Today, while the others watered and weeded, Seth hammered the wooden slats that made up the fence around the three-sisters mound—a few slats had come loose. He was taller and thinner than Cyrus, with a shaved head, now bandanna-wrapped to protect it from the scorch, a goatee, and iron-shredded abs. His shoulders still bore traces of scars from the cigarette burns he used to give himself. Izzy remembered the first time she’d seen the marks on his shoulders, but she’d been too afraid to mention them that day. She’d assumed Seth’s dad, Rick, had made the marks, and she was even more shocked when she learned about the self-harm. Thankfully, Seth outgrew that habit after he married Nephy.

They were all damaged, weren’t they, in different ