Grace E-Book

T. Greenwood

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Every family photograph hides a story. For thirteen-year-old Trevor Kennedy, taking photos helps make sense of his fractured world. His father struggles to keep a business going, while Trevor's mother, Elsbeth, all but ignores her son, instead doting on his five-year-old sister, Gracy. Though Trevor knows he can count on little Gracy's unconditional love, nothing compensates for the torment he has endured at school. But where Trevor once silently weathered the jabs and name-calling, now insuppressible fury threatens to wrest control. Only Crystal, a shop worker dealing with her own loss, sees the deep fissures in the Kennedy family - in the haunting photographs Trevor brings to be developed. And as their lives become more intertwined, each will be pushed to the breaking point, with shattering, unforeseeable consequences.

Leseprobe

Outstanding Praise for the Novels of T. Greenwood

Grace

“Grace is a poetic, compelling story that glows in its subtle, yet searing examination of how we attempt to fill the potentially devastating fissures in our lives. Each character is masterfully drawn; each struggles in their own way to find peace amid tumultuous circumstance. With her always crisp imagery and fearless language, Greenwood doesn’t back down from the hard issues or the darker sides of the human psyche, managing to create astounding empathy and a balanced view of each player along the way. The story expertly builds to a breathtaking climax, leaving the reader with a clear understanding of how sometimes, only a moment of grace can save us.”

—Amy Hatvany, author of Best Kept Secret

“Grace is at once heartbreaking, thrilling, and painfully beautiful. From the opening page, to the breathless conclusion, T. Greenwood again shows why she is one of our most gifted and lyrical storytellers.”

—Jim Kokoris, author of The Pursuit of Other Interests

“Greenwood has given us a family we are all fearful of becoming— creeping toward scandal, flirting with financial disaster, and hovering on the verge of dissolution. Grace is a masterpiece of small-town realism that is as harrowing as it is heartfelt.”

—Jim Ruland, author of Big Lonesome

Nearer Than the Sky

“Greenwood is an assured guide through this strange territory; she has a lush, evocative style.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“T. Greenwood writes with grace and compassion about loyalty and betrayal, love and redemption in this totally absorbing novel about daughters and mothers.”

—Ursula Hegi, author of Stones from the River

“A lyrical investigation into the unreliability and elusiveness of memory centers Greenwood’s second novel. . . . The kaleidoscopic heart of the story is rich with evocative details about its heroine’s inner life.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Compelling . . . Highly recommended.”

—Library Journal

“Doesn’t disappoint. A complicated story of love and abuse told with a directness and intensity that packs a lightning charge.”

—Booklist

“Nearer Than the Sky is a remarkable portrait of resilience. With clarity and painful precision, T. Greenwood probes the dark history of Indie’s family.”

—René Steinke, author of The Fires and Holy Skirts

“Greenwood’s writing is lyrical and original. There is warmth and even humor and love. Her representation of MSBP is meticulous.”

—San Diego Union-Tribune

“Deft handling of a difficult and painful subject . . . compelling.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Potent . . . Greenwood’s clear-eyed prose takes the stuff of tabloid television and lends it humanity.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“T. Greenwood brings stunning psychological richness and authenticity to Nearer Than the Sky. Hers is the very first work of fiction to accurately address factitious disorders and Munchausen by proxy—the curious, complex, and dramatic phenomena in which people falsify illness to meet their own deep emotional needs.”

—Marc D. Feldman, M. D., author of Patient or Pretender and Playing Sick?: Untangling the Web of Munchausen Syndrome, Munchausen by Proxy, Malingering, and Factitious Disorder, and co-author of Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

This Glittering World

“In This Glittering World, T. Greenwood demonstrates once again that she is a poet and storyteller of unique gifts, not the least of which is a wise and compassionate heart.”

—Drusilla Campbell, author of The Good Sister and Blood Orange

“T. Greenwood’s novel This Glittering World is swift, stark, calamitous. Her characters, their backs against the wall, confront those difficult moments that will define them and Greenwood paints these troubled lives with attention, compassion, and hope. Through it all, we are caught on the dangerous fault lines of a culturally torn northern Arizona, where the small city of Flagstaff butts up against the expansive Navajo Reservation and the divide between the two becomes manifest. As this novel about family, friendship, and allegiance swirls toward its tumultuous climax, This Glittering World asks us how it is that people sometimes choose to turn toward redemption, and sometimes choose its opposite—how it is, finally, that we become the people we become.”

—Jerry Gabriel, author of Drowned Boy and winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction

“Stark, taut, and superbly written, this dark tale brims with glimpses of the Southwest and scenes of violence, gruesome but not gratuitous. This haunting look at a fractured family is certain to please readers of literary suspense.”

—Library Journal (starred)

“Greenwood’s prose is beautiful. Her writing voice is simple but emotional.”

—Romantic Times Book Reviews

Undressing the Moon

“This beautiful story, eloquently told, demands attention.”

—Library Journal (starred review)

“Greenwood has skillfully managed to create a novel with unforgettable characters, finely honed descriptions, and beautiful imagery.”

—Book Street USA

“A lyrical, delicately affecting tale.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Rarely has a writer rendered such highly charged topics . . . to so wrenching, yet so beautifully understated, an effect. . . . T. Greenwood takes on risky subject matter, handling her volatile topics with admirable restraint. . . . Ultimately more about life than death, Undressing the Moon beautifully elucidates the human capacity to maintain grace under unrelenting fire.”

—The Los Angeles Times

The Hungry Season

“This compelling study of a family in need of rescue is very effective, owing to Greenwood’s eloquent, exquisite word artistry and her knack for developing subtle, suspenseful scenes . . . Greenwood’s sensitive and gripping examination of a family in crisis is real, complex, and anything but formulaic.”

—Library Journal (starred review)

“A deeply psychological read.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Can there be life after tragedy? How do you live with the loss of a child, let alone the separation emotionally from all your loved ones? T. Greenwood with beautiful prose poses this question while delving into the psyches of a successful man, his wife, and his son. . . . This is a wonderful story, engaging from the beginning that gets better with every chapter.”

