Shelley always has a to-do list much longer than she can ever finish, and she keeps it with her at all times, checking things off and then making a clean copy, putting down new things to fill the old, like those things she thinks about but never gets around to doing, like scrubbing the bathroom grout with a toothbrush dipped in Clorox or sorting that big plastic bin of Legos into colors. Those are the kinds of things she would love to do, but of course who has time? It’s about all she can do to get Harvey up and dressed and moving, and then get herself to work on time.

She pulls into the parking lot of the courthouse with no idea of what to do next. Should she walk right up those granite steps and through the big doors like nothing had happened, avoiding eye contact as she always does with those lined up and waiting for some kind of sentence or judgment? Usually she feels proud that she is not among them, their eyes bloodshot and cigarettes dwindled to ash, some crime or misdemeanor heaped on their shoulders. She is sympathetic, but she is also afraid of them. She is afraid she will be told that that’s where she belongs, there in the lineup of those trying to climb from a hole.

Sometimes, when she doesn’t want to be home alone, Shelley comes and parks and just watches people coming and going. The Food Lion is always good, and so is the cemetery, near where she lives, and so is the courthouse. So many people and for so many different reasons: marriage licenses and restraining orders, murder trials and traffic violations. She has to keep the car running so she can stay cool in the AC, which she knows burns gas, but there’s no other choice. If the wait gets to be too long, she will go across the street and wander around Food Lion and the Dollar Store, where it’s cool, and if anyone ever makes eye contact, like they want to come over to her window, she studies her phone or the newspaper she always keeps in the car for this reason.