A clock ticked in the kitchen.

She kept her back straight.

When the sweat began to form, it started between the blades on her back. She imagined the taste of a drink and heard the lullaby of one more forgotten day.

It would be easy.

So very, very easy.

The decision to pray stole across her like a shadow. It was as if she’d blinked, then opened her eyes to an absence of light so distinct, it made her look up. The temptation rose from a deep place in her soul, a once-fierce heat now compressed to something black and cold. She fought the temptation, but lost, and when she knelt, she felt like a liar and a fake, like a traveler lost in a night of ceaseless rain.

Words, at first, refused to come, and it felt like God, himself, had closed her throat. But she dipped her chin and strove to remember how it felt. Nakedness. Faith. The humility to plead. And that’s what she did. She begged for strength, and for her son to be well. She begged God for help, silently, ardently. She begged to keep what she had: her son, their life together. When she stood, she heard the sound of tires on gravel, and it sounded like rain. And then the sound stopped.

Ken Holloway met her at the door.

His suit was creased, the tie a rich purple, loose around his neck. Katherine froze when she saw the displeasure on his face, the sweat on his collar. She stared at the brush of hair that covered the back of his hand.

“What are you doing?” He cupped her chin with a thumb and two hard fingers. “Who are you so dressed up for?” She could not answer. He squeezed her chin. “I said, who are you so dressed up for?”

“I’m going to the hospital.” Small voice.

Ken looked at his watch. “Visiting hours will be over in an hour. How about you pour us a drink and you can go tomorrow? First thing.”

“They’ll wonder why I’m not there.”

“Who will wonder?”

She swallowed. “DSS.”

“Bureaucrats. They can’t hurt you.”

She raised her head. “I have to go.”

“Fix me a drink.”

“There’s nothing here.”

“What?”

“It’s gone. All of it.” She tried to move past him. He stopped her with one massive arm.

“It’s late.” He ran a hand down the small of her back.

“I can’t.”

“I was in jail all night.” He gripped her arm. “That was Johnny’s fault, you know. Your son’s fault. If he hadn’t thrown that rock through my window…”

“You don’t know that he did that.”

“Did you just contradict me?”

Pain flared in her arm. She looked down at his fingers. “Take your hand off me.”

He laughed, and she felt him move against her, the press of his chest as he filled the doorway. He began to drive her back. “Let go,” she said. But he was pushing her into the house, his lips thin below unforgiving eyes. A sudden image of her son came to Katherine, his small chin in one still hand as he sat on the stoop and looked up the hill for some sign of his father’s return. She’d chastised him for it, but she felt it now, the hope he must have felt. Her gaze slid up from Ken’s arm and she looked up the same hill. She imagined the rise and fall of her husband’s truck, but the hill was empty, the road a stretch of silent black. Ken made the same raw sound in his throat, and when she looked up, she saw a smile cut his face. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Johnny. First thing.”

She looked again to the hilltop, saw metal flash as a car rose at the crest. Her breath caught, then she recognized the car. “My cab,” she said.

Ken stepped back as the cab began to slow. Katherine pulled her arm free, but felt him there, tall and thick and angry. “I have to go,” she said, then pushed past him and met the cab in the drive.

“Katherine.” His smile was broad, and to anyone else might have seemed genuine. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

She threw herself into the cab, felt the seat on her back, smelled cigarettes, unwashed clothes and hair tonic. The driver had folded skin and a scar on his neck that was the color of damp pearl. “Where to?”

Katherine kept her eyes on Ken Holloway.

“Ma’am?”

Ken kept his smile.

“The hospital,” she said.

The driver watched her in the mirror. She felt his eyes and met them. “Are you okay?” he asked.

She was sweaty and shaking. “I’ll be fine,” she said.

But she was wrong.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Johnny stood with woods at his back, a narrow clearing before him. It was a scratch in a sea of trees, an imperfection; but from where Johnny stood, it was everything, a rolling thatch of green that bent to a silent breeze.

His sister stared at him from the center of the glade. She raised her hand, and Johnny found himself walking, grass at his ankles, then at his knees. Alyssa looked as she had the last time he’d seen her: pale yellow shorts, a white top. Her hair was as black as ink, her skin very tan. She kept one hand behind her back, and tilted her head so that strands of black fell across her eyes. She stood on a piece of rusted tin that pressed the grass flat. Johnny could smell the crushed-grass smell, the summer ripeness.

The snake curled at her feet. It was the copperhead he’d killed. Five feet long, brown and gold and silent. It tasted the air with its tongue, and when Johnny stopped, it raised its head.

Johnny remembered how it struck at him on the day he’d killed it. How close it had come.

Inches.

Maybe less.

Alyssa stooped for the snake, and her fingers closed around its midsection. The tail wrapped her wrist. The head rose higher as she straightened, and the snake met her gaze. Its tongue flicked out. “This is not strength,” she said.

The snake struck her in the face, and when it withdrew, two holes appeared, followed by dots of blood that looked like small, perfect apples. She held the snake higher, took a step and the tin shifted beneath her feet. “This is weakness.”

The snake struck, a blur that slowed only when the fangs snagged in her face. She faltered, and the snake hit her again. Twice. Once on the brow, once on her lower lip. More holes. More blood. She stopped walking, and suddenly her eyes shone, so brown they were black, so still they could pass for empty. They were Johnny’s eyes, their mother’s eyes. Her hand tightened on the snake, and Johnny saw that she was not afraid. Her face radiated violence and anger. Her lips paled and the snake began to struggle. She squeezed and her voice gained strength.

“Weakness,” she repeated, fingers white, snake becoming frantic as she crushed it. It struck her hand, her face. It hit the neck and hung on, pumping its venom even as it writhed. Alyssa ignored it, moved her other hand from behind her back. In it, she held a gun, black and gleaming in the hard, hot light.

“Power,” she said.

And ripped the snake from her neck.

Johnny woke with a start. The drugs had worn off, but the dream kept its grip: his vanished sister, and how she’d smiled as Johnny laid fingers on the warm, bright metal in her hand. He touched the bandages on his chest, then he saw his mother. She sat alone in a chair by the wall. Mascara stained the skin beneath her eyes. One knee twitched.

“Mom.”

Her head came around and her voice caught. “Johnny.” She found her feet in an instant, crossed the room and stood over him. Her hand smoothed his hair, then she bent and wrapped her arms around him. “My baby.”

Detective Hunt came two hours after breakfast. He appeared in the door, gave Johnny a tight smile, then crooked a finger at Katherine and moved back into the hall.

Johnny watched them through the glass. Whatever Hunt said, his mother didn’t like it. They argued hotly. She shook her head, stared twice through the window, then dipped her chin. Hunt’s hand touched her shoulder once, but she threw it off.