After making sure he’s not watching, I choose six picture books for Cassie, my little sister. They’re all by Dr. Seuss, who’s the flavor-of-the-month.

Three books have come in for me, travel books on the High Arctic and Mongolia, and an autobiography, as well as a couple of CDs: Metallica and AC/DC. The real bonus is a DVD of one of AC/DC’s concerts. I swipe everything through the automatic checkout.

Let’s get this over with. I’m a reader. Nonfiction mostly, because I like to hoard information. I’ve tried novels, but you can’t trust the facts any more than you can trust the authors to keep the emotional lid on. I’ve even tried poetry. Lids off and toss ‘em in the air, that’s what poetry’s all about.

Although I own an old-fashioned boom box with a CD player and an AM/FM radio, I don’t own a laptop, iPod, iPhone, or Blackberry, and Floyd hogs the TV—what else is there to do every evening from November to April except read?

I wish I owned a laptop. On Sunday mornings, when he and Opal sleep in, I sneak into his study and use his; ditto when they go out together. But it’s not as good as having your own.

1.2 [and introducing...]

I’M WONDERING which book I’ll start first, so my mind’s somewhere else as I leave Main Street and cross behind a row of new Chevy Cobalts.

“Why aren’t you home?”

I stop dead, like I’m the buck who’s been shot.

Floyd strolls toward me in his blue striped shirt, freshly ironed, and his dark blue tie. You could slice an artery on the creases in his trousers.

“Did you hear me?” he says.

“I’ve just been to the library. I’m gonna grab a Sub, then I’ll go home.”

“Where did you get the money for a Sub?”

“Opal gave it to me.” Opal’s my mother.

When I left the house, she was upstairs in her office—the place where she keeps her angel cards, crystals, and aromatherapy crap—so I helped myself from the jar in the pantry. Near enough to the truth, even for him.

Anyway, what can he do so close to the GM dealership? It’s been nearly three weeks, though—twenty days, to be exact, and his max is usually a month. For some of that time he was on vacation, so I’m hoping it doesn’t count.

“You can give the money back to her, kiddo, because you won’t have time for lunch,” Floyd says with that empty smile of his. “Two cords of hardwood are being delivered this morning.”

“I’ll go home right after I eat. It’s only eleven o’clock.”