1

If I were a different person, I could move forward and never look back, never try to fathom the forces that shaped me for the worse. But there are times when a fog rolls in, slow as dusk, beginning with a nodule of regret. I should have, why didn’t I, if only. I replay the day my father left us for good, the sun showing orange through the live oak, him pacing at the bottom of the porch steps, twelve-year-old me looking down with my baby brother, Philip, on one hip. I winced as I gently extracted a strand of my dark brown hair from his doughy little grasp.

Daddy bounced his feet on the bottom step and squinted up. Look, darlin’. Miss Joleen next door can help your mama with the baby. So how’s about it, Loni Mae? You comin’ with me?

My dad hadn’t gone fishing in months. But he’d grown restless, knocking into furniture and slamming the screen door. There was a thrumming in the house like the wind before a storm.

That day, my mother said, Boyd, go on! You’re pacing the house like a caged animal.

I’d have given almost anything to be out fishing in the swamp with him, to draw every creature I saw, to watch and listen as before. But how could I? I had to stay. Now that Philip was here, I served a purpose in my house. I held him while my mother talked on the phone, while she rested or did housework. I knew how to make him laugh those hiccupy laughs. He was my after-school activity, my weekend amusement, my part-time job. My mother no longer shook her head at my hopelessness, nor raised her eyes to heaven.

Daddy turned, and his boots crunched gravel. He retrieved his fishing pole and tackle from the garage. I put the tip of my braid in my mouth and sucked it to a fine point as he walked out to the end of the dock, his khaki vest sagging with lead weights and lures, the tackle box a drag on his left arm. He turned and looked back for a minute, tilting his head so his face caught the light. I put my hand up to wave, but a shaft of sun was in his eyes, and he didn’t see. He swiveled back toward the jon boat, stepped in, and he was gone.

He could have slept at the fishing camp, that faded two-room cabin that stuck out over a muddy bank, or he might have gone on patrol right after his swamp time. But on Monday morning, his Fish & Game uniform still hung in the closet at home, pressed and waiting.

Around three, my dad’s boss stopped over. Captain Chappelle was tall and fit in his khaki uniform, his boots clunking up the porch steps. My mother was out the door before he’d reached the top stair.

Hello, Ruth. Just came by to see if Boyd was sick or what.

My mother turned to me. Go on, Loni. Get to your chores. Two vertical lines between her eyebrows told me not to argue.

I couldn’t hear what they said, though from the kitchen I strained to make words from the low tones in the Florida room. I wiped the last dish and heard Captain Chappelle’s truck kicking up gravel in the driveway.

The weather turned cool that night, sweatshirt weather, and still Daddy didn’t return. Long after I’d gone to bed, I heard voices and went to the top of the stairs.

I shoulda seen it, Ruth. It was a man’s voice—Captain Chappelle. The Florida room’s square panes of glass would be black now, the marsh invisible behind them. The darkened banister glowed with the light from downstairs, and Captain Chappelle’s voice rippled with a watery sound. Boyd hadn’t been himself lately. I just never thought he’d go and—

No, my mother said.

Had he been acting strangely around home? Depressed? Because these last few weeks—

No, she said louder.

Captain Chappelle’s voice dropped to a murmur, but words floated up to me. Drowned… intentional… weighted down…

My mother kept repeating, No.

We’ll fix it up, Ruth. Boating accidents happen every day.

Not to my Boyd.

At the funeral home, I stepped away from the varnished wood box and listened.

Such a terrible accident.

What a shame.

It could happen to anybody, out in a boat.

You just never know when it’s your time.

So it was an accident. Those other words, floating up along the staircase, had just been a bad dream.

After the funeral, my mother and I took Philip home and we didn’t talk about Daddy. If we didn’t speak his name, maybe we could erase the knowledge that he’d never come back.

2

A body of approximately 150 pounds plunging into deep water from a height of approximately two feet above the surface, if weighted with an extra 15 to 20 pounds of, say, lead weights, will sink at the rate of approximately one foot per second. The person, regretting the lead weights, might thrash and struggle, or, not regretting, might succumb to the rate of sinkage until the dark and cold of the water takes over, until the moment when breath no longer holds, until the final, too-late regret, when the weight and the dark and the distance from the surface counterbalance any second thought, at which point the rate of sinkage becomes irrelevant, and the small fish approach and begin to nibble.

