that he favored his left leg, making his bowlegged gait even more lopsided. He opened the door to the stove and tossed in two split logs he took from the stack of firewood against the wall.

He came back around, dusting his hands. “Y’all are hungry, I ’spect. I’ve got a rabbit fried up. Fresh killed and dressed this morning. I’ve kept a batch of biscuits warm. I was waiting till Derby got here to make the gravy.”

Laurel’s stomach had been growling for the past several hours, but to be polite, she said, “I hate that you’ve gone to so much trouble.”

“No trouble. Coffee’s—”

The door burst open, and Derby came in with their suitcases. He dropped them at his sides and pushed the door closed with his heel.

Irv said to him, “Move over there closer to the stove. I’ll pour y’all some coffee.”

“Got any hooch? Or are you abiding by the new law of the land, even though it’s horseshit?”

Looking displeased by his son’s crudity, Irv glanced at Laurel, then walked over to a small chest that had only three legs. In place of the missing one was a stack of catalogues with faded, curled, dusty covers. He grunted as he went down on his right knee. He opened the bottom drawer, reached far back into it, and came out with a mason jar that was two-thirds full of clear liquid.

As he heaved himself up, he said, “Sometimes my hip gets to bothering me so’s I can’t sleep. A nip of ’shine helps.”

Derby reached for the jar without so much as a thank you. He uncapped it and took a swig. The corn liquor must’ve seared his gullet. When he lowered the jar, his eyes were watering.

Laurel was already furious at him. Weren’t their present circumstances dreadful enough without his getting drunk? She didn’t conceal the resentment in her voice when she told him she needed the necessary.

Irv said, “Around back, twenty paces or so. You can lay the baby down over there.” He nodded toward a mattress on the floor in the corner. “Take a lantern, Derby.”

Laurel didn’t want to leave Pearl, but not having any choice, she laid her on the mattress. The ticking looked reasonably clean compared to the hard-packed dirt floor. She wrapped the baby tightly in her blankets, hoping that a varmint wouldn’t crawl into them before she returned.

Between taking sips of moonshine, Derby had lit a lantern. Bracing herself for the brutal cold, Laurel followed him out. It had started to snow, and it was sticking.

She was glad Derby was with her to help her find her way, but she was too angry to speak to him. She went into the foul-smelling outhouse and relieved herself as quickly as she could.

When she emerged, Derby passed the lantern to her. “Get back inside. I’m gonna have a smoke.”

“It’s freezing out here.”

“I’m gonna have a smoke.”

“And finish that?” she said, glaring at the fruit jar.

“I’m sick of you nagging me about every goddamn thing.”

“As if things aren’t bad enough, you’re going to get skunk drunk?”

He smirked. “Thought I would.” He raised the jar to his mouth, but she slapped it aside, almost knocking it out of his hand.

“Do as I tell you, Laurel. Go inside.”

“Your daddy didn’t know about Pearl and me, did he?” When he just stared back at her, she shouted, “Did he?”

“No.”

Even though she wasn’t surprised, hearing him admit it caused her to see red. “How could you do this to me, Derby? To Pearl? To all of us? Why in the world did you bring us here?”

“I had to do something with you first.”

“First?”

“You’ll thank me later.”

He produced a pistol from the pocket of his coat, put it beneath his chin, and pulled the trigger.

Two

Laurel’s father-in-law waited until daylight and the worst of the storm had blown itself out to notify the authorities. Before leaving for town, he made her swear that she would stay inside the shack while he was gone. Listlessly, she agreed to remain inside, having no desire to subject herself to see in the dreary, gray daylight what she had beheld in darkness.

She hadn’t even known that Derby owned a pistol.

In Irv’s absence, she sat on the mattress near the potbellied stove, where she had endured the long night, benumbed by what Derby had done. She’d held Pearl to her the entire time, her infant being the only thing that seemed real, the one thing she could cling to in this ongoing nightmare.

She couldn’t even take comfort in fond memories of Derby. Those she’d cherished had died with him. They’d been obliterated by what would be her final memory of him.

She resented him for that.

Irv returned, followed by the sheriff and the justice of the peace. They came into the shack and spoke to her briefly, but there was little she could say that would make the circumstances any clearer than the gore they’d seen splashed onto the door of the outhouse.

After Derby’s body had been removed and taken to the funeral parlor, Irv dismantled the outhouse and burned it. By the early dusk, he had built another enclosure. He probably wouldn’t have been so industrious on the day after his son’s suicide if it hadn’t been for the privacy Laurel required.

Now, less than twenty-four hours after meeting her father-in-law, they were alone in the shack, except for Pearl. He was at the cookstove, preparing food she didn’t think she could eat, but knew she must in order to sustain Pearl.