I thought of all the names I’ve been called during my life, from the “Iffy-Genius” taunts of my childhood to “Pit-Dog,” “Donna Quixote,” or “Interfering Bitch.” I said, “Vic will do. . . . My mother used to quote Dante to me. She was Italian.”

He shook his head again, this time with regret. “I’m third-generation. I can order five different kinds of pasta, but that’s about it.”

I climbed into the car. Baggetto shut the door for me. “Good night, Vic.” He sketched a salute.

“Night, Dante.”

I drove off, thinking of the pet names my mother used for me. My father called both of us his pepper pots, because we were so hot-tempered. My mother used to quote Dante only to me, saying that her love for me was l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle—the love that moves the sun and all the other stars.

I felt a spurt of anger toward the Kiels: they were both living into old age, they still had their daughter. Didn’t either of them know what they were squandering?

23
Picture Perfect

The thumb drive I’d found at the bottom of Doris McKinnon’s stairs fell out of my jeans when I tossed them at the little room’s armchair—my long evening had pushed it from my mind. I put the drive on top of my phone, so I’d see it first thing, and slid under the covers, Peppy curled around my feet. I’d taken her into the bathroom shower with me, scrubbing the day’s grime from us both, and we lay under the covers smelling sweetly of lavender.

Despite a fatigue that seemed to dig into my bone marrow, I couldn’t relax into sleep. I finally got out of bed and powered up my laptop. Peppy opened an eye, wondering if I was stupid enough to be on the move again, and gave a sigh of relief when she saw me sit at the corner table. Perhaps in some future life I’d come back as a golden retriever, able to sleep the sleep of the just and good.

For a mercy, the drive wasn’t password-protected. It also wasn’t labeled, but my heart beat a little faster when I saw it held a series of photo and video files—it must have been August’s, something he dropped as he fled the house.

When I started opening the file, though, my spirits sank: I was looking at blank frames. Apparently even pros like August can act like the rest of us, pressing the camera button a zillion times without knowing it. I scrolled through to the end of the file just to make sure and finally realized I actually was looking at photos. They’d been taken in a field at night, without a flash. About halfway through the series, predawn light began clarifying a picture of dead plants and overturned earth.