Kit rolled over in bed and sat herself up. The mattress slumped on the side where she had slept the past five or so hours. She’d gotten back to the house as the sun was coming up, collapsed into bed, and slept deeply. Now it was noon and her muscles and joints had stiffened so much that when she went downstairs, it felt like trudging through mud. She made it to the sink and brought back a cup full of ice water, then turned on the ceiling fan and returned to her bed, her bare feet propped on the brass footboard. How strange it felt to rest. A warm feeling had lingered after she left Caleb’s home. To the tick of the fan she let her mind wander. She could not explain this feeling of peace. After a night like that, she should be off somewhere digging a trench or burning brush; there would be rage, a violent act against nature. But there in his house with its ridiculous curtains, he had handled her like a fallen wren. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so cared for, maybe not since Eleanor.
She was just about to start worrying again about Charlie when the girl traipsed through the front door and up to her room as if a day hadn’t passed since they’d seen each other.
“Where have you been?” Kit barked, though she wanted to hug her daughter tight till she yelled. Charlie stopped in front of Kit’s door.
“Smoking weed with Dirk,” she said, direct and barefaced. On another day, Kit would have come down harder on her. Far as she knew, Charlie had never done drugs before, and she sure as hell shouldn’t have been out with a boy all night. But Kit was so relieved to see her safe, so weary of fighting, she called a silent truce.
“What happened to you?” Charlie said, her tone less flippant, and Kit realized she must have seen her busted lip.
She didn’t like lying, especially not after Charlie’s latest show of honesty, but she wasn’t ready to get into any of what happened last night.
“I took Warbucks out for a ride,” Kit said. “Got pitched off and kissed a fence post on my way down.”
“Shit,” Charlie said, apparently satisfied. “Okay, well, I’m gonna cram for my tests tomorrow. Do not disturb.” And with a flourish of her sleep-tousled hair, she disappeared into her room. How Kit missed the days when Charlie had looked up to her, how she would run up to her after school clutching a drawing she had made, some scribble resembling nothing. The pride in Charlie’s voice as she described the drawing to her mom. She felt the pang in her heart even now, at Charlie’s capacity for wonder. Charlie would push and push, “Look at this, Mommy! Did you see?” until Kit could muster the desired amount of praise. How could she have wasted those days, so squeamish about the demands of motherhood that she couldn’t absorb how beautiful it was to be needed? Worse still, she hadn’t seen how much Charlie had given to her.
Now she shuddered at how close she’d come to taking off last night, running laps in and out of town, flirting with escape. She hoped to God Charlie never found out. As she replayed the tape of the evening before, it was like watching someone else’s movie. The trailer park, the drinking, ignoring her instinct that Trip was trouble—in the light of day it all seemed so dramatic.
Ever since Manny came back, she’d recognized that she had been weird as shit. Off-balance. Like he had suddenly appeared on the bridge she and Charlie had been walking, a bridge that was only wide enough for two. She was so accustomed to dealing with things alone, in the swirling darkness of her own mind, that the idea of sharing Charlie with someone—with Manny—was paralyzing. And how could they just pick up where they left off, after all that had happened?
The three of them, a happy TV family, roast in the oven, a stiff drink in his hand? She almost laughed. His presence confused and frightened her, and she was sure last night’s tussle with Trip would never have happened if she hadn’t run into Manny. And now it was like he was everywhere. It hadn’t been long before news of the dashing reformed convict, Manuel, was all over town. Kit heard tell of his kindly deeds: at the grocery store between gushing housewives, “Did you ever meet a straight man that was so . . . so sensitive?” or at the diner, “I swear he hadn’t even touched his sandwich, but when he saw poor old Levi counting his pennies for a bowl of soup, Manny slid his lunch right on down the counter and went hungry.” She had heard of his theatrics in church with Ms. Blanchet several times, each more embellished than the last. When Beulah Baker had called him “positively Christlike,” Kit left her shopping cart in the middle of the canned foods aisle and walked out. He was conning the whole damn town—her goddamn town. She knew the whole charade was somehow directed at her. But to what end? He had said he wanted her forgiveness, but the Manny she knew wanted more.
He’d had the sense to stay away from her, at least. She had had only one encounter with him aside from seeing him at the church with Warbucks. She had just come out of the post office with a huge box of flea collars for Doc, and he had a handful of letters to mail. She stopped cold and let the door swat her behind. He wore a T-shirt from the church softball league and his old jeans, his hair still long, now threaded with gray. Hadn’t she noticed it before, this mortal change? She reminded herself of the last time she saw him, drunk and hateful, and held it up to the man in front of her. He was different. In his downcast eyes, his tentative manner. He was humbled. Maybe it wasn’t his fault the town was so lusty for a hero. Maybe it wasn’t a con, but contrition. She didn’t know which feelings to trust, the ones she felt now, which shimmered with the possibility that the good she had known was not gone; or the bruise he’d left behind, dark and deep, the canny voice that whispered beware? She took a lozenge of ice from the glass by her bed and slipped it inside her cheek. The cold deepened, then numbed until she could feel the nerves under her teeth beat. She’d be a fool to take his act at face value. Manny always had an angle, and he never left without getting what he came for.