“What do you do for a living?” Carter asked.

“All kinds of things,” James said as Korey placed a stack of ice cream bowls in front of her father. “But right now, I’ve got a little money put aside to invest.”

Patricia reconsidered. Was he rich?

“In what?” Carter asked, scraping long white curls of ice cream into everyone’s bowls and passing them around the table. “Stocks and bonds? Small business? Microchips?”

“I was thinking something more local,” James Harris said. “Maybe real estate.”

Carter reached across the table and put a bowl of ice cream in front of James, then fitted a thick-handled spoon into his mother’s hand and led it to the bowl of vanilla in front of her.

“Not my area,” he said, losing interest.

“You know,” Patricia said. “My friend Slick Paley at book club? Her husband, Leland, they’re into real estate. They might be able to tell you something about the situation here.”

“You’re in a book club?” James asked. “I love to read.”

“Who do you read?” Patricia asked as Carter ignored them and fed his mother, and Blue and Korey continued to stare.

“I’m a big Ayn Rand fan,” James Harris said. “Kesey, Ginsburg, Kerouac. Have you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?”

“Are you a hippie?” Korey asked.

Patricia felt pathetically grateful that James Harris ignored her daughter.

“Are you looking for new members?” he continued.

“Ugh,” Korey said. “They’re a bunch of old ladies sitting around drinking wine. They don’t even actually read the books.”

Patricia didn’t know where these things came from. She’d chalk it up to Korey becoming a teenager, but Maryellen had said they became teenagers when you stopped liking them, and she still liked her daughter.

“What kind of books do you read?” James asked, still ignoring Korey.

“All kinds,” Patricia said. “We just read a wonderful book about life in a small Guyanese town in the 1970s.”

She didn’t mention that it was Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People.

“They rent the movies,” Korey said. “And pretend to read the books.”

“There wasn’t a movie for this book,” Patricia said, forcing herself to smile.

James Harris wasn’t listening. He had his eyes on Korey.

“Is there a reason you’re being fresh to your mother?” he asked.

“She’s not usually like this,” Patricia said. “It’s all right.”

“Some people use literature to understand their lives,” James Harris said, continuing to stare at Korey, who squirmed beneath the intensity of his gaze. “What are you reading?”

“Hamlet,” Korey said. “That’s by Shakespeare.”

“Assigned reading,” James Harris said. “I meant, what are you reading that other people didn’t pick out for you?”

“I don’t have time to sit around reading books,” Korey said. “I actually go to school and I’m captain of the soccer team and the volleyball team.”

“A reader lives many lives,” James Harris said. “The person who doesn’t read lives but one. But if you’re happy just doing what you’re told and reading what other people think you should read, then don’t let me stop you. I just find it sad.”

“I…,” Korey began, working her mouth. Then stopped. No one had ever called her sad before. “Whatever,” she said, and slumped back in her chair.

Patricia wondered if she should be upset. This was new territory for her.

“What book are y’all talking about?” Carter asked, tucking more ice cream into his mother’s mouth.

“Your wife’s book club,” James Harris said. “I guess I’m partial to readers. I grew up a military brat, and wherever I went, books were my friends.”

“Because you don’t have any real ones,” Korey mumbled.

Miss Mary looked up, right at James Harris, and Patricia could almost hear her eyes zoom in on him.

“I want my money,” Miss Mary said angrily. “That’s Daddy’s money you owe.”

There was silence at the table.

“What’s that, Mom?” Carter asked.

“You came creeping back, you,” Miss Mary said. “But I see you.”

Miss Mary glared at James Harris, fuzzy gray eyebrows furrowed, the slack skin around her mouth pulled into an angry knot. Patricia turned to James Harris and saw him thinking, genuinely trying to puzzle something out.

“She thinks you’re someone from her past,” Carter explained. “She comes and goes.”

Miss Mary’s chair scraped backward with an ear-grinding shriek.

“Mom,” Carter said, taking her arm. “Are you finished? Let me help you.”