—The Washington Times

Two Rivers

“From the moment the train derails in the town of Two Rivers, I was hooked. Who is this mysterious young stranger named Maggie, and what is she running from? In Two Rivers, T. Greenwood weaves a haunting story in which the sins of the past threaten to destroy the fragile equilibrium of the present. Ripe with surprising twists and heartbreakingly real characters, Two Rivers is a remarkable and complex look at race and forgiveness in small-town America.”

—Michelle Richmond, New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Fog and No One You Know

“Two Rivers is a convergence of tales, a reminder that the past never washes away, and yet, in T. Greenwood’s delicate handling of time gone and time to come, love and forgiveness wait on the other side of what life does to us and what we do to it. This novel is a sensitive and suspenseful portrayal of family and the ties that bind.”

—Lee Martin, author of The Bright Forever and River of Heaven

“The premise of Two Rivers is alluring: the very morning a deadly train derailment upsets the balance of a sleepy Vermont town, a mysterious girl shows up on Harper Montgomery’s doorstep, forcing him to dredge up a lifetime of memories—from his blissful, indelible childhood to his lonely, contemporary existence. Most of all, he must look long and hard at that terrible night twelve years ago, when everything he held dear was taken from him, and he, in turn, took back. T. Greenwood’s novel is full of love, betrayal, lost hopes, and a burning question: is it ever too late to find redemption?”

—Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, author of The Effects of Light and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize–winning Set Me Free

“Greenwood is a writer of subtle strength, evoking small-town life beautifully while spreading out the map of Harper’s life, finding light in the darkest of stories.”

—Publishers Weekly

“T. Greenwood’s writing shimmers and sings as she braids together past, present, and the events of one desperate day. I ached for Harper in all of his longing, guilt, grief, and vast, abiding love, and I rejoiced at his final, hard-won shot at redemption.”

—Marisa de los Santos, New York Times bestselling author of Belong to Me and Love Walked In

“Two Rivers is a stark, haunting story of redemption and salvation. T. Greenwood portrays a world of beauty and peace that, once disturbed, reverberates with searing pain and inescapable consequences; this is a story of a man who struggles with the deepest, darkest parts of his soul, and is able to fight his way to the surface to breathe again. But also—maybe more so—it is the story of a man who learns the true meaning of family: When I am with you, I am home. A memorable, powerful work.”

—Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain

“A complex tale of guilt, remorse, revenge, and forgiveness . . . Convincing . . . Interesting . . .”

—Library Journal

“In the tradition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, T. Greenwood’s Two Rivers is a wonderfully distinctive American novel, abounding with memorable characters, unusual lore and history, dark family secrets, and love of life. Two Rivers is the story that people want to read: the one they have never read before.”

—Howard Frank Mosher, author of Walking to Gatlinburg

“Two Rivers is a dark and lovely elegy, filled with heartbreak that turns itself into hope and forgiveness. I felt so moved by this luminous novel.”

—Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author

“Two Rivers is reminiscent of Thornton Wilder, with its quiet New England town shadowed by tragedy, and of Sherwood Anderson, with its sense of desperate loneliness and regret. . . . It’s to Greenwood’s credit that she answers her novel’s mysteries in ways that are believable, that make you feel the sadness that informs her characters’ lives.”

—BookPage

Books by T. Greenwood

Grace

This Glittering World

The Hungry Season

Two Rivers

Undressing the Moon

Nearer Than the Sky

Breathing Water

GRACE

T. GREENWOOD

First published in the United States in 2012 by Kensington Books, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp., New York.

First published in e-book in Great Britain in 2017 by Corvus.

Copyright © T. Greenwood, 2012

The moral right of T. Greenwood to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 099 5

Printed in Great Britain.

Corvus

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

In memory of:

Justin Aaberg

Cody J. Barker

Brandon Bitner

Asher Brown

Harrison Chase Brown

Raymond Chase

Tyler Clementi

Alec Henrikson

Jaheem Herrera

Nicholas Kelo, Jr.

Lawrence King

Billy Lucas

Lance Lundsten

Eric Mohat

Caleb Nolt

Felix Sacco

Carl Walker-Hoover

Seth Walsh

and all the other tragic casualtiesof hatred and intolerance.

We don’t see things as they are,we see them as we are.

—Anaïs Nin

I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and itseemed a shame that this beauty should not be seenand appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpieceof design . . . When a snowflake melted, thatdesign was forever lost. Just that much beauty wasgone, without leaving any record behind.

—photographer Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley, 1925

WINTER

Kurt is suddenly aware of the way the snow looks like something living, like something with a purpose. He has always thought of snow as simply falling from the sky, at mercy to gravity. But now, as he marches out across the snow-covered field behind the house, his rifle drawn and aimed at the back of his only son’s head, he sees that it is intent in its falling. Resolute, determined, even calculated in its descent.

Trevor is three feet ahead of him, trudging through the snow, bare hands shoved into his pockets, head bowed in deference to the blistering assault. It is midnight, but the sky is opaque and bright. It is only December, but it has been snowing for two days straight; they are up to their shins in it. Trevor is not wearing a coat, hat, or gloves. He is in jeans and the navy chamois shirt he had on when Kurt dragged him from his room into the mudroom, where he had allowed him to put on his boots before pushing him through the door into this cold, white night.

As they pass the unmarked boundary between their property and their neighbors’, Trevor hits a deep patch of snow and sinks in up to his knees. If you didn’t know better, you might think he was praying, only genuflecting to the falling snow.

As Trevor struggles to move forward, he glances over his shoulder at his father. For years, the arch of his brow, the thick dimple in his chin, the boyish smirk have been like reflections in a mirror held up to Kurt’s own boyhood. This used to make him swell a bit with proprietary pride. But now these similarities seem to mock him, accuse him. You made this, they say. You are this.

