But she calls out behind her: “Hey! There’s something on the front porch for you. A package.”

Atlanta doesn’t move at first. Soon she hears the pipes complain as Mama starts filling the tub. Atlanta heads outside.

Out there, she finds a wicker basket wrapped in red cellophane like a Christmas present that time-traveled to this warm and dry June evening. Inside are meats and cheeses and crackers and cookies. Summer sausages in their tubes, a brick of sharp cheddar, butter crackers and sugar cookies and more.

A little tag dangles from the arch of the basket’s handle. Atlanta plucks it like a crab apple and flips it open:

I’m sorry. I’ll help. –Shane.

Atlanta smiles.

It’s a small smile, sure, but right now even the tiniest curl to her lips is a bright light in a very dark space.

Next day, at the little grungy café in the middle of town, Atlanta sits across from Shane and tells him everything, which feels good. There’s comfort in purging all this horrible stuff she’s been keeping stored up inside her, like it doesn’t have to be all hers anymore.

Waitress brings her an iced tea, and as she talks, Atlanta upends a small dump-truck’s worth of white sugar into it. Shane watches her over a coffee so black it might as well be ink poured out of a squid’s ass. At the end of it, after he noisily sips the too-hot coffee, he blinks and says, “That sucks.”

Two words, so simple, and so true. It does suck. All of it sucks.

She pops the straw in her mouth, slurps some tea. Still not sweet enough. They do not know how to make iced tea up here, she thinks. Glass of cold tea down South is like liquid crack. Iced diabetes and oh-so-tasty.

More sugar, then. It whispers as it hits the tea and sinks past the ice.

“So what do we do?”

“Well,” she says, “that’s why I need you. You’re smarter than me, plain and simple. If I figure out anything it’s because I’m lucky. If you figure it out, it’s because you’re smart.”

“That’s not true. You’re plenty smart.”

“I’m not saying I’m a dipshit or anything. You might be shorter than me physically, but you’re taller than me if you figure your brain into the equation. Let’s just leave it at that.” She sips at the tea. Feels the sugar eating into her teeth—kind of a tingly sensation. Perfect. “That’s why I need you. I’ll pay you for your brain.”

“You don’t have to pay.”

“No, I want to. Oh. Hey. Thanks for the basket of meat.”

“It had cheese and other stuff in it, too.”