“Of course they did,” she finally said. It was three a.m., and she had not slept at all. “They were people born with problems, and hateful people teased them. They had every right to cuss and throw rocks.” She rubbed her hand up and down Harvey’s back, his bony spine startling her with his fragility, his little bird bones.

She has said everything she knows to say to soothe him; she has said that there are no ghosts, that everything is fine and he needs to try to do what the teacher at school suggested and focus on happier things. The pediatrician said he had “schoolitis” and sent her home with the name of a therapist and some harsh advice (she thought) about being a more direct and conscientious and demanding parent. She almost told Harvey what she once heard her grandmother say, “I don’t fear the dead; I fear the living,” but she didn’t, because there are plenty of living people the child already fears. And so does she! She fears that asshole who any minute will be led into the courtroom.

Her grandmother was tired and washed-out, like an old gray rag—teeth missing but still dipping snuff and sucking on hard candies—and she’d whispered in Shelley’s ear so Shelley’s father wouldn’t hear her—“I don’t fear the dead; I fear the living”—and Shelley knew she was talking about him. He was a living man to fear, his own mother, who was mean herself, scared of him, his wife reduced to nothing, his son filled with hatred. But she can’t tell Harvey any of that; she can’t say how there are so many things and people to fear.

As a child, Shelley was a worrier, and then she worried about worrying—still does. And now she fears she has given this to Harvey, the way he is so cautious about what might jump out and grab him, the way he is so scared by ghost stories and obsessed with what happens when you die. He has his bird and fish and lizard cemetery, wooden blocks with names of the various creatures, and then he has a huge Lego structure that he says is a camp for runaway turtles and salamanders, who need to be loved. He once announced over dinner how much he loves skinks.

“You mean skanks?” Jason asked. This was at the old house, and Brent was still there.

“Skinks!” Harvey yelled. He didn’t like that they were laughing at him, and he threw a buttered roll across the room. Peggy ate the roll in one bite and came over to the table in hopes of more.