“Hel—heck no. There's a limit. I give her a piece of orange or something—maybe a half a cookie—and send her right back. Not that it stops her the next time.”

“What about Chondra?”

“She don't get up, but I hear her crying in her bed—under the blanket.” She looked over at the older girl, who was sitting motionless in the center of the pool. “She's the soft one. Soft as jelly.”

She sighed and looked down at her coffee with disdain. “Instant. Shoulda made real stuff.”

“It's fine,” I said, and drank to prove it.

“It's okay, but it's not great—don't see great around here too often. My second husband—Brian's dad—owned a big place up near Fresno—table grapes and alfalfa, some quarter horses. We lived up there for a few years—that was close to great, all that space. Then he went back to his drinking—Brian, Senior—and it all went to—straight down the tubes. Ruthie used to love that place—especially the horses. There's riding stables around here, too, out in Shadow Hills, but it's expensive. We always said we'd get over there but we never did.”

The sun dropped behind the cloud bank, and the yard dimmed.

“What're you gonna do to us?” she said.

“To you?”

“What's your plan?”

“I'd like to help you.”

“If you wanna help them, keep them away from him, that's all. He's a devil.”

“Tiffani called him an instrument of Satan.”

“I told her that,” she said defiantly. “You see something wrong with that?”

“Not at all.”

“It's my faith—it props me up. And he is one.”

“How'd Ruthanne meet him?”

Her shoulders dropped. “She was waitressin' at a place out in Tujunga—okay, it was a bar. He and his bunch hung out there. She went out with him for months before tellin' me. Then she brought him home and the first look I got I said no, no, no—my experiences, I can spot a bad apple like that.” Snap of fingers. “I warned her, but that didn't do no good. Maybe I gave up too easy, I don't know. I was havin' problems of my own, and Ruthie didn't think I had a single intelligent thing to say to her.”

She lit another cigarette and took several hard, fast drags. “She was stubborn. That was her only real sin.”

I drank more coffee.

“Nothing to say anymore, doc? Or am I boring you?” She flicked ashes onto the dirt.

“I'd rather listen.”

“And they pay you all that money for that? Good racket you got there.”

“Beats honest labor,” I said.

She smiled. First friendly one I'd seen.

“Stubborn,” she said. She smoked and sighed and called out, “Five more minutes, then into the house for homework, both a you!”

The girls ignored her. She kept looking at them. Drifted off, as if she'd forgotten I was there. But then she turned and looked at me.