“Dad,” Trevor says, but Kurt can’t hear. It’s as though his head is full of snow—cold, thick, numb. “Daddy.” Snot has frozen in two slow paths from nose to lip. His eyes are swollen.

Trevor is thirteen, and he looks exactly like Kurt did at thirteen. He is the same height, the same weight. He has identical ears, the same bent pinkie finger, Kurt’s slight overbite and white-blond hair.

When they finally get to the top of the hill where Kurt used to take Trevor sledding when he was a little boy, to the place where the entire world shimmers then disappears in the valley below, Kurt says, “Stop.”

The sound of his voice is like ice breaking. Like springtime at Joe’s Pond when the ice goes out. The crack, the shift, the signal that the thaw has begun. But Kurt knows that this is a weakness he cannot afford. He must stay solid, frozen, numb. There cannot be any cracks, any fissures in this ice.

They are far enough away now from the house where, on any other night, they would be sleeping. But the house is empty. There is no one to hear the gunshots.

“Turn around,” Kurt says.

Trevor turns to face him again. But this time, it’s not the face of a child he sees. Nor is it the face of the monster he has turned into. Instead, his hair is covered in a thin layer of white, and Kurt can see the old man each of them might one day become.

Trevor puts his hands up, as if his palms might be enough to protect him. “Don’t, Daddy,” he pleads.

At this, Kurt lowers his rifle, turning his gaze from his son to the sky. He watches the shards of ice, the intricate, gorgeous filaments, as they continue to fall. And he thinks of the news footage he saw right after the attacks on the World Trade Center, before the media realized what they were showing—the men who broke windows, climbed ledges, and leapt to their deaths. The falling men, the men forced to choose one kind of death over another.

Kurt looks back at Trevor, who is crying now, tears and snot freezing upon impact with the air. He lifts his gun to his shoulder again, and the snow makes a lens of ice as he peers down the sight.

LAST SPRING

It started with a gift.

The box was blue, the same color blue as the eggs Trevor found up in the eaves of the shed earlier that morning, the color of crushed-up sky. Mrs. D. gave it to him after the bell rang and almost everybody else had already packed up their stuff and headed out the door. He was messing around in his backpack, worrying about where he was going to sit at lunch, and didn’t know that she was trying to get his attention. But then she touched his arm, real soft, with her talcum-powder hands and said, “Trevor dear, can you wait just a minute, please? I have something for you.”

Mrs. D. was the art teacher at Trevor’s school. A lot of kids were creeped out by her; some of the younger ones even thought that she was a witch or something. She did look a little bit like a witch, with the small hump underneath her moth-hole-riddled green sweater, with the threadbare black wig she wore. She smelled dusty and old too, like wet books. Some kids cackled whenever she turned her back, called her Nanny McPhee, but Trevor liked Mrs. D. So what if she was old and strange? She was a good artist, a good teacher. The fruit she drew always looked like fruit: bananas and apples and a pomegranate, its seeds spilling out all over the table like the insides of the buck that Trevor’s dad shot last year. Plus, Mrs. D. was always giving him things to bring home—a box of waxy oil pastels, some tubes of acrylic paint that she was about to throw away. One time she gave him a set of colored pencils that weren’t even opened yet. Besides, Trevor liked being in the art room. He loved the smell of paint and paste, the dusty, musty scent of it all. He liked the way the canvases looked like boys leaning against the brick walls. He liked the paint-splattered floors, the rough wooden worktables, the high ceilings, and the quiet. It was almost like being in a library here; and when the doors closed behind him, he felt suddenly secure, sheltered, at peace.

He opened the box and pulled out a camera. A real camera, heavy and black with a glass lens: the old-fashioned kind. For the last few weeks, they’d been doing a unit on photography, and this camera was like the ones each student was allowed to sign out, but this one was brand-new.

“Have you ever had your own camera before?” she asked.

He shook his head.

He thought of the slide show she’d shown them last week. Ansel Adams, that was the landscape guy. Some old lady who took pictures of flowers. But Trevor had liked the picture of people, the portraits, best. Faces. Mrs. D. had explained that photographers could be artists, that a good photographer uses the light to make ordinary or even ugly things beautiful. He thought about the kind of pictures he might take, about the faces he knew.

“The school will probably do away with the darkroom eventually. Move everything to digital. But for now, I can still teach you how to develop the film. How to make prints.” Her head shook back and forth like a bobblehead doll, her voice made of tissue paper. “I want to see the world the way you see it, Trevor.”

He wasn’t sure why Mrs. D. took such an interest in him. He wasn’t a good artist. Not like Angie McDonald in his class, whose paintings always looked like what they were supposed to. The things he drew never matched what was inside his head. He couldn’t get what was up there on the page, and he wasn’t sure anybody would want to see that anyway. But since sixth grade, Mrs. D. had looked at him like she saw someone special inside there. Nobody had ever looked at him like that before.

He’d been thinking a lot lately about the way people looked at him. He’d grown so much since last year, he barely recognized himself in the mirror. He’d outgrown every pair of pants, every pair of shoes he owned. He felt like the Incredible Hulk, busting out of his own clothes. Kids had always been mean to him, teased him, but now the same kids moved away when he walked down the halls at school, pretending like he wasn’t there but still making sure to get out of his way. His teachers, except for Mrs. D., now looked at him like he was one of the bad kids. Like he was the troublemaker. His mother looked at him with sad eyes mostly, though he knew she was trying not to. If pity were a picture, it would be a picture of his mother. His dad’s face was full of worry too, though he tried not to show it. His little sister, Gracy, was the only one who didn’t look at him with some shade of disgust or disappointment. But she was only five; what did she know?

“Thanks,” he said and took the camera from Mrs. D. and turned it over in his hands, excited to give it a try. He peered through the viewfinder and twisted the lens only to focus in on Jolyn Forchette, who was jealous and smelled like green beans, scowling at him from across the room. He crammed the camera into the backpack with the math homework he hadn’t turned in and a banana that had been sitting in there so long it had turned brown and soft.

“It’s already loaded,” Mrs. D. said. “Just shoot.”

