I have no answers, and you can’t give me any. I should be writing about horses, hair, and horseflies. Horses because they’re part of our camp here and that’s what we’ve dealt with so far. Ashlyn has to exercise the horses because she has three DUIs and she whacked the pink streak out of her hair tonight. Carmella has to pick up bugs because she was caught shoplifting one too many times. And Tiffany has to sketch the bugs because she posted ugly pictures of her classmates. I just know you would have handled things like this. I miss you, Mama, even though I still can’t understand why you did things the way you did.

Until later, Jayden

Clouds shifted across the moon that evening, and everything remained dark in all the cabins. Jayden and her team had had a pretty big day, so Elijah wasn’t surprised when he didn’t find her on the porch, but he was more than a little disappointed. He was about to round the end of the cabin when he saw a movement in his peripheral vision and saw Jayden coming back from the bathhouse.

“Hey, don’t run away.” Her tone sounded light.

He turned around and headed back. “Thought you had already turned in for the night. Mind if I sit down?”

“Not a bit if one of those beers is for me.” She slid back in the deep-red chair and patted the table connecting it to the other one.

He set a beer on the table, twisted the top off the other, and handed it to her. Then he sat down and did the same with the second bottle. “Tell me about your day.”

She took a long sip of the cold beer, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and said, “Horses, horseflies, and hair.”

He chuckled. “Want to give me a few details about that?”

He took a couple of deep breaths and then reminded himself how improper it was for him to even be sitting on the porch with her. If one of the girls came outside, or if Novalene or Diana decided to come over for a late-evening chat, his being there could be misconstrued as something more than just sharing a beer with a fellow employee. But right then he didn’t really care.

Jayden started with the story about taking Dynamite for his afternoon walk and then went right into the bit about the horsefly. “I tell you, that Tiffany has surprised me. She’s tougher than I thought she would be, and she’s got real talent with her drawing. I could almost smell that pile of crap when she sketched it with a horsefly flittering around the top of it. When we got home, they got into the insect book on the shelf in there, and the giggling started.”

“Why?” Elijah enjoyed listening to her spin on the stories.

“The female horseflies are the ones that bite, and they don’t care if it’s humans or animals. They need the blood to produce eggs. The males don’t bite,” Jayden answered.

“I knew that, but why would the girls laugh about it?” Elijah asked.

“They said it had to be a boy horsefly. A girl one would be more interested in making eggs for babies than playing around in a warm pile of stinky crap. Then they likened the horse crap to sports,” she said, “and it went from there. I was sitting in the living room listening with one ear, but I found out that they are all three sexually active, and we took their birth control pills from them when we took away their purses. They were moaning about their boyfriends having to use condoms for a whole month when they got back home.”

“They’re not old enough to . . . ,” Elijah stammered.

“Evidently they are, but Carmella said that none of them would have a boyfriend when they got home because boys didn’t wait two months to get laid,” Jayden told him.

Elijah was a seasoned veteran, so he didn’t blush, but he felt heat rising from his neck. His mind went back to his first sexual experience. He’d been seventeen and his girlfriend was a year younger. He’d taken her to a party on the beach down around Texas City.

“Thinkin’ about your first time?” Jayden asked.

“Busted!” He turned up his bottle of beer and took a long gulp, then set it back down. “But being the gentleman that I am, I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Well, I’ll just put a hand grenade in whatever thoughts you might be harboring about that first time.” She laughed. “According to my girls, most boys don’t know how to make a girl feel all warm and gooey—their words, not mine—inside. They’re slam, bam, thank you, ma’am, and on to the next girl, kind of like the old male horsefly does when he flits from one pile of horse crap to the next.”

Elijah couldn’t do anything but shake his head. “So, who is the horse crap?”

“According to them, it’s whoever their boyfriends are home screwing around with right now,” Jayden answered.

“But it’s not them, right?”

“Oh, no, they are all”—Jayden giggled—“glasses of five-hundred-dollar champagne that the boy horsefly has left behind for the skanky old crap piles.” She dissolved in laughter.

“I’m not sure I want to hear about the horses and the hair after this.” Elijah laughed with her.

“The rest is a little anticlimactic after all that.” Jayden finished off her beer. “A snake spooked Dynamite, and Ashlyn had to chase him down. She did fairly well with him, but when she was taking Thunder back from the half-mile marker, he got away from her, and it took all three of them to chase him down. They cussed and ranted about it the whole time they were in the shower. Ashlyn says that it’s a good thing she didn’t have a gun, or he would be coyote food tonight. They were all so tired that they didn’t even argue with me about the bedtime curfew.”

“And the hair story?”

Jayden told him about Ashlyn whacking off her pink streak. “Ashlyn was told she had to cut the pink or dye it. She had been tucking it up under her cap, but tonight she sawed it off with her razor and gave it to me. I’m tellin’ you, I’ve got some tough girls.”

“From what I can see, they’ve got a tough counselor,” Elijah told her.

“Thank you for that,” she said. “Now tell me about your day.”

“Well, it sure wasn’t as exciting as yours. I didn’t play dodge the horse apples or horseflies, either, but I . . .” He paused and took a deep breath.

She laid a hand on his arm. “Are you all right?”

Her gentle touch made him think of all the times Mary had patted him on the back. He probably shouldn’t say a thing, since it might spook Jayden, but he needed to talk to someone. “It’s about Mary and Henry. I’m worried about them both, but more about her. They’ve looked forward to retiring all year, and it seems like Mary is going downhill lately. I’ve noticed her grabbing her chest a few times, and I’m scared that she’s got heart trouble.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t know what he’d do without her. They’ve only had each other all these years and Henry wouldn’t last six months if he lost Mary. She works too hard during the sessions . . .”

“Have you talked to Henry about it, or suggested she see a doctor?” Jayden asked.

“I have, but Henry is in denial, and Mary won’t do anything to jeopardize this retirement trip they’ve planned. It starts with a European cruise and ends with them settling into a pretty little village down on the coast near Beaumont.” Elijah covered her hand with his and squeezed gently, and then quickly moved his hand away when he realized what he’d done. “After all the girls they’ve helped, they deserve a few years together. I want them to have nothing to do but enjoy time together and play dominoes with their new neighbors.”