Their yard wasn’t taken care of, and the gray paint was peeling off the house. I had been inside the house only one time, when Coraline said her mother wasn’t home because she was shopping for new clothes. The house was a pit. There was stuff all over, in piles, you could hardly walk. Nowadays, we call that hoarding. Then, there was no label.

When we heard Gloria’s car in the driveway, Coraline cried, “Oh no! Get out, Evie. Go out the back! Don’t let our mom see you,” and she and Rhett pushed me out a window and begged me to stay hidden as I left their property. I didn’t leave, though. I watched through the back window. The mother came lumbering in, heavy, plodding, her hair all over like a porcupine’s, drunk.

Gloria started swearing at her kids. She raised her hand to hit one of the younger ones, and Rhett caught her arm. She turned red as she swung her other arm through the air and cuffed Rhett as Coraline pushed the whimpering, frightened younger kids to the bedrooms.

Gloria saw all the kids running and she thundered after them, swearing and yelling, her body rolling from side to side. Rhett darted after her, tried to stop her, tried to distract her.

In the corner of the room, I saw a baby. Motionless. I hadn’t seen him before. I didn’t even know there was a baby. He was the loneliest baby I had ever seen. It was like he already knew that crying made things worse.

When Gloria came hobbling back in, dragging the fourth kid by the hair, still swearing, then tried to stuff rotten bread in his mouth for “complaining about being hungry, you ungrateful brat,” I had a premonition: Gloria was going to die.

She was going to die wearing the same pink-flowered muumuu she had on that day. She might die later that day. It was going to be at night. She was driving her car, the car was swerving, as she drank straight out of a bottle. She was going to crash into a tree on a quiet, dark street out in the country. I saw her suffering. I saw her legs trapped. I saw her crying. I saw her bleeding. I saw the blood running down her face. I saw her yelling for help, trying to twist her bulk. I saw night turning into day, and she was still alive, but barely. Then I saw her close her eyes, giving up, her face scrunched in a mask of pain, sober at last, and take her last breath.

I did nothing to interfere in that premonition. A few nights later Gloria crashed her car wearing the pink-flowered muumuu and died.