He forgot about the camera as he made his way to the cafeteria for lunch. As the sea of students parted for him, liquid and flowing, whispering and sneering, he kept his head down, his gaze at the floor. He tried to make himself invisible, though that’s nearly impossible when you’re six feet tall in the seventh grade and you wear a size ten shoe. Still, he tried his best to disappear. But then as he made his way past a group of snickering and pointing seventh-grade girls, he started to feel that bad metal feeling. Corroded. That was the only way to describe it. Like his insides were rusted out, like one of his dad’s cars at the yard. He could even taste it sometimes way back in his throat. He tried to swallow it down hard, but the metallic taste lingered on his tongue, made the insides of his cheeks itch.

He tried to ignore them and went to a table near the hot lunch line. He only had $1.50, which didn’t go far in the à la carte line. The few times he’d tried to get a decent meal there, he’d wound up starving by the end of the day, his stomach roiling and furious. Only losers got hot lunch, but at least the hot lunches filled him up. He threw his backpack down into a chair and grabbed a tray. That was the other good thing about hot lunch; there wasn’t a wait, so there would actually be enough time to eat after he got back to his table.

Spaghetti. That meant there would be bread too and those electric orange cubes of cheese. Gray-green broccoli and chocolate pudding with skin on top. He was hungry. His mom had made eggs and bacon and hash for breakfast, but he felt hollow now. His body burned through fuel faster than his dad’s pickup.

He pushed the brown plastic tray along the metal rollers and he watched as a group of seventh-grade guys went right to the table where his backpack was. He grabbed a carton of chocolate milk from the bin filled with ice and glanced over at the table, hoping they’d notice his pack and go somewhere else.

“Here you go,” the lunch lady said, handing him a sloppy plate of spaghetti. He took a pair of tongs and grabbed a clump of cheese cubes and three spongy slices of garlic bread.

The guys didn’t seem to notice Trevor’s backpack holding his place. They were all sitting at the table, laughing and eating their à la carte burgers and French fries. Trevor shoved the money at the hot lunch cashier and made his way over to the table.

“Fee Fi Fo Fum,” said one of the kids.

“That’s my backpack,” Trevor said softly.

“That’s my backpack,” mimicked the kid in a girly voice. He had red hair that covered one eye like a comma. Ethan Sweeney. Of course.

Trevor reached for his backpack but Mike Wheelock, with his greasy black hair and a Patriots jersey, grabbed it first.

“Hey, freakshow, what do you keep in here? Body parts? I bet he’s got some dead chick’s head stuffed in here,” he said, laughing.

“Just give it,” Trevor said.

Mike started to unzip the backpack and stuck his head in to inspect.

“Ew, what’s that smell?” he said, jerking his head back. The banana.

The other guys leaned over to see inside. And suddenly Trevor felt the metal turning into quicksilver, mercury rushing through his veins.

“What’s this?” the Sweeney kid asked, reaching in and grabbing the camera from Mrs. D.

“I said, give it,” Trevor said. He thought about Mrs. D., picking out the camera and paying for it out of her own pocket. He thought about what the kid might do to it.

“Give it, give it,” Ethan mocked, his voice high and sharp.

Normally, Trevor just tried to ignore these guys, but lately, he couldn’t seem to control himself. It was like this new body of his, these new hands, had a mind of their own. So the next thing Trevor knew, the tray of spaghetti was flying onto the floor and his fists were swinging, though they connected with nothing but air. The whole cafeteria erupted, the chanting starting small and growing bigger, like a heartbeat. Fight, fight, fight.

His eyes stung and his mouth flooded with the taste of metal. But before he had the satisfaction of his fist making contact with Ethan’s face, someone was yanking his collar hard, choking him. He shook his head like a dog on a chain, and the hands let go, making him stumble backward.

“All right, that’s enough. Break it up,” Mr. Douglas, the janitor, said.

Trevor blinked hard and when his eyes focused again, he noticed the way the sunlight was shining through the cafeteria window, casting his own shadow, enormous and dark on the filthy cafeteria floor. And he thought about the gift from Mrs. D. About the camera. About how he might capture this picture: his own terrifying silhouette and all of the other kids’ faces staring at him with something between fascination and horror.

Elsbeth looked at the catalogues that came in the mail with the models in their bathing suits and flip-flops and dreamed herself somewhere warm. It was April, spring everywhere else but here in Vermont, where yards were still laced with patches of dirty snow and you could still see your breath, like ghosts, when you went outside. Her girlfriend, Twig, went on a cruise for Christmas last year. She and her boyfriend flew down to Miami and then got on a ship to the Bahamas. She came back the color of a ripe peach with streaks of sunshine shimmering in her hair, like she’d captured the sun itself and brought it home with her. This was one of those things Elsbeth ached for, another one of those things she knew that she and Kurt probably wouldn’t ever be able to afford to do. Still, she marked the bright green two-piece in the Victoria’s Secret catalogue with a coupon for mayonnaise she clipped earlier, and set it on the kitchen table next to the stack of neglected bills.

Elsbeth had worked at the salon all morning and then picked Gracy up from her half day at kindergarten after lunch. Gracy had fallen asleep in the car on the way home and, thankfully, stayed asleep as Elsbeth carried her inside and put her in her bed. Trevor would be at school for another couple of hours, and Kurt would be at the yard until suppertime. There was a roast in the Crock-Pot, so supper was taken care of, and so she had exactly two more hours of peace. Two more hours when she didn’t have to tend to anybody else’s needs except for her own. This was her guilty pleasure. This solitude. Sometimes she just lay down on the couch and closed her eyes for the whole two hours, waiting for Gracy to call for her and break the spell. She knew she could be, should be, catching up on the laundry. She knew she had dishes to do, grout to scrub, floors to mop, but this was the only time of day when she could hear her own thoughts. The only time of day when she was completely and absolutely alone.