The glass tank before me contains a tiny diver figurine, air bubbling out of him, small fish hovering near, making me certain I will never again visit the National Aquarium, as close as it is to my work. My eyes move from the diver to someone behind me, a dark-haired young woman, hovering in the glass. I turn, but no one is there. I look back to see it’s my own reflection, my adult self, for a second unrecognizable to the girl whose terrors have a habit of creeping into the grown-up I’ve forced myself to become.

Who would have thought that these seven or eight eye-level tanks recessed into the wall in a lobby of the Commerce Building could threaten everything that keeps me safe in Washington? Beg me as they will, the ichthyologists will have to find another artist. I’m sticking to drawing birds, from now until sweet goddamn eternity.

I take the two blocks back to Natural History at a clip, unfazed by a beefy guy in a dark suit who tries to stand in my way and breathes, Hey, honey. What’s your hurry? At last, I enter my sanctuary, with its shining foyer. The public space of the museum is not my favorite, loud and full of tourists and school groups and hungry hordes. Their curiosity is endearing—they’re acolytes for the natural world. And the marble gleams with architectural detail and precious objects all around. But on these, my gray days, entering the building carries the weight of death: all the specimens, thousands of carcasses of every species, stuffed or otherwise retrieved from oblivion so we can know them, yet all dead. The birds I draw and paint, all dead. On these days, my only defense is to imagine every pinned butterfly taking wing, every stuffed marsupial waking up, every preserved plant specimen blooming and carpeting the marble floor like a time-lapse forest, and every bird coming to life, flying up to the dome and away. On the days when the fog comes and hooks into my gut like a sharp-toothed parasite, these visions can save me.

The steadier, more consistent salvation, of course, is the work. I can lose myself for hours drawing, for instance, the common loon, with its inky head, white banding at the neck, and an intricacy of pin dots and fractured rectangles cascading across the wings. With the right precision, I can bring the deadness of a bird skin to a striking facsimile of life.

From the museum’s foyer, I enter the drab back hallways and ascend to my studio, a well-lit office with an old metal desk pushed into a corner next to my drafting table. Vertical shelves hold drawing papers arranged by weight beside soft pencils organized by number and the pliability of their graphite. I’ve set the dark bottles of Rapid Draw next to an insanely large number of pen nibs and, next to them, my tubes of paint in rainbow order, ROYGBIV and all the gradations between.

I sit at my drafting table and look out over the Mall, the nation’s vast green rectilinear lawn, punctuated with museums and monuments and a straight blond path. It took nine years to get an office with a window overlooking these American elms, soon to begin a fragile March budding, and toward the Smithsonian Castle. But it only took one day of work at Natural History to know I’d found my home. Yesterday was my thirty-sixth birthday, and my colleagues came in here singing, insisting I blow out candles on a little cake. They don’t know the water is rising as I close in on thirty-seven, my father’s magic number, his end point.

I reach for a paintbrush. On my slanted table today is a partially finished Vanellus chilensis, the southern lapwing, her slender black crest flying out behind her head. I refine the bronze sheen on the upper wings and fill in the gray, black, and white of the face. I need a size 0 brush for the beak, so I swivel away from the window to choose from among my clean, dry brushes, every bristle aligned and ready.

I’m at the tip of the beak when the phone rings. I set down the brush.

Loni, it’s Phil.

For a millisecond I think my brother has remembered my birthday. Then I come to my senses. Phil, is something wrong?

Mom’s had a fall. You gotta get here. He pauses. And… you should plan for an extended stay. The fall broke her wrist, he tells me, but that’s not the main problem. She’s been acting strangely, Loni. Her memory—

Come on, everybody that age forgets things, I say, cutting him off. I was home last year and I did notice her extra-short temper with me, but that’s just an intensification of a lifelong habit.

Tammy thinks it’s the early-onset thing.

My mother is only sixty-two, and Phil’s wife, Tammy, is no medical or psychiatric expert. I don’t want my sister-in-law making any diagnoses. All right. I’ll see if I can get a few days off.

No, listen, Loni. Take more time than that. This is major. And we need you here.

He so rarely asks. However, it’s not the ideal time to miss work. The incoming administration has installed a cadre of nonscientists, mostly business majors hovering around the age of twenty-five, to examine the Smithsonian’s efficiency quotient. I’d call them fresh young faces if they weren’t so imperious and sour, masking their inexperience with the strict authority they’ve been given to boss our bosses. I might even have some patience with their youth if they weren’t so determined to get rid of good people.

