“Oh, goodie,” Spaulding says. “I get bored doing things the nice way.” He turns her suddenly, almost yanking her off her feet, spinning her to face his cruiser. “Let’s take a walk.”

She shoots a furious look over one shoulder. Hank stares back from behind his mirrored shades.

“I’ll get a lawyer,” she says. “I’ll drag your fascist ass into court.”

“Do that. See who a judge thinks should have custody of our kid. An unstable drunk with a history of mental illness and an arrest record long as my arm? Or a decorated former marine who makes a point of employing disabled vets? We’ll see how it goes. Rudy, that’s good gin. All yours if you want it.”

Rudy Spaulding frog-marches Bloom to the cruiser while she twists and spits. The young cadet tugs the bottle of gin out of the pile of clothes. He turns it flashing in the sunlight to inspect the label.

“Is Mom getting arrested?” Jack asks.

Hank puts his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Probably. But don’t let it weigh on your mind. She’s had plenty of practice.”

2.

Jack sits with his legs hanging over the side of a hole gouged deep into the earth. His mother stares up at him from the bottom of the pit with a sad, apologetic smile. She’s buried to her neck so that only her dirty face is visible. Her hair is all worms: fat, glistening earthworms that flex and squirm. The bottom of the hole is lit with a flashing blue light.

A screen door slaps shut with a bang loud as a gunshot, and Jack comes awake sitting on the top of the stairs. He has been nightwalking again. There’ve been times his mother has found him out in the yard at two in the morning, eating handfuls of dirt. Once he went down the road bare naked, carrying a trowel, slashing it at imaginary enemies. It has been worse in the three weeks since she left.

He can still see that flashing blue light, and at first he doesn’t know why. Beth appears at the bottom of the stairs and looks up at him with eyes bloodshot from crying. She mounts the steps three at a time, pulls on his arm to bring him to his feet.

“Come on, buddy,” she says, her voice grainy with emotion. “Back to bed.”

He climbs under the covers, and she sits on the edge of the bed beside him. She smooths his hair down with one palm, thoughtlessly stroking him as if he were a cat. He can smell her hands, a spicy sweetness, like geraniums.

Red and blue lights strobe across the smooth white plaster ceiling, throbbing around the blinds. Jack hears low male voices outside and the staticky squabble of people talking on the police scanner.