She jerked her arm out of Carter’s grip and rose, eyes fixed on James Harris.

“You’re the seventh son of a saltless mother,” Miss Mary said, and took a step toward him. The wattles of fat beneath her chin quivered. “When the Dog Days come we’ll put nails through your eyes.”

She reached out and pressed her hand against the table, holding herself up. She swayed over James Harris.

“Mom,” Carter said. “Calm down.”

“You thought no one would recognize you,” Miss Mary said. “But I’ve got your photograph, Hoyt.”

James Harris stared up at Miss Mary, not moving. He didn’t even blink.

“Hoyt Pickens,” Miss Mary said. Then she spat. She meant for it to be a country hawker, something sharp that would slap the dirt, but instead a wad of white saliva thickened with vanilla ice cream and speckled with chicken oozed over her lower lip, then rolled down her chin and plopped onto the front of her dress.

“Mom!” Carter said.

Patricia saw Blue gag and clap his napkin over the lower half of his face. Korey leaned back in her chair, away from her grandmother, and Carter reached for his mother, napkin outstretched.

“I’m so sorry,” Patricia said to James Harris as she got up.

“I know who you are,” Miss Mary shouted at James Harris. “In your ice cream suit.”

Patricia hated Miss Mary at that moment. Someone interesting had come into their home to talk about books, and Miss Mary wouldn’t even let her have that.

She hustled Miss Mary out of the dining room, pulling her beneath the armpits, not caring if she was a little rough. Behind her, she was aware of James Harris rising as Carter and Korey both started talking at once, and she hoped he was still there when she got back. She hauled Miss Mary to the garage room and got her seated in her chair with the plastic bowl of water and her toothbrush and came back to the dining room. The only person left was Carter, sucking on his ice cream, hunched over his bowl.

“Is he still here?” Patricia asked.

“He left,” Carter said, through a mouthful of vanilla. “Mom seemed weird tonight, don’t you think?”

Carter’s spoon clicked against the bottom of the bowl and he stood up, leaving his bowl on the place mat for her to clean up, not waiting to hear what she had to say. In that moment, Patricia hated her family with a passion. And she wanted to see James Harris again, badly.

CHAPTER 8

That was how she found herself a little after noon the next day, standing on the porch of Ann Savage’s yellow-and-white cottage.

She knocked on the screen door and waited. In front of the new mansion across the street, a cement truck dumped gray sludge into a wooden frame for its driveway. James Harris’s white van sat silently in the front yard, the sun spiking off its tinted windshield and making Patricia squint.

With a loud crack, the front door broke away from the sticky, sun-warmed paint and James Harris stood there, sweating, wearing oversize sunglasses.

“I hope I didn’t wake you,” Patricia said. “I wanted to apologize for my mother-in-law’s behavior last night.”

“Come in quickly,” he said, stepping back into the shadows.

She imagined eyes watching her from every window up and down the street. She couldn’t go into his house again. Where was Francine? She felt exposed and embarrassed. She hadn’t thought this through.

“Let’s talk out here,” she said into the dark doorway. All she could see was his big pale hand resting on the edge of the door. “The sun feels so nice.”

“Please,” he said, his voice strained. “I have a condition.”

Patricia knew genuine distress when she heard it, but she still couldn’t make herself step inside.

“Stay or go,” he said, anger edging his voice. “I can’t be in the sun.”

Looking up and down the street, Patricia quickly slipped through the door.

He brushed her aside to slam the main door, forcing her deeper into the middle of the room. To her surprise, it was empty. The furniture had been pushed up against the walls along with the old suitcases and bags and cardboard boxes of junk. Behind her, James Harris locked his front door and leaned against it.

“This looks so much better than yesterday,” she said, making conversation. “Francine did a wonderful job.”

“Who?” he asked.

“I saw her on my way out the other day,” she said. “Your cleaner.”

James Harris stared at her through his large sunglasses, completely blank, and Patricia was about to tell him she needed to leave when his knees buckled and he slid down to the floor.