Ornithology’s baby hatchet man is named Hugh Adamson. Last Monday, he gathered the staff together to spit out corporate-speak such as downsize and consolidation. We’ll be encouraging early retirement, he said. We won’t replace those who quit, and we’ll enforce to the letter any and all violations of the leave policy.

Our office dress code is pretty relaxed, but Hugh wears a suit every day. The costume seems new to him, trousers straining against his thighs, perfectly starched shirt cutting into his neck. Achieving downsizing via attrition, he said, putting a forefinger between collar and skin, should not affect morale.

I snuck a glance at my boss, Theo, whose aging, mustachioed face was completely immobile. Federal employees are notably difficult to force out, but it seems these new bureaucrats will find a way. What Hugh and his fellows don’t understand is that stern looks don’t tend to motivate anyone in our line of work. The Institution encourages expansive thinking, and an ability to breathe in the atmosphere of your field is necessary for breakthrough science. People at the Smithsonian truly put their lives into what they do. But these young men—and they are all young, white men—are blind to everything but their own agenda. Which, at the moment, means conformity. Leaving for an extended stay in northern Florida will not fit their mold.

I head down the hall to consult the botany librarian, Delores Constantine, who has worked at the Smithsonian for the last forty years. She’s the institutional memory of this place, and my role model for longevity in a job. She’s also as prickly as a stalk of blessed thistle.

The hallway leading to Botany is lined with cabinets full of dried plants laid out on acid-free paper. Today, I imagine them as a vertical garden, orchids and epiphytes dripping from the sides, a phantom scent of humid forest.

I enter the library. Delores?

Back here.

She stands on a rickety stool between stacked bookshelves. At eye level, the hem of her mauve skirt meets a pair of age-spotted shins. She lifts two large volumes above her head and hoists them onto a high shelf.

Delores, can I help you there? I mean, is that safe?

She glares down at me through cat-eye bifocals. What is it you want, Loni? She pushes the books into place and steps down from the stool.

I tell her about my brother’s call, and what little I know about my mother’s current condition.

She doesn’t say, Oh, kid, I’m sorry.

She leads me instead to her desk and moves a pile of books. Without sitting, she clicks the mouse, peering at the screen with her neck at what seems like a painful angle. See this? She points. This is the FMLA form. Family leave. She gets up and whips a sheet off the printer, offering it to me with a blue-veined hand. You fill this out, ask for eight weeks off, and go take care of your mom.

Eight weeks? No possible way.

She puts a hand on a hip. You don’t have to use it all. Heck, the law gives you twelve if you need it. But with all the suits walking around this place, best keep it to eight.

"Two weeks in my hometown would be more than I can take," I say.

Honor your mother, Loni. Delores has a daughter of her own, somewhere, but it’s a pain point. They rarely talk. One of the few times it came up, she shrugged and said, She doesn’t like the way I give advice. But not everybody you love is gonna love you back. And then she went back to her work.

Delores puts a stack of books onto a cart. You ask for eight, and if you use only two, come back and look incredibly dedicated to your work. She moves her lips into a canned smile, her eyes enlarged behind her specs. As a plant person, Delores may not seem like the most apt career counselor for a bird artist. In fact, she rarely thinks about birds. She’s famous for tapping the side of her head and saying, I only have so much space up here, kid. And it’s botany, all day every day. But she knows more than anyone about how this place works.

So go fill out that form and walk it down to HR, she says, giving me just the advice I need.

As I reach the doorway, she picks up another set of books and says, Three things to remember: Number one, the Smithsonian will not pay you during your family leave.

But—

Number two, check out the liaison program. I think Tallahassee has a museum that could use your help. They pay you directly, so you can preserve your leave status.

Liaison program?

Delores heads toward a bookshelf. Look into it.

I nod, but then turn back. What’s number three?

Don’t go a minute past the time you request. It’s the French Revolution around here, and they’re oiling the guillotine.

I go back to my desk, fill out the form Delores gave me, and search the Smithsonian website for liaison program. Then I call Estelle, my truest Floridian friend, who always picks up when I call.

Estelle, I say. Is your museum part of the liaison program? With mine?

Hello, Loni. Yes, I’m fine, thanks, and you?