She lay on the couch and glanced at the magazine. The model was bustier than she was, with more up top and in the rear than Elsbeth had. The model had flowing auburn hair, while Elsbeth’s was the color of coal tar pitch. She wore it in a ponytail most days like she used to when she was a little girl; it made her feel younger than her thirty years. The model was smiling, and her teeth were even and white like Tic Tacs or a row of shiny Chiclets. Elsbeth hadn’t seen a dentist in a decade. And when her wisdom teeth came in, they undid all the work the braces she’d worn in junior high had done. Still, she knew she was sort of pretty to look at. She had her dimples and big wide eyes. She was no Victoria’s Secret model, but her stomach was flat and her legs were long and strong. She tried to picture herself in the bathing suit, but the only real beach here was way up at Lake Gormlaith, and only teenagers wore two-pieces there. She thought of the summers when she was still a teenager: those humid nights spent drinking wine coolers and skinny-dipping. She wished she’d known then that she should hold on to that feeling—of strawberry-flavored Bartles & Jaymes on her tongue and cold water on her naked skin—because now it was so far away it felt like a whisper too quiet to hear.

She closed the magazine and then closed her eyes, calculating how many minutes of freedom were left. She tried to remember sunshine, the smell of suntan lotion. The sound of loons and the splash of bodies in water. But just as she was drifting off, floating on her back looking up at a dream sky full of stars, the phone rang, rattling her nerves. She sat up and quickly grabbed it off its cradle so it wouldn’t wake Gracy.

“Hello?” she said softly.

“Mrs. Kennedy? This is Principal Cross.”

Elsbeth closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Waiting.

“I just wanted to let you know that Trevor will be staying after school with us again today.”

“What happened?” she asked. She could hear Mrs. Cross sigh on the other end of the line.

“There was an altercation.”

“A fight?”

“More of a confrontation really.”

“What does that mean? Is he hurt?”

“No one is hurt. Mr. Douglas, our custodian, was, thankfully, able to stop the boys before it got physical.”

“So it was an argument?” Elsbeth asked. Mrs. Cross drove her crazy.

“Mrs. Kennedy, Trevor’s behavior is becoming disruptive. This is the third time this month that he’s served detention. If this had escalated into a fight, if anyone had gotten hurt, he’d be facing suspension.”

“But no one was hurt?” she repeated.

“No. Thankfully, not this time.”

Elsbeth, exasperated, stood up. She could hear Gracy stirring in the other room.

“You may pick him up from the office at four o’clock,” Mrs. Cross said.

She nodded and hung up the phone, looked at the glossy redheaded model smiling at her. Mocking her.

She didn’t know what was going on with Trevor lately. He’d always had a hard time at school, with other kids. But he’d never been violent before: always more apt to flee than fight. And Principal Cross was new this year; she didn’t know Trevor, hadn’t seen what he’d been through since kindergarten. All she saw was this big kid always on the verge of a brawl.

Quietly she went to the room that Gracy and Trevor shared, and Gracy smiled up at her from her soft nest of blankets and pillows. Elsbeth sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair. There was a sleepy seed in the corner of her eye that Elsbeth delicately extracted with one pale pink fingernail.

“Hi, Mumma,” Gracy said sleepily.

“Hi, baby. Did you have sweet dreams?”

Gracy nodded. “I’m still sleepy.”

“Okay, baby. Go back to sleep.”

She never said it out loud, but she worried that she loved Gracy more than she loved Trevor. It was one of those truths that made her feel ashamed. What kind of mother admits that? What kind of mother even thinks something like that? But even when Trevor was just a baby, she remembered feeling like he didn’t belong to her. Like she didn’t belong to him. With his white-blond hair and skin, his ice-colored eyes, he certainly didn’t look like her. It was like Kurt had made him all by himself, as though she’d had nothing at all to do with it. Even after nine and a half months of carrying him around in her belly, there were times when she would watch him playing or sleeping and she had to remind herself that he was her son. Her child.

Of course, she was only seventeen when he was born. Nobody should be having babies at seventeen. She hadn’t even put away her baby dolls yet when she was seventeen; when Kurt used to sneak into her room at night, she’d turn them all face-down on her dresser so they wouldn’t see what they were doing. She was still just a girl when she got pregnant. So for a long time, she thought maybe it was just because she was such a young mother. Maybe she resented Trevor for the loss of her freedom, blamed him for all the things she had to give up: for the prom she didn’t go to, the pep rallies, the bonfires, her position as first chair flute in the band. For all the other summers she might have spent drinking wine coolers and swimming naked at the lake.

But as he got older, she realized it wasn’t as simple as that. Trevor wasn’t like the other children. At the playground the other mothers sometimes shook their heads at Trevor, whispered when they thought she wasn’t looking. He didn’t look like the other little boys, and he didn’t behave like they did either. For one thing, he was so sensitive. He’d cry about just about anything. If something was too loud, if he didn’t want to leave, when someone refused to play with him. He threw tantrums, big tantrums. Those times, she’d scoop him up in her arms and walk away from the huddled mothers, wincing as he kicked her thighs, scratched her arms, and sobbed into her hair. But despite feeling protective, angry at these women with their well-behaved toddlers, she couldn’t help feeling a little bitter too. Angry at him for being such a crybaby. And she realized what she was feeling was shame. She was ashamed of her own son. It made her feel awful.

And then seven years and two miscarriages later, Gracy was born, and she knew for sure that while there might be something wrong with Trevor, there was something far worse wrong with her. Because the minute Gracy was born, she remembered feeling a whole new kind of love. Not love like she felt for her mother, for her grandpa. Not even the kind of crazy love she used to feel for Kurt. But a love so big it felt like something liquid. Something that soaked her; she felt heavy with it. A mother’s love.

Gracy was a beautiful baby: eyes as big and dark as Junior Mints. Her hair, like Elsbeth’s, was the color and thickness of molasses. She almost never cried, and when she did it wasn’t because she was angry or frustrated. She never threw her body across the room and into closed doors, never tore her own hair out like Trevor did at that age. She cooed and smiled and didn’t shrink away from Elsbeth’s touch. (That’s what killed her more than anything, the way Trevor retracted from her. It made her feel found out, accused.) Grace was just that, just the smallest bit of grace. Elsbeth’s sweet reward for the agony that was Trevor. Her mercy.

