“You know, I haven’t told you enough, Bids. Of course I should’ve trusted you from the start. About the little situation in the basement.”

I shook my head. I didn’t understand.

“It’s time, well, to let sleeping dogs lie.”

I looked at Chicken. He was like a vacuum cleaner, sucking up corn off the floor. He crunched a bone. Sharp parts stuck out of his mouth.

“Chicken’s awake,” I said.

“Chicken’s a good dog, isn’t he?” She turned the stove on. Maybe she was going to make a dessert. “Every single day I think about how Rowan used to be. And what he became. It truly breaks my heart.”

Gloria was talking strange. The woodpecker got up in my neck. It was pecking me harder than it ever did before. Tak-tak-tak. Tak-tak-tak. Tak-tak-tak.

“It’s been the hardest thing to accept. I thought for sure I could fix him. I wanted to keep him close. Turn him back into the old Rowan. So he wasn’t a wolf no more. But I needed Telly’s help to do that. Telly’s help. And I didn’t get it, Bids. I didn’t get no help at all. And Rowan, he’s gone. I can’t even recognize him no more. Just more and more vicious. And it’s not safe trying to keep him. He’s a danger. And a menace. And no one can help him. No one. I should never’ve tried it. Gloria really overestimated herself this time, didn’t she?” She laughed a little, but the bubbles were gone. “And now I’m broken inside, and I just, I just tell myself he never came home at all. He’s sleeping on the bottom of the lake. He’s down there, Bids. Like Telly said. And no matter how much we try to hope and think and imagine, we can’t pull him up. Our Rowan. We’ve got to do that. It’s easier to tell ourselves he died, Bids. He drowned, okay? Or his ghost’ll never find no peace. It’ll be tormented.”

His ghost?

“You need to do that. Accept that he died. Your brother drowned, Bids. I couldn’t save him. I tried so hard.”

My eyes were getting fuzzy. My middle was full of nails. Chicken licked the floor over and over.

“The police did nothing right. From the get-go. I’m going to bring a lawsuit, I am. Take what I’m owed. They need to be held responsible. Maybe I’ll save some other family from the misery I experienced. That’s a noble goal.”

Gloria took the dirty potato pot. She put in some oil. She kept pouring it in. Glug, glug, glug. Then she opened another bottle of it. And then another until the pot was full.

“What are you making, Gloria?” I tried to say it loud. But I don’t think she heard me.