Lena opened her mouth as if to respond but said nothing. She touched Ruth’s chin, lifting it until Ruth met her eyes. “I for one am glad you’re back home. You stayed away too long.” There was something about the way Lena looked at her that said, I know all about what happened long ago, but we’ll pretend I don’t. Mama had been fiercely adamant about keeping Ruth’s pregnancy secret. Was it possible she’d told someone?

“How’s business these days?” Ruth said, eager to change the subject.

Growing up, there had been a steady stream of customers, especially around the holidays with people buying one-of-a-kind gifts for family and friends.

“People don’t shop as much now that Fernwood has shut down.”

“Shut down? What do you mean? The plant meant everything to Papa.”

“They couldn’t afford to keep the production here. Closed about six months ago. So many out of jobs now. Patrick’s dad, Butch. Your brother. It’s hard out here right now. Everybody’s just looking out for their own, you know.”

“Damn.” Ruth closed her eyes to gather herself, recalling how Eli would come home after work with grease streaking his face. Over the years, Fernwood had laid off workers during lean times, but no one thought it would ever shut down for good. It’s not like Mama would have called to tell her Eli was out of work, and Ruth knew Eli was too proud to have called her himself.

“Butch hasn’t been himself since he got his walking papers. You know, losing your job isn’t just about the money. It’s like you lose everything. Everything that makes you who you are can be gone just like that.” Lena snapped her fingers for effect. “All these car companies around the country are talking about filing for bankruptcy. And I don’t know that Obama’s going to do anything about it.”

Hearing a white woman, even a family friend, make a subtle criticism of the incoming president who hadn’t even taken the oath of office yet annoyed Ruth. It was like somebody talking trash about your crazy uncle. Family could mock and drag him all day, but nobody else could. Lena must have read her mind.

“I voted for him, don’t get me wrong, but he promised change like all the rest that came before him. So, we’ll just have to see. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Ruth laughed to take the bite out of her frustration, hoping her words would come out restrained, minus any low-grade anger. “The man hasn’t even measured the drapes in the West Wing yet. Give him time.”

Lena had been good to her family. Her politics shouldn’t matter, but Ruth couldn’t help but wonder if she was like her colleagues at Langham who said one thing at work but did something very different behind the curtain of the voting booth.

Eight

Midnight

The ice grunted under the wheels of Miss Ruth’s car, and the faster Midnight threw snowballs at them, the harder she must have mashed the gas pedal trying to get away. Her car swerved. He laughed. Granny couldn’t see him from inside the shop, and he knew she’d have a fit if she saw him acting out, as she called it, but the diabetes made her eyes so blurry she once poured salt instead of sugar in her apple pie filling. Instead of going back inside, he stood there on the street and watched the car get smaller and smaller until it was an itty-bitty speck and then just part of the big blob of gray sky.

Midnight sat on the curb, the butt of his pants soggy from the snow. He heard steps and sniffles behind him, and that’s when Bones ran up with his mouth open for one of Midnight’s Reese’s Pieces. Granny didn’t like him feeding him candy, though. She said it made a dog’s blood sugar drop, which made no sense because she insisted sweets made hers go sky-high. He counted out four Reese’s, enough to stop Bones from begging but not so many to make him sick.

Bones hardly had any hair to keep him warm, and his thin skin felt slippery and rubbery, his bones jutting out in places like those raw chickens Granny had him hold by the legs while she seasoned them. The dog had followed Midnight zipping down alleys and through empty lots on the Pratt side of the railroad tracks. Nobody had ever claimed him, so he became the neighborhood’s dog. The name Bones stuck. Every living thing needed its own name, maybe not the one it was born with, but one that fit. Granny wouldn’t let Midnight take him home, though. I have enough mouths to feed, she said.

“Where do you think Miss Ruth is headed now?” he asked, and Bones shook his head, either to say he didn’t know or to shake off the cold. Miss Ruth’s skin glowed a dark bronze and she looked like one of those models from the clothes catalogs Granny got in the mail. She smelled sweet, too, like the perfume ads. What he didn’t like was how she asked the same silly questions most grown-ups did. Even worse, she looked at him over the top of her glasses like the school principal did that time she gave him detention for putting thumbtacks on the substitute teacher’s chair. Still, she’d covered for him and hadn’t ratted him out. Nobody had ever done that for him before. Not ever.

The sun peeked through the blinds the next morning and Midnight wished it were still dark, so he wouldn’t have to see the roach, small and black, on the kitchen floor right next to Auntie Glo’s open pizza box from the night before. Once you got a roach in your house, you were stuck with it for a long time. They didn’t die too easy. And as soon as you got rid of one, more came. He tiptoed across the kitchen tiles and raised his foot, then cursed under his breath when he realized it was just a stupid button from Granny’s coat.