In the glare of the kitchen bulb, her cheeks look made of chalk. Her throat sags; her roots show; her upper spine has begun to hunch. How many hotel toilets did she scrub today? How many beds did she strip? Watching the years take Bunny’s youth has been like watching the forest behind the house go down all over again.

“Listen, honey, the Aspen Leaf is shutting down. Geoff said they can’t compete with the chains anymore. He’s letting me go.”

Envelopes litter the table. V-1 Propane, Intermountain Gas, Blue River Bank, Lakeport Utilities. His medication alone, he knows, costs $119 a week.

“I don’t want you to worry, honey. We’ll figure something out. We always do.”

He skips math, crouches in the parking lot with Janet’s phone.

In a world warmer by two degrees centigrade, 150 million more people—most of them poor—will die from air pollution alone. Not violence, not floods, just inferior air. That’s 150 times more fatalities than the American Civil War. Fifteen Holocausts. Two World War Twos. In our actions, in our attempts to throw some wrenches into the market economy, we hope that no one will die. But if there are a few deaths, isn’t it still worth it? To stop fifteen Holocausts?

A tap on his shoulder. Janet shivers on the curb. “This is getting annoying, Seymour. I have to ask for my phone back five times a day.”

Friday he comes home from school to find Bunny drinking wine from a plastic cup on the love seat. She beams, takes his backpack off his shoulder, and curtsies. She has, she announces, taken out a payday loan to see them through until she finds a new job. And on the way home, she was passing by the Computer Shack beside the lumber yard, and had to stop.

From behind the cushion she produces a brand-new Ilium tablet computer, still in its box. “Voilà!”

She grins. The burgundy she has been drinking makes her teeth look as though she has been eating ink.

“And remember Dodds Hayden? At the store? He threw this in for free!” Next from behind the cushion she produces an Ilium smart speaker. “It tells the weather and plays trivia and remembers shopping lists. You can order pizza just by talking to it!”

“Mom.”

“I’m happy to see you doing so well, Possum, spending time with Janet, and I know it’s hard to be the kid without the new tech stuff, and I thought, well, you deserve it. We deserve it. Don’t we?”

“Mom.”

Out the sliding door the lights of Eden’s Gate shimmer as though borne along by an underwater current.

“Mom, you need Wi-Fi to use these.”

“Huh?” She sips her wine. Her shoulders deflate. “Wi-Fi?”