When I’m moving slow, she’s moving fast. And now, this once, when it counts, she wants to slow me down. I can visualize exactly where she is, at her curator’s desk in the Tallahassee Science Museum, and I can even approximate what she’s wearing—some stunning, jewel-toned suit, crisp-white-collared shirt, and complicated jewelry, her long red curls pushed back to accommodate the phone at her ear.

Estelle, I say. Please, just tell me.

Yes, we are. Do you think I’d have my best friend working at the Smithsonian and not lobby hard for a connection? The Board approved it six months ago, and I believe I mentioned it to you.

Right. I thought so!

There’s a little excitement in your voice, Loni.

Yep. So see if you might need anything from a wandering bird artist.

You’re coming home?

Just for a little while.

Yay! And, as a matter of fact—

No need to commit right now, I say. It’s just good to know there’s a possibility.

It takes me three days to get the forms stamped and approved and my own boss, Theo, mollified. He sits at his desk to sign the papers, then tosses the pen down and drags his hand from graying mustache to chin.

I try to reassure him. Theo, I plan to come back quickly. Two weeks, max.

Uh-huh, he says.

I’ll be back for the forest fragmentation project. It’s a program that’s been years in the making, requiring careful documentation of bird populations and countless illustrations. I promise.

I pack my art kit, a tiny tackle box into which I place my favorite pencils, a quill pen and a few nibs, a matte knife, my Arkansas stone, and more crinkly tubes of paint than I’ll ever use. I stuff my sketchbook and a few other small items into my large cloth bag, and then I turn out the office light.

My fellow illustrator Ginger comes running toward me from Botany, her long body waving side to side and her wild hair moving back and forth like a feathery bunch of fennel in the breeze. Loni, with you gone, who’ll defend me against the Bug People?

As departments, we aren’t very respectful of one another. The geologists are the Rock People and Delores and Ginger are the Plant People. Here in Ornithology, we’re the Bird People, the ichthyologists are the Fish People, the entomologists are the Bug People, those in Paleo are the Bone People, and Anthro is just Anthro, because otherwise we’d have to call them the People People. Ginger is a botanical artist, but she spends a lot of time hanging out by my office door procrastinating. She is usually either comforting me about my latest dating failure, telling me I’m beautiful and wasting my time on jerks, envying my long straight hair that doesn’t frizz like hers in D.C. humidity, or moaning about the Bug People, who continually ask her for illustrative favors.

Eight whole weeks! she says.

I’m not staying that long. I hold up my art kit. And I’m working while I’m there. After Estelle and I talked, she called me back to say she’d finagled some funding for a few key drawings of Florida birds.

Theo steps out of his office at the end of the hall. The skylight amplifies his padded frame, and he smooths his salt-and-pepper mustache. Theo has been a mentor since my first Smithsonian expedition, when our team of scientists walked into a muddy Peruvian cloud forest looking for the gallito de las rocas (Rupicola peruvianus), the bright orange bird with a tall bouffant. I trudged behind him for miles, my energy nearly spent and two sips of water left, nothing to focus on but his waistline bulging over fatigue-green khakis, wondering how a pudgy guy twenty years my senior could have so much more stamina. Then he pulled up short and raised his right index finger, pointing toward the tangerine-colored bird we’d come to see. Without Theo, I’d have walked right past it.

He tries to sound hard-nosed. You filed those FMLA forms?

Yes, boss.

And you got the official notice from HR?

I nod.

Any last words? he says.

Don’t let them eliminate my job.

Just get back on time, Loni. That’s all I have to say.

I got that message. I give him a pat on the arm, the limit of physical affection allowed by federal employee guidelines, and push through the door to the next hallway.

Who is there to greet me but our man Hugh Adamson. He wears a bright red tie that buckles where it meets a gold bar. Ms. Murrow, a word?

I’ve never been expert at concealing my feelings, and I’m afraid that in Hugh’s meetings I haven’t been as stoic as Theo. Either because I’ve asked an irritating question or two or because my face has betrayed me, Hugh regards me with particular disdain.

He looks down at a clipboard. Ms. Murrow, I see you’ve requested eight weeks off under the Family Medical Leave Act. As today is March 15, that will make your return date May 10. Please know that May 10 means May 10, and if you report to work on May 11, rather than the previous day—May 10—you will be, regrettably, terminated.

