She has told him stories about his dad and what a huge loss to the world it was when he died. “We were so in love,” she has told Jason many times. And she has painted the things she remembers, as well as things she wishes she remembered, and still he had questions: Did he like cantaloupe, too? Did he ever jump from a plane? Or kill somebody? She tells Jason that his father watches over him and will bring him great luck and strength. She tells it so well that she believes it, too.

She tells Harvey that he is also special, that often something happens at birth to make sure everyone is aware of how important that person is. “So smile, honey,” she says, and he does, but it is always with his hand raised to cover his mouth, the scar that splits his top lip, the tiny white line up to his nose. He loves the kit of fake mustaches Jason gave him, especially the big bushy handlebar one. He says that is what he will grow when he’s a teenager, that he bets his daddy will have a big mustache when he gets home from building an igloo and from hiking on the Appalachian Trail. He says when he is a man his mustache will be put in Ripley’s Believe It or Not for being the longest mustache ever. He is sure his lost turtle will come back home any day now, and he says he has seen a murderer at least once—maybe in a parked car when they are leaving a store or on the highway. He has also seen a ghost in their house.

People leaving and never returning is as common as someone getting a gun, going into a public place, and blowing people away. During many trials, Shelley has heard people say: “And we never saw him again.” Or they say: “Yet another angry white man with a gun.” The shootings happen so often, people ask: Terrorist or sick white dude? Pass the salt. How was your day? Just like in that song Shelley’s mama used to sing, “Ode to Billie Joe,” where all the people sit at the table eating like no big deal when this boy has killed himself, and nobody ever even knows what the girl had to do with it all in the first place. It’s clear she was involved, but how? She was seen with him up on the bridge—pass the biscuits—and then he was dead, gone, like all those poor people just going about their lives before the crazy person showed up. That’s what she has heard a judge say: “One minute they were where they were supposed to be—school, work, worship—and the next minute they were not.”