“Guilty,” the jurors all say. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. And the courtroom rings with a thunderous applause that brings tears to Shelley’s eyes. The friend, Joanna, runs over and hugs all the old people who have been there every day of the trial. Their girl vindicated—C. J., her name was C. J.—if not returned to life. And the nasty jack-o’-lantern smirks and looks at the judge like he’d like to kill her. And this is where on another day, if Shelley was working on her story version of it all, she would have the judge leap over that railing and beat the shit out of him, but she doesn’t dare type that. She types, Guilty. She describes the thunderous applause that now has gone for over three minutes and scans the crowd for any sign of anyone she might recognize.

She reaches into her pocket for a Tic Tac, just in case she has to talk up close to anyone, and pulls out what Harvey must have slipped there this morning, an old empty matchbook from a place she’s never heard of—the Lorraine Hotel—with a little note written on paper from his wide-ruled writing tablet: You and my Dad shud go hear. The matchbook looks about a hundred years old and says: 100 modern rooms, air-conditioned for your comfort. Where on earth does he find these things? And doesn’t she wish they could be there in air-conditioned comfort, in a cool, dark room with crisp, clean sheets and a long worry-free afternoon up ahead. Another chance.

Frank

When Frank and Lil rode over to see Preston’s old house that first time, he was hit with a kind of sad longing that surprised him; perhaps it was simply the reminder of how many years had come and gone, and how for a long time it had been easy to fool himself, to continue to picture his mother alive and walking around that yard, tending to her flowers. She liked to cut blooms from the large magnolia tree that is no longer there, and float them in a silver bowl, the fragrance filling the small dining room. When Frank was a boy, it shaded a whole corner of the yard, the perfect climbing tree and an easy place to hide. The pods of the magnolia looked a lot like hand grenades, and Frank and the other boys in the neighborhood stockpiled them for when they played war.