I covered Carl’s lucky gift with my hand. “It’s a decoration.”

Gloria laughed. “Like a crow she is, Telly. I swear. Always dragging home junk.” Then she whispered, “Pick it out, Bids. In the garbage right now.”

I went to the kitchen and stepped to make the garbage lid flip up. I tugged the metal from my hair, but I didn’t throw it in. When Gloria turned around I squished it small and hid it in my pocket.

“Good girl,” Gloria said. Then she put a hand on Rowan’s shoulder. He rolled his shoulder away. Her eye crinkles stopped then. She said, “I’m sorry if you think I’ve been tough on you, sweetheart. It’s been ever so stressful with your dad gone. You can’t even imagine.”

“It’s okay, Gloria,” I said because Rowan didn’t open his mouth. I think he was pretending she was disappeared, but she was the only one who could do that.

“Well, it’s good for us all to be together again, isn’t it? Telly’s been dying to come home, he told me. Get everything back on track. Right, Telly?”

“It’ll be great to talk,” he said. He scritched his head.

“Yes, talk. We need to talk.”

“So other than butterfly hunting, what’s going on, Bids?”

When I said “Not much,” Gloria’s eyes got small. So I changed my answer. “I mean, lots of stuff. Gloria made the front door nice. Do you like the color?”

“I surely do, Bids. It’s a fantastic color.”

“I think so too. And me and Rowan saw Darrell fixing his bike. Shar’s coming back from her mom’s soon. Oh, and I lost Jenny the Head again this morning. Can you believe it?”

“Jenny the what?”

“Jenny the Head. She’s my doll, but she don’t got no body. She doesn’t need a heart, Rowan said, and Gloria found her in the drawer with the toothpaste. I don’t know when I put her in there.”

“You’re always in la-la land, Bids,” Gloria said. She patted my head. “Good thing you got such an excellent mom.”

“Well, let’s hope you can hold on to her this time,” Telly said. He patted my knee. “You go through dolls like a river goes through water.”

I laughed. Telly laughed too. Maybe everything was going to be okay.

The house was all cleaned up. We never used the table in the dining room, but now it had plates on it. In the middle there were ribs with red sauce. There was broccoli that I hated, but it was covered in orange cheese from the bottle that I loved. There were biscuits and corn with steam coming out and a glass bowl full of potato salad.