The police took me outside, and I could not remember a single face after that night. “Someone shot him through the window,” I said, to the first face that seemed to be asking me a question. “I was standing behind him and someone shot him through the window.”

“What relation?” asked the face.

“I’m his sister,” I said automatically. “This is his dad. Not my dad, but his.” I don’t know why I made the distinction, except I’d been making it clear to people for years that I had no kinship to Matthew Lang.

“You need to go to the hospital, too,” said the face. “You need to get that glass pulled out.”

“What glass?” I said. “Tolliver got shot.”

“You have glass in your face,” the man said. I could see now that he was a man, that he was an older man in his fifties. I could see that he had brown eyes and deep creases radiating from their corners, and a big mouth and crooked teeth. “You gotta get that pulled out and cleaned.”

I needed to start wearing safety goggles if I was going to keep on getting glass in my face.

Then I was at the hospital, sitting in a cubicle, and someone had taken my wallet from my purse to get the insurance information. About a hundred people were asking me questions, but I couldn’t talk. I was waiting for someone to come to tell me how Tolliver was doing, and there was no point in talking until I knew what had happened to him. The doctor who was removing the glass seemed a little scared of me. She tried to keep talking, maybe thinking I’d relax if her voice kept going.

“You need to look down while I get this piece out,” she said finally, and when I looked down I could feel the tension go out of her body. I must have been staring. I was wishing that I could let go of my body and float down the hall to see what was happening to my brother. If I promised to give him up if he lived, would that help? The bargains you make when you are frightened are probably a true measure of your character. Or maybe just an accurate measure of your primitive nature, what you would be like if you’d never been to a mall or gotten a paycheck or relied on someone else to provide your food.

A woman in a pink smock asked me if there was anyone else she could call for me, anyone who would like to stay with me, and I knew I would start screaming if I saw Iona or Hank, so I said no.