Unlike the rest of the Fortunes, Mossy doesn’t talk and he doesn’t drink, although he used to do both. There’s a sad story there, about a slow, quiet girl named Ruby Tooth, who Mossy supposedly knocked up. Mossy asked Ruby’s father for her hand in marriage, but the old man said no. Called him a no-good drunken devil-spawned retard, and spit in his face. So Mossy hit the old man with a two-by-four, said he loved Ruby and would marry her anyway. But Ruby Tooth went missing. They found her body on the rocks off Greener’s Cliff a few days later. Her father swore up and down it was a suicide. That she was driven to it by that no-good drunken devil-spawned retard Mossy Fortune. That was thirty years ago. Mossy hasn’t said much, nor touched a drop of liquor, ever since.

“Where’s Mama, and what are you two doing here?”

Peggy doesn’t look up, just keeps languidly flipping through the photo album I left on the table. Mossy’s eyes widen with a weird, youthful bemusement as a sympathetic frown deepens the lines in his faintly misshapen face.

“Effie’s just down the road giving old Flossie Baker a hand, what with Flossie’s hip being so bad. We found this rig here hitchhiking on the highway,” Peggy says, with a quick nod toward Mossy. “So don’t get your panties in a knot. We’re not staying long.”

She stops turning photo album pages, and looks to me with her mouth and nose pulled into a po-faced pucker. “What’s that smell?”

Considering Allie and I were hotboxing a rental car in a graveyard less than an hour ago, I know that I reek of weed. But I’m an adult now, goddammit, and I’ll walk in this door smelling any bloody way I want, Peggy.

“New perfume,” I say. “It’s called Eau d’Coping With Crisis. Hope you like it. It’ll be my signature scent for the next while. And all my friends will be wearing it at my funeral.”

“Got a hole for yourself good and dug already, do you?” she says, as she goes back to studying the photos in front of her.

“Oh, fuck no,” I say, glaring at her with a woozy, button-pushing glee. “Getting buried in the dirt is for plebes. I want something a little flashier.”

“Who’s gonna pay for that, now?” Peggy pushes back. “Your mother on her hotel maid’s pay? Maybe that fella you had in Toronto? Or that drug dealer you used to sleep around with, whassisname, Willy Gimp?”

“None of your business,” I grunt, shuffling to the stove to find Mama’s tea kettle cold and empty, then to the fridge, where there’s nothing but a half-eaten egg sandwich and a jar of somebody’s homemade green tomato pickle slime. An audible huff escapes my throat as I thump the fridge door shut.

Mossy is still gawking at me with an air of feeble sadness. Peggy keeps right on staring at Mama’s photo album, her thick finger tracing the ridges and edges of a particular page.