Now that Trevor was older and things seemed to be getting worse rather than better, she didn’t know what to do. She tried so hard to be a good mother. To make Trevor feel loved and special. But it felt false, like she was pretending, and she worried that he could sense this. That maybe she was even to blame for his problems, that she had failed him in some terrible way.

Of course, she would never admit that she felt this way. It was her secret. Kurt didn’t know how hard she worked just to get through some days with Trevor, how exhausting it was. Thank God for Kurt. Kurt who was patient and kind. Kurt whose love was always equal. Elsbeth knew that Kurt never had such terrible thoughts. At least Trevor had his daddy. Always. She knew she needed to call Kurt, let him know what had happened. What had almost happened. Jesus, that woman infuriated her. She’d send Kurt to get him. Kurt would know what to do.

When Elsbeth called, Kurt was out in the yard looking for a ’92 Camry hubcap. He was pretty sure they had one, but it wasn’t showing up in the system. He searched through the shiny stack, like a haphazard pile of fallen spaceships, but couldn’t find the one he was looking for. The customer was a lady, and he could tell she was watching the time. She was one of those coffee-break shoppers. Thinks she can show up at three in the afternoon, find what she needs, and make it back to work without anybody noticing she’s gone. She was teetering on a pair of scuffed black high heels, scrunching up her nose at the smell, as Kurt sorted through the heap.

Beal came out to the cap pile, carrying the chirping cell phone like it was on fire. “It’s Elsbeth,” Beal said, breathless, holding the phone, which had ceased its song.

There were a billion reasons Elsbeth might be calling (something she needed him to pick up at the store on his way home, a question about where to find the hammer or Phillips head or WD-40), but today Kurt’s first thought was of Trevor. Of what did he do now? As Beal handed him the phone and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his shirt, Kurt felt a knot grow in his gut.

“Thanks,” he said, looking at the screen that announced the presence of a new message.

The lady put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot, glanced at her watch. At this rate, she’d be lucky to make it back to her office without somebody figuring out she’d been gone.

“I’m real sorry, ma’am. Why don’t you leave your number with Beal here and we’ll give you a call as soon as we find the cap you need,” Kurt offered.

“Maybe you didn’t understand when I said I needed it today,” she said, like she was talking to a four-year-old. “I’m showing a client a house in an hour, and I can’t be driving around town without a hubcap. It’s not professional.”

He wanted to listen to Elsbeth’s message, but this lady with her high heels and impatience was their first customer of the day, possibly their only customer of the day the way things had been going lately. They couldn’t afford to lose her business, even if it was just a forty-dollar hubcap.

“Beal, see if you can find this young lady’s cap for me?” Kurt asked.

“No problem,” Beal said.

“Beal here will help you find exactly what you’re looking for,” Kurt offered, and the woman scowled.

He listened to the message as he made his way back to the shop through the maze of car carcasses, waiting until he was out of their earshot to call Elsbeth back. He leaned against the yellow husk of a 1979 Mercedes and hit the speed dial.

“Hey, baby,” Elsbeth’s voice said. The thick, gravelly sweetness of her voice could still make his knees go soft. “Did you get my message? Trevor’s in detention again and Gracy’s still napping. Would you mind picking him up at school at four?”

“What did he do?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Another fight, I guess. She said the janitor stopped it before anybody got hurt. Can you get him?”

“Yeah. I’ll go.” He glanced at the scratched face of his watch.

He had about twenty minutes. Beal could close up the shop. Hopefully he’d find that damned hubcap before the lady gave up.

As he made his way to the shop to grab his truck keys, he surveyed the sea of glass and chrome. He’d been working at the salvage yard since high school. Back when he still had plans to go to college, he’d helped Pop out every summer, socking away any money he made for his tuition. But then, after Billy took off, and later when Pop keeled over at the A&P, the stroke leaving his whole right side paralyzed, Kurt knew he wasn’t going anywhere. He’d taken over the yard and been here ever since. He’d married Elsbeth, Trevor was born, and then Gracy. He had a family, and he really didn’t have a choice but to keep the business going, unless he sold the yard. Not that he hadn’t thought about it. Not that he hadn’t been tempted. But the sad fact was that he had grown up among this wreckage. These hollowed-out skeletons of Caddies and station wagons and Volkswagen buses had been his playground as a kid. Getting rid of the salvage yard would have been like selling off his own childhood.

And the yard had actually been a lucrative business until last year. But now people were driving their cars into the ground rather than scrapping them when things started to break. It also seemed like everybody was finding what they needed to keep them running on eBay. And the folks who used to drop stuff off were trying to make a profit off it themselves, selling parts on craigslist or out of their own garages. He’d stopped looking at the books; he knew that as soon as he did, he’d have to cut back Beal’s hours, maybe even let him go, and Beal’s wife was just about to have twins. Despite everything, Kurt loved the yard, and it pained him that the business was going to shit. He used to think he’d pass it on to Trevor someday when he was grown.

Trevor. Ever since the episode last month, the new principal seemed to have it out for Trevor. He was always coming home with pink slips, warnings about his behavior, signed in that curlicue handwriting that looked more like it belonged to a teenage girl than a school principal. The times they’d been called into the office, Mrs. Cross hardly said anything, just shook her blond head, like he and Elsbeth should know better. Like they were at fault for his bad behavior.

Not that Kurt didn’t blame himself. Of course he did. Trevor was his son. He was the one who had raised him. But ever since Trevor was just a little boy, he’d had a hard time with other kids. He’d been pushed around and made fun of for one thing or another, off and on for twelve years. Up until this year it was the other kids whose parents were getting the pink slips and fancy handwriting and calls from the school. They’d been to the school counselor a hundred times, but she insisted that there was nothing wrong with Trevor. He was a good student, sensitive but well-behaved; it was the other boys who were the problem. The school did what they could, but Kurt knew how devious kids could be, how much they could do when the teachers weren’t looking. And lately, Trevor refused to talk about it. But Kurt could still see it in his eyes. He’d seen it in his brother Billy’s eyes when he was a kid. Trevor didn’t have a single friend, and Kurt knew exactly how to read the pain of his loneliness. He didn’t know what to do for him, didn’t know how to make that sorrow go away.

