“Orly. Pete.” That second name, he says to the cop. “What the hell’s going on here? I thought this business was . . .” He scowls at Atlanta, and she feels a gentle push forward by one of Orly’s big hands. Then the words of Chris’s father are lost to her as her own mother steps in and sweeps her up in a big hug. She doesn’t return it.

“Baby,” Arlene says, “c’mon now, let’s go, let’s just leave this place behind.”

Cold, glaring eyes watch from the sidelines: Mitchell, the Skank, John Elvis. All three of them watch the scene unfold with grim, gravestone faces.

Atlanta returns the look. She tries burying in there a not-so-secret psychic message: This ain’t over. Seems her psychic message might’ve been received, because the Skank scowls and Mitchell shakes his head as if to disagree. John Elvis just seems lost, unfocused. Not surprising.

She pulls away from her mother, turns to Chris—Chris, who watches his father standing off to the side with those other two men, murmuring, arguing in whisper, maybe even conspiring.

“Chris, c’mon,” Atlanta says. “We’ll take you home.”

He doesn’t look at her. Instead, he calls to his father. “Dad?” The man doesn’t look back.

“Chris—”

“Dad.”

His father turns, mouth a cocked line, and waves him on. “Just go on, get out of here. The girl’s mother can take you home.” Chris pleads with his eyes, but his father isn’t having any of it. Instead he just points to the door. “I said go on, goddamnit!”

The look on Chris’s face says it all. Like he just got slapped. Like someone reached in and gave his heart a hard squeeze with a rough hand. Like this, out of all the day’s events, is the part that stings him the most. Tears roll down his bruised cheek.

Atlanta’s mother pulls on her elbow. “Honey. Come on, now. Car’s running.”

“Chris,” Atlanta says, not budging. “You coming?”

He does, finally, and the three of them escape the gun club.

Arlene’s car is a boat. Not literally. An Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight from the mid-’90s. White, but dirty. Mama likes to joke that it has enough miles on it to get her to the moon and back.

Chris sits behind Atlanta. He’s quiet. Mama grabs the steering wheel but makes a sound in the back of her throat like a wounded coyote—a low keening whine. Fingers tighten around the wheel, knuckles go bloodless.

“They hurt you in there,” she says. Her hands are shaking worse than Atlanta’s. “Didn’t they.”

It’s a statement, not a question.

“It’s fine, Mama,” Atlanta says. “Let’s just . . . get outta here.”