“Maria!” Terry yelled. He crawled over to her, grabbed one of her flailing hands, tried to pull her back down to the ground. But she brushed him off, smacked him in the forehead.

“She was purple, don’t you get it!” She stilled herself, stood rigid with fists at her side like a child demanding something from her parents, took each of them in with a glare. “I didn’t even have a chance to raise her! How could I? In this mucked-up world? How could I dare? Better purple than crazy! Better purple than eaten by some damned Crank! Better purple than taken by WICKED and thrown in a cage! Like an animal!”

The words had spilled out of her, one on top of the other, until they blended into a long slur of madness. She sucked in a breath, now, then belted out one last roar, her face reddening and swelling up like a cooked grape.

“PUUUUUUUURPLE!”

Maria dove into the fire. Screaming now from pain more than rage, she slapped at the burning logs, the glowing-hot coals, the ashes turned to gray but still smoldering with intense heat. Newt could see the burns melting her skin, right before him, too frozen in shock to help. Her face grew taut, the pain evident, the indifference plainer.

Terry tackled her with such force that both of them tumbled and rolled out of the fire and several feet away. Newt had to lurch to his left to avoid getting smacked by their bodies. When he looked over his shoulder Terry swatted with open palms at any lingering flames that had sprung up on her clothes. Her hair, too. Singed and sooty. It smelled terrible.

Keisha held tightly to Dante, smothering his face into her chest, her own eyes squeezed shut as if not seeing would make it all go away. Terry had stopped pounding on his wife, now just cradled her body and stared down at her, breathing heavily; tears streamed down his face, but he said nothing. Maria lay still, silent, somehow sobbing without noise.

Newt’s stomach had turned sour, his weariness gone. He didn’t know how badly she’d been burned, but something told him there wasn’t a Crank Palace Hospital up the street, right next to the grocery store and bowling alley.

Terry finally slouched to the side of Maria, crossed his legs pretzel-style, shoulders slumped, forearms on his knees, hands dangling like ornaments. He gave Newt a look that said it all.

Don’t ask.

Not that he needed to. The window onto Maria’s life had cleared a bit, some of the grime washed away. The only thing left to wonder was which had come harder. The madness it took to kill your own child or the madness that resulted from killing your own child. And at what stage did the Flare creep its way into the affair? Newt had no right to know, and swore to himself he’d never ask.