But this fighting business was new. It was like something shifted inside Trevor since he turned twelve. First off, he grew seven inches. Went from being the shortest kid in the class to the tallest in just one summer. He also put on about thirty pounds. A thin line of hair started to grow above his lip. He went from boy to man in about thirty seconds flat, except for his voice, which remained that of a little boy. Kurt knew this was part of the problem: something else that set him apart from the other boys.

It wasn’t two weeks into the school year that Kurt and Elsbeth got the first call from Mrs. Cross. Apparently during the seventh-grade recess some kids had been giving Trevor a hard time, pushing him around, and he’d, finally, pushed back. There had been two other “incidents” since then, the same kids picking on him, and both times instead of just taking it like usual, he’d fought back, once shoving one kid into a snowbank. Part of Kurt was proud of Trevor. These stupid asshole kids were finally getting what they deserved. But the school didn’t see it that way. The same counselor who had insisted that Trevor was fine now said she “didn’t know what to do with him.” She thought he should see an outside professional, someone who could help him manage his anger. But even if Kurt hadn’t thought that therapy was a load of shit, his insurance wouldn’t have covered it anyway. He knew Trevor shouldn’t be fighting, that he’d have to punish him, again, for this, but he also knew that there weren’t a lot of other options.

Kurt grabbed his keys from the shop and went to his truck. The windshield was filthy. He lifted the wiper-fluid lever, and the motor buzzed. Empty. He turned the wipers on anyway, and they pushed the sludgy grime across the glass. He waited until the windshield was clear enough to see, until the road came into focus in front of him, and then sighed, backing out of the driveway and heading to the school.

Trevor sat perched on one of the wheel wells in the back of his dad’s truck as they drove away from the school. He watched as the school became a dollhouse and then just a redbrick pinprick in the distance. Trevor loved riding in the back of the truck. With the wind coming at him from all sides, he held his arms out and could feel every inch of his skin. Sometimes, in the summer, his dad would take him and Gracy swimming up at Lake Gormlaith, and they’d get in the back still soaking wet, their towels flapping around like capes. By the time they got home they’d be dry, their eyes red and stinging from the wind. He loved the taste of the air, held his mouth wide open and stuck his tongue out, tasting the seasons on his tongue. Spring tasted like fresh-cut grass. Summer tasted like hay and heat. Fall like overripe fruit. It was too cold to ride in the back in the winter, but he imagined winter air might taste like peppermint. In the back of the truck, he felt free. His skin stopped prickling. His muscles relaxed. He let the breeze wash over him. It made him feel clean. In the truck, he could almost forget about school.

School. He almost wished Mr. Douglas hadn’t gotten to him so quickly. If there had been an actual fight, he would have gotten suspended. And if he got suspended, at least then he wouldn’t have to go back to school tomorrow.

Mr. Douglas, who restrained and then detained him, considered himself the school cop as well as the janitor. (After somebody started calling in bomb threats a few months ago, Mrs. Cross gave him a neon orange bib that said SECURITY across the front, which he wore when he patrolled the parking lot at the school.) He was fat and sweaty. When he’d pressed Trevor’s head down onto the sticky cafeteria table and yanked his arm behind his back (which Trevor thought was pretty ridiculous considering he hadn’t even gotten a chance to hit anybody), he’d hissed into Trevor’s face, “You’re in a lot of trouble, mister,” and his breath smelled like hot dogs and cigarettes.

Trevor turned toward the cab and looked at the back of his dad’s head. When his mom rode in the truck, his dad would stretch one arm across the backseat behind her and rub her neck. But today he had both hands on the wheel, his knuckles tight and white. Trevor wasn’t sure what would happen to him when he got home. His mom would probably try to get him to talk about it, but he knew that even though she asked the questions (What did they say to you? What did they do, baby?), she didn’t really want to hear the answers. What she wanted was for him to be like Gracy. Sweet and loveable and easy. But he wasn’t any of those things, never had been.

All the other times, his dad had taken him out to the shed, made him yank down his pants, and hit him twice on his bare backside with his belt. It hadn’t hurt much, but it made his eyes sting with shame. As further punishment, his dad had made him go to the yard and stack tires all day on the weekends. He couldn’t get the smell of rubber off his hands, even with soap. His dad didn’t try to talk to him; he was probably smart enough to know there wasn’t any way for Trevor to explain. No way to describe how he felt right before he snapped. When the things they said to him pricked his skin like needles. Freakshow, Frankenstein, Faggot. How could he tell him about that rusted-out taste in his mouth that meant all hell was about to break loose?

When they pulled into the driveway, he stood up and hopped out of the back of the truck. He could see Gracy peering out the front window at him. She pressed her nose against the glass like a pig and blew her cheeks out. He smiled at her, and she waved, leaving greasy prints on the glass.

“Come on,” his father said, exasperated, leading the way to the backyard, loosening his belt as he walked.

It was only five o’clock, but the sky was already darkening. The whole world looked bruised. They’d made this same trek a dozen times or more since last year. There was practically a path worn into the ground. When they got to the shed, Trevor closed his eyes and braced himself, leaning his hands against the cold siding.

“Damn it, Trevor.” His father’s voice was deep and soft, a lullaby voice. Trevor squeezed his eyes shut tighter and tried to pretend that he was only waiting for sleep. But then he heard the slide of leather through denim, the belt catching on the loops, and his whole body tensed, readied itself.

“What am I supposed to do with you?” his father said softly. “What the hell am I supposed to do?” But he wasn’t talking to him, to Trevor, not really, but rather seemed to be asking the question to the dusk. To that damaged sky.

