“My parents died together in their old car, one day when one of the trees went, in the middle of April that year. Sycamore maybe.” She paused. “It’s kind of sweet, right?”

Izabel tried to think of it as sweet. She really tried. She decided to change the subject. “You know what I’ve been thinking about?”

“The killings.”

“I wasn’t going to say that, but yeah, that, too.”

“What were you going to say?” Andy said. She seemed glad to be surprised.

“I’ve been thinking about guns.”

“Guns? I haven’t thought about them in a long time.”

“Exactly,” Izabel said. “I started thinking about them and now I can’t stop.”

“You want to hear one of my stories about guns?”

“Yeah,” Izabel said.

“When I was little, we lived in a super safe neighborhood, you know? Not like now, not like so safe, but for then. But we were near a city. When I got older I wondered how more crime didn’t creep out over the edges of the city, but it didn’t. Anyway, I’m little in this story, and my mom took me on walks every day in my stroller. And my dad tells my mom that a few days ago, a man in a sweatshirt shot someone one road over from where we live, but further down. And she’s shocked, you know. How you’re supposed to be.” Andy checks to make sure the girls aren’t paying attention to them. “And then he tells my mother, a day or so after that, the same guy, he’s walking around and looking odd, so a few people approach him and he just starts shooting them. But maybe nobody died that time—I don’t remember. And you know, she’s shocked again, how terrible, all the rest. And then about an hour later she’s getting ready to go out on our walk and she’s putting me in the stroller. My dad freaks out. ‘What are you doing? What about the guy who’s shooting people?’ And she’s like, ‘What am I going to do? Not walk?’ He goes, ‘Yes! Don’t walk!’”

Izabel laughs.

“Would you go out and walk?” Andy asked.

“No!” Izabel said.

“See, I think I would.”

“No, you wouldn’t. With Hestia?”

“I mean, they win, if you don’t keep living your life.”

“But it’s not a them. It’s one shooter. You can’t make a point against one shooter who’s down the street.”

“Right, but you’re willing to put your life marginally at risk or you’re not. You have a little fear or you don’t. That’s a choice you have to make.”

“I don’t know,” Izabel said. Cami had come back over. She pulled on Izabel’s fingers. “What is it, honey?”

“I’m a shark and she’s a fish and I’m going to eat her.”