Are you sick? Casey asks, swaying from side to side, her long skirt nearly brushing the kitchen floor.

Nope, Mrs. Whitehead says. She takes a sip of her tea and stands looking at the glass. Her hair is lank and close to her head, her eyes luminous and ringed with shadows. It is not unlike the way Debra Ann’s mother sometimes looked when she was having a bad week, when Debra Ann would follow her from room to room, asking questions. Do you want to hear a joke? Do you want to watch some TV or sit in the backyard, or lie down in your bed while I read a book to you? If it was a bad enough week, Ginny might stop talking altogether. She might spend hours in the bathtub, turning the tap back on to keep the water hot, slowly turning the pages of her National Geographic, sighing loud enough that D. A. could hear her through the closed door. Today, Aimee’s mother looks like a reed in a windstorm, Debra Ann thinks, hanging on, hoping she can bend enough to survive.

Maybe I am sick. Mrs. Whitehead lets out a short, barking laugh. Maybe I am just bone-tired.

Aimee looks at the other girls and they lift their hands, palms up. What’s wrong, Mama?

She tells the girls that Judge Rice handed down the sentence yesterday afternoon. A year’s probation, she says, and five thousand dollars to that girl’s family.

The girls all gasp. Five thousand dollars? D. A. says. That’s a fortune.

Yeah, Casey says, he’ll feel that in his pocketbook.

Girls, Mrs. Whitehead says, stop it right now. Y’all don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.

Justice is served, Debra Ann calls out. Ha! Lauralee laughs, and they all high-five each other.

Oh, shut up. All of you girls shut up.

One year of probation, she says, and her voice is a rupture. Five thousand dollars. Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

If a diamondback had just slithered out from under the kitchen table, the girls could not look more shocked. Aimee takes two steps back with her hands in the air, as if her mother might shoot her. Mama, that’s heresy.

Oh honey, it is not. It’s blasphemy. And really, who the fuck cares?

She hurls her glass of iced tea across the kitchen where it slams against the wall and shatters spectacularly. Rivulets of iced tea roll down the flowered wallpaper and gather on the linoleum. The baby begins to scream from the other end of the house, and she slides to the floor as if somebody stole her backbone. I don’t know what to do with myself, she says.

D. A. doesn’t know what to do either, none of them do, but they are old enough to know it isn’t right to stare. So they turn away, four girls pivoting almost in unison to face the wall. They wait, and when some minutes have passed and Mrs. Whitehead still has not moved from her place on the kitchen floor, Debra Ann picks up the phone to call Mrs. Shepard. She listens and then taps the receiver a few times. Phone’s dead, she says. Wind must have knocked out the line.

You’re wrong, Aimee’s mama says. It was just working.

No, ma’am. It’s out now.

Aimee’s blue eyes are huge and her cheeks are white as a sheet of paper. What are we going to do?

The baby’s scream pierces the air and disintegrates into a steady, mournful wail that makes D. A. want to clamp her hands over her ears. I’m going across the street to get Mrs. Shepard, she says. She walks over to Aimee and hugs her tightly. I’m going to Penwell with my friend, but I’ll be back soon.

After Debra Ann has gone, Aimee kneels next to her mother. Can you get up off the floor, Mama? Maybe have something to drink? But Mary Rose keeps her hands pressed stiffly against her thighs. I don’t think so, honey.

And when Mrs. Shepard walks through the door a few minutes later, still wearing her house slippers, she looks around the kitchen, her eyes taking in the broken glass, the iced tea all over the wall and floor, and the three girls leaning uneasily against the doorframe while the baby howls like someone has set him on fire. Mrs. Shepard claps her hands sharply together. You girls go get that goddamn baby and take him to Aimee’s room. She bends down so she’s eye level with Mary Rose, who is crying so hard her whole body shakes with the strength of it.

None of the girls have ever seen a grown woman cry this hard, not even at a funeral, and they are all too young to recognize it as rage.

Mrs. Shepard rubs the younger woman’s arm and rests one hand in the center of her back. Okay, she says, you’re going to stand up now and come sit down at the kitchen table.

Aimee’s mother shakes her head.

Honey, I can’t bend over like this for one more minute. Now get up.

Without a word, Mary Rose stands and walks over to the kitchen table. She sits down and lays her head against the oilcloth, her shoulders moving in time with her sobs. Corrine wipes the tea off the wall and sweeps the glass into a corner. Just for the time being, she says, we’ll clean it up in a few minutes. After she pours two glasses of iced tea and carries them to the table, she looks over and sees the girls still standing in the doorway with their mouths open. Why are y’all still here? Corrine says. Go get that goddamned baby before he bursts a blood vessel.

The girls walk down the hall to Aimee’s bedroom, the wind shaking the house like it wants to fling them out the windows and into the yard. They sit on the floor and make goo-goo eyes at the baby, and Casey suggests they play O Mighty Isis because Isis can master the wind, and Lauralee says they ought to play Incredible Hulk, because he can turn his rage into a force for good. Aimee doesn’t want to play anything. She just sits and looks from her baby brother to the window, and back again. She tells the other girls she has been thinking about probation—what it means, or what she thinks it means. Dale Strickland can still go anywhere he pleases, he can eat ice cream whenever he wants, and go see a football game. What about Glory Ramírez? What happens to her? And what about them?

Half an hour will pass before Corrine comes into Aimee’s room with a bottle for the baby. She looks around their little circle, three pale, round faces and the baby grabbing at his sister’s hair. Where the hell is Debra Ann? she asks them. Why isn’t she in here with you girls?

Corrine

Between the wind blowing and the baby crying, between air filled with enough dust to suffocate a bull and Mary Rose refusing to open her goddamned curtains, not even for two minutes to let some sunlight in, Corrine couldn’t have heard or seen Jesse and D. A. pulling the garage door open and backing the truck out. Now she stands on the dusty concrete with clenched fists and sweaty armpits, staring at the empty spot where Potter’s truck used to be. All that remains is a puddle of fresh motor oil.

Mary Rose runs across the street, still buttoning her blouse, purse knocking against her hip bone. Her shoelaces are untied and she is not wearing socks. When she sees Corrine standing in the empty garage, she stops abruptly. Where is Potter’s truck? Where’s Debra Ann?

I don’t know. Still hung over from the salty dogs, Corrine presses her fingers so hard against her eyelids that she sees stars. She tries to recall the last time she sat in the truck. When did she last listen to Bob Wills on the radio and shift into neutral before turning the key and hoping for the nerve to stay put for as long as it took? When was the last time she stared at the gauges for a minute or two before sighing and turning the truck off and going inside to fix herself a glass of iced tea? Two nights ago. And then, as always, she left the key in the ignition.

Mary Rose hurries into Corrine’s kitchen and holds the phone receiver to one ear. Propping the door open with her foot, she quickly taps the switch hook, listens for a couple of seconds, and taps it again. How much gas is in the tank? she calls through the open door.

Less than half, I think. Corrine scans the garage. Everything is in its usual place, other than the empty space where Potter stored his tent. Boxes of Christmas ornaments are labeled and lined up on the shelf next to the rest of their camping gear. His rakes and shovels are stacked in a corner, covered with a fresh layer of gray dust, and just like that, Corrine sees him walking across the backyard with some animal lying in the center of the shovel blade—a garter snake or mouse or sparrow. She sees him digging a hole, a goddamned grave for every little creature. He should have outlived me, she thinks. He was so much better at life.