And then it was over, as if it had only been a couple of distant cracks of thunder. As if it had only been a faraway storm.

Outside the hospital window, the sky was like a fairy-tale sky. A violet sky, a violent sky, with a terrible moon. If this sky were flattened into the pages of a book, the moon might have a face, a sneering face. And the story would be about what happens to bad little girls when they don’t listen to their mothers.

Crystal’s mother sat at the side of the bed, busying herself with the remote control as if the most savage thing in the world hadn’t just happened to her daughter.

“You can go home, Mom,” she said. “I’m okay.”

Distracted, she turned to Crystal and said, “Don’t be silly.” But she couldn’t hide the look of relief on her face, the gratefulness for Crystal’s permission to leave. For all of the arguing over the last several months, now neither one of them seemed to have any words left for the other, and they had spent the last two hours sitting in silence. “Seriously. I’m fine. They said I can check out in the morning. Just come back at nine.”

The truth was, she didn’t want her mother to stay. She wanted to be alone with this strange sorrow, the one curled like a cat in the corner of her mind. If her mother left, then it might leap to her lap, let her stroke its soft fur. But not as long as her mother insisted on lingering. As long as her mother was here, she had to pretend. To make believe that it was as simple as this.

“Well, only if you promise me you’ll be okay,” her mother said, cocking her head slightly and reaching for Crystal’s hand. She ran her thumb gently, absently, over the IV needle stuck into the vein in the back of her hand. This tenderness felt like a blow. Her mother hadn’t given her so much as a good-night kiss in months; she couldn’t remember the last time she hugged her. But now that it was all over, now that her mother had gotten what she’d wanted, the warmth she’d withheld was suddenly released. Her lips pressed against Crystal’s forehead; she squeezed Crystal’s hand. “We love you,” she said, speaking not only for herself but for Crystal’s father, who had known enough to leave three hours ago, as well. “We’re proud of you. This was the right decision.”

Crystal could feel her throat thickening, the sorrow filling her body in all the new, empty places. She nodded because if she spoke she would cry. And she would not cry.

“Okay, then,” her mother said, straightening. “You call if you need me to come back. Even if it’s the middle of the night. I can come back.”

Crystal kept nodding, willing her mother out the door. Watching, relieved, as she disappeared, as the heavy wooden door closed, leaving her, finally, alone. Her whole body felt like a limb that had fallen asleep and was just now prickling back to life. The pain was there but not there. Like some shimmering thing underwater. And the memory of what happened tonight was also soft at the edges.

She’d been out walking Willa after dinner. She hadn’t been able to eat more than a few bites before she felt bile rising like mercury up the thermometer of her esophagus. Like fire in her throat. She thought that maybe if she walked, gravity would prevail, and there would be some relief.

She’d only gotten to her sister Angie’s school before she needed to sit down. Her heart was skipping beats again, stuttering and stumbling and then stalling. It took her breath away each time, like a dozen small deaths. She’d looped Willa’s leash to the swing set and sat down on one of the swings. The canvas cradle was not designed for a girl in her condition, but she needed to rest. She didn’t feel right.

Willa hadn’t found a place to relieve herself yet. She’d sniffed nearly every bush, every tree, along the way. But now she was squatting at the foot of the slide.

“Willa, no!” Crystal said.

Willa looked up at her as her body convulsed with the effort of relieving herself.

“Jesus, Will,” Crystal said, grabbing onto the cold chains of the swing to help her stand up. She shoved her hands in her pockets, hoping she’d remembered to put a plastic baggie inside or else some poor kid would get a terrible surprise at the end of his ride.

Willa sniffed at the pile, and Crystal located a bag in her pocket. She enclosed her hand in plastic and bent over awkwardly to scoop up the stinking mess. Suddenly, she felt a shock go through her entire body, and then a deep ache across her abdomen. She stood up, hand full of shit, and swooned from the stink and the pain.

“Come on, Willa,” she said, and Willa obeyed.

The two blocks home felt like two miles. She had to stop every other house it seemed, her entire body quaking with each contraction. When she walked past Ty’s house, she wondered if he was inside. What would he do if she just stopped here? If she just had the baby right here on his doorstep? Would Lucia invite her in, make her some chamomile tea? She almost laughed at the thought of it.

By the time Crystal got back to her house, she realized that this was it. It was finally, really, happening. She needed to go to the hospital; the baby was coming tonight.

And now, just eight hours later, it was over. All of it. The baby had come. And gone.

She thought about her mother driving home. Her back straight, her hands at ten and two. She imagined Willa waiting at the door for her. Her father inside now, maybe catching up on some listings, trying to forget what had happened in the hospital. She thought of her sister, Angie, doing homework or drawing. Or maybe already asleep, as if this had all been a dream. As if Crystal weren’t lying in the hospital feeling like her body had been split open like a ripe peach. That dark pit in the center of her, that pocked dark place now exposed.

She reached for her phone on the nightstand. Nothing. Ty hadn’t answered any of her texts. Hadn’t had the decency to even answer the goddamned phone. She stung. She leaked. She could feel her body emptying. Everything that remained trying to escape.

Through the wall behind her she could hear a woman moaning, like an animal. On the other side of the curtain that divided her own room in two, a baby cried, its cries like tinkling bells. Only Crystal keened silently. Her body weeping, seeping, but her eyes were absolutely dry.

Later as she closed her eyes, she allowed her mind to wander to that place she’d promised she wouldn’t ever go again. To that impossible place. To imagine what would have happened if she had simply refused. If instead of handing the baby over to Mrs. Stone with her pale hair and pale yellow sweater set, she’d just held on.

As Elsbeth stood, rolling Mrs. Van Buren’s whispery hair into hot rollers, she dreamed her life backwards. She couldn’t help it. It was magnetic, this need to circle back again and again. To unwind the life that had been woven from that moment on, to imagine how things would be different if she hadn’t met Kurt. Mrs. Van Buren’s soft voice was hypnotic, and as she talked, Elsbeth drifted.