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And Jimmy She made herself think his naht be up there already And in a single second that worry lifted from her like a flake of ash as she saw for the first time the truth of this day For her, the end of all previous co else entirely, a kind of gaether, she’d told herself, and into what, his mother’s mobile home? Somehow it had come to pass that this man was her whole world, and she had failed to take his measure Neither child nor father, he kne to climb telephone poles, and he kne to disappear The minute he breathed trouble, he would slip down the back side of thecould beHe would be back at work before anyone knew he’d called in sick If she turned up in the news as charred remains, he would keep their story quiet, to protect her family Or so he’d tell himself Look what she’d nearly done She paled at the size her foolishness had attained, how large and crowded and devoid of any structural beams It could be flattened like a circus tent

She was on her own here, staring at glowing trees Fascination curled itself around her fright This was no forest fire She was pressed by the quiet elation of escape and knowing better and seeing straight through to the back of herself, in solitude She couldn’t re This was not just another fake thing in her life’s cheap chain of events, leading up to this day of sneaking around in someone’s throay boots Here that ended Unearthly beauty had appeared to her, a vision of glory to stop her in the road For her alone these orange boughs lifted, these long shadows beca It looked like the inside of joy, if a person could see that A valley of lights, an ethereal wind It had to

She could save herself Herself and her children with their soft cheeks and milky breath who believed in what they had, even if their whole goodness and mercy was a mother distracted out of her mind It was not too late to undo thistrees were put here to save her It was the strangest conviction she’d ever known, and still she felt sure of it She had no use for superstition, had walked unlucky roads until she’d just as soon walk under any ladder as go around it, and considered herself unexceptional By no ns and wonders on her account What had set her apart, briefly, was an outsize and hellish obsession To stop a thing like that would require a burning bush, a fighting of fire with fire

Her eyes still signaled warning to her brain, like a car alar lot She failed to heed it, understanding for thethat transcended fear and safety She only wondered how long she could watch the spectacle before turning away It was a lake of fire, so far more fierce and wondrous than either of those elements alone The iain still harbored its dark patches of dales, and there sat her car in the drive where she’d parked it With her mind aflame and her heels unsteady from what she’d seen, she tried to look at the vinyl-sided ranch house in soained purchase on her vision up there felt violent, like a flood, strong enough to buckle the dark roof and square white corners of home and safety But no, it was all still there The life she had recently left for dead was still waiting The sheep rehbors’ peach orchard still rotted in place on its perfect grid, exposing another fareen earth had changed, only everything had Or she was drea She’d come down the mountain in less than half the tih for her to doubt the whole of this day: what she’d planned to do, what she had seen, and what she’d left undone Each of these was enor, then what? A life measured in half dollars and clipped coupons and culled hopes flattened between uninsulated walls She’d gone for loss and wreckage as the alternative, but there ht her back here to so

To what? A yard streeathered plastic toys and straggling grass, devoid of topsoil, thanks to her father-in-law’s hasty job of bulldozing the pad for the house One neglected rosebush by the porch, a Mother’s Day present frootten roses on in the drive, crookedly parked in haste, the keys in the ignition where she always left them, as if anybody around here would drive it away The faint metal sound like a pipe dropped on its end when she put the car into gear It could not be more tedious or familiar, any of it Sadness filled her like water as she turned out onto the highway and clicked on the radio Kenny Chesney aiting there to pounce, crooning in his molasses voice that he wanted to knohat forever felt like, urging her to gallop away She clicked Kenny right off She turned up the drive to her in-laws’ place and their old farmhouse came into vieith its two uncurtained s upstairs that made her think of eye sockets in a skull Hester’s flower beds had arden They’d finished to almost before they started Hester’s prized rose beds were reduced to thorny outposts clotted with fists of mildew It was Hester who loved roses For Dellarobia their cloying scent and falling-apart flowerheads opened a door straight into the ot out of the car she noticed one bright spot of color in the whole front yard, a tiny acid-green sock on the stone step where she ht the kids She swiped it up and pocketed it on her way up the steps, abashed to confront the wo of a sickness She opened the door without knocking

Cra, carpet, spilledrelief of that, like the aftermath of a car accident narrowly avoided The two of the room floor in a tableau of brave abandonment Preston had his arms around Cordie and his chin nested on her fuzzy head while holding a picture book open in front of her The collies stretched on either side in alert recline, a pair of protective sphinxes All eyes flew up to her as she entered, keen for rescue, the grandht Preston’s dark, plaintive eyebroere identical to his father’s, aligned across his forehead as if drawn there by a ruler Cordelia reached both hands toward Dellarobia and burst into tears, her mouth downturned in a bawl so intense it showed her bottom teeth The TV drone in the kitchen died abruptly, and Hester appeared in the doorway, still in her bathrobe, her long gray hair coiled around pink foaave her an injured look, probably just a slightly less toothy version of Cordie’s It wasn’t as if she asked her mother-in-laatch the kids every day of the week Not even once a month