“Those. Moths, ladybugs, whatever, she'd save 'em. When she was real little she went through this stage of not wanting anyone to cut the lawn because she thought it hurt the grass.”

She tried to smile, but her lips got away from her and began trembling. She covered them with one hand.

“You see what I'm saying?” she said, finally.

“I do.”

“She never changed. In school, she went straight for the outcasts—anyone who was different, or hurting—the retarded kids, harelips, you name it. Sometimes I think she was attracted to hurt.”

Another forage in the purse. She found red-framed sunglasses and put them on. Given the ambient shade, they must have blacked out the world.

I said, “I can see why she went into social work.”

“Exactly. I always figured she would do something like that, always told her nursing or social work would be perfect for her. But of course when you tell them, they do something else. So it took her a while to know what she wanted. She didn't want to go to college, did some waitressing, some file clerking, secretarial. My other kids were different. Real driven. Got a boy practicing orthopedic medicine in Reno, and my older girl works in a bank in St. Louis—assistant vice president.”

“Was Becky the youngest?”

She nodded. “Nine years between her and Kathy, eleven between her and Carl. She was—I was forty-one when I had her, and her father was five years older than me. He walked out on us right after she was born. Left me high and dry with three kids. Sugar diabetic, and he refused to stop drinking. He started losing feeling in his feet, then the eyes started going. Finally, they began cutting pieces off of him and he decided with no toes and one arm it was time to be a swinging bachelor—crazy, huh?”

She shook her head.

“He moved to Tahoe, didn't last long after that,” she said. “Becky was two when he died. We hadn't heard from him all that time, suddenly the government started sending me his veteran's benefits. . . . You think that's what made her so vulnerable? No—what do you people call it?—father role model?”

“How was Becky vulnerable?” I said.

“Too trusting.” She touched her collar, smoothed out an invisible wrinkle. “She went straight for the losers. Believed every cock-and-bull story.”

“What kind of losers?”

“More wounded birds. Guys she thought she could fix. She wanted to fix the world.”

Her hands began to shake and she shoved them under her purse. The Stepne sisters were singing louder. She said: “Shut up.”

“Did the losers mistreat her?”

“Losers,” she said, as if she hadn't heard. “The great poet with no poems to show for it, living off welfare. Bunch of musicians, so-called. Not men. Little boys. I nagged her all the time, all the dead-ends she was choosing. In the end, none of that mattered a whit, did it?”