I give him a fake smile, closing my eyes and keeping my lips together lest I say something unfortunate about the number of times he has said May 10, or about treating his elders like fucking idiots.

Perhaps he intuits what is on my mind, because he lowers his otherwise prepubescent voice and says, Do you think I won’t do it?

I beg your pardon?

I see how you look at me during meetings, like I’m a little shit who doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Hugh, I don’t think I’ve—

Well, you just better come back on May 10, Loni, because on May 11 your ass will be in a sling and we’ll be waving you good-bye.

I nod and proceed past our young despot. I’ve never really understood that expression, ass in a sling. In this case, it could be one of those giant slingshots drunk college boys use to hurl water balloons at unsuspecting passersby. Perhaps Hugh was his fraternity’s Slingshot Chairman. Maybe he’d like to pull back and fling every scientist in his small realm of power from a turret of the Smithsonian Castle.

To regain my equilibrium, I head for the corridor of bird skins. These are not taxidermied birds, not cute in any way. Still, it comforts me to open the wide, flat drawers and see them there, even if they are tied at the feet and devoid of the life conveyed in the average field guide. Ornithologists, it turns out, are both preservationists and murderers, learning how to scoop out a bird’s innards and keep the feathers on. But a bird skin, if properly prepared, can serve as a reference into the next century and beyond. Like this drawer full of cardinals: juveniles, males, females, specimens with winter plumage, summer plumage, and every variety within the varieties.

I close the drawer and continue wandering the corridors, soaking in the fluorescent dimness and the preservative smell that could be slowly pickling our brains, lulling us all into unpaid overtime and an odd reluctance to leave. The noisy museumgoers never see this labyrinth behind the gleaming cases and stage-lit dioramas—never need to know about Botany’s desiccated stalks or Anthro’s disassembled people filed away in labeled bins: Skulls, Femurs, Tibiae, and Fibulae. In Orn we have dead birds ceiling to floor, but at least we don’t separate them into their various bits.

I’m almost to Rocks when I push on a pebbled-glass door leading to the main rotunda, its taxidermied elephant frozen midcharge. I turn a circle, tilt my gaze up past the balcony toward the dome, and whisper a prayer to the natural world to bring me back healthy and whole, and well before May 10.

3

MARCH 17

Revelers in green stumbled from pub to pub as I drove away yesterday from springtime in Washington, a collage of the organic and the man-made—redbud and sidewalk, dogwood and car. Small trees in the easement showed feathery pink blossoms.

I’ve left the delicacy of spring for a hot, sodden green, the cruise control carrying me south through Virginia and the Carolinas, Georgia, and farther on toward the place where Florida’s panhandle curves in and resort beaches fade into a coastline of dense mangrove and fingerling waterways. Slightly inland from the Gulf sits my hometown of Tenetkee, where the water transitions slowly to land.

I pull into town and a droplet of the old familiar wish to be anywhere else diffuses through my rib cage. I roll down the windows. The air is heavy with moisture, the wind redolent with rain. I stop for one of only six traffic lights in Tenetkee and rummage in the cupholder for a covered rubber band to pull my hair off my sticky neck. At the third stoplight, I pull into the parking lot of St. Agnes Home, or, as we kids used to call it, the Geezer Palace. I wish it really were a palace, for my mother’s sake. The building has a Victorian façade, gingerbread cheerful, with a concrete ramp leading to sliding glass doors.

I sit in the parking lot and watch the automatic doors open as someone approaches, then close after the visitor passes through. I check myself in the rearview, combing out my hair and dabbing some makeup over my freckles. I rarely wear foundation, but I’d like to avoid advice from my mother about fixing myself up. Little good it does—the makeup just forms beige-colored beads of sweat that I wipe away with a tissue. At least my eyes look okay—the whites clearly defined against the green irises. I thought they’d be bloodshot, given all the hours I’ve been driving.

I sit for a few more minutes staring at the outside of the building. Because Mom broke her wrist, she went into St. Agnes for physical and occupational therapy. Phil hinted on the phone at the possibility of a permanent move. I was skeptical, but he reported a level of chaos in the house I could hardly believe of my fastidious mother: open food containers in the linen closet and soiled clothes stuffed into bureau drawers, burners left on, midnight rambles through neighbors’ yards, and an insistence on driving after several costly collisions. Last year when I was here for a few days, none of this was evident. But I suppose while Mom’s wrist heals and she recovers in the Geezer Palace, Phil and I can figure it all out.

When I arrive at her room, she’s sitting in a vinyl chair, her arm in a cast and a sling.

She starts in right away, the aging debutante with a voice full of mint juleps and brass nails. Awright now, Loni, take me home.

No Hello, darlin’, it’s been a long time, how good to see you. No kisses or tears.

Hi, Mom! Long time no see!

Don’t switch the dern subject, you’re here to take me home, now let’s go.

Phil’s wife, Tammy, who’s a beautician, has styled my mom’s hair into two stiffly sprayed, soup can–sized curls ascending an inch above her center part, the gray tips curving down and touching her temples. Without any intention, my sister-in-law has given my mother the look of the boreal owl, Aegolius funereus. If, as Tammy claims, she tailors each of her hairstyles to the personality of the client, what might this one indicate? Wisdom? Insomnia? The hunter’s instinct?

My mother stands. I’ve got my purse, now let’s go.

I search the room for a distraction. Hey, look! Tammy hung up your wedding picture.

Yes, my mother says, and when I tell Daddy how you have incarcerated me here, he’s gonna whup your hide.

It takes my breath for a second, Dad spoken of, and in the present tense. She’s not only mixed up the years, she’s trampled the unwritten family rule: nobody talks about Daddy. And whup your hide? That would be his phrase, not hers.

She opens the bathroom door with her good arm. I’m fixing my hair, and then we’re going. She shuts the door harder than necessary.

Her open suitcase on the bed looks like it’s been stirred with a wooden spoon. She’s been packing to go home, but I reverse the process, hanging a blouse in the spartan closet, then folding and arranging the other items back into dresser drawers. I’m about to close the empty suitcase and put it under the bed when I see a piece of pink paper in the elastic side pocket and pull it out.

Dear Ruth,

There are some things I have to tell you about Boyd’s death.

Boyd, our father, who aren’t in heaven. My eye darts to the signature. Henrietta. I reread the first line, then scan the flowery penmanship.

Rumors flew around… I couldn’t tell you then…

My mother opens the bathroom door, and I slip the letter into the back pocket of my jeans, nudging her suitcase under the bed with my foot.

Not a Q-tip in this whole establishment! she says.

Hey, I can go get you some. I’m out the door before she can fuss anymore about going home. The Tenetkee Pharmacy is only three blocks from the Geezer Palace by sidewalk—a block and a half if I cut through the park—and I can read the letter on the way. The glass doors slide open and I step into the heat, almost colliding with a tall, fit older man.

Well, hello, Loni Mae.

I see the chest of a Fish & Game uniform and my heart bing-bangs before I lift my eyes to the face. He’s a year or two older than my mom, but his hair is still dark, and he seems young for his age. He beams a broad, gleaming smile.

Captain Chappelle! I reach up and give him a hug. Wow. Sorry. You caught me by surprise. No one’s called me ‘Loni Mae’ since… you know, my dad…

Oh, so well I do. He pauses. Boyd’s passing will never leave me, no matter how many years go by.

Hearing Dad’s name in public is like a blaring car horn. In my short trips to Tenetkee, I rarely run into my father’s old friends.

Where you headed? he says. I mean to stop in and see your mama, but I’ll walk with you a ways. Chappelle descends the concrete ramp with me. I heard you were livin’ up north.

I recite the basic details about Washington and the Smithsonian, looking up at my father’s former boss, still straight-spined and robust. I once overheard Daddy say, I’d trust that man with my life.

Have any chirren? he says.

The sun is behind him, and I squint. I beg your pardon?

You know, sons and daughters?

Oh, no, sir.

Married?

No, sir. Not yet.

And you like that Washington, huh?

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. I’m speaking like a child, a slight Florida twang creeping in with my Southern manners.

It’s a shame about your mama, he says. Me, I’ve just decided my age won’t get me.

Looks like it hasn’t.

I’m in that gym every day, fightin’ it off! He flashes that charismatic smile.

There’s a lull before my mother’s training kicks in. Ask him something about himself. Um… how are your kids?

Oh. He looks down. You know, I don’t hear too much from Shari. She’s up in Alabama. And Stevie, well… He swallows. Stevie was killed, you know… car accident… back in January…. He stops and presses his lips together.

Shit, of course I heard about this—a head-on collision, Stevie just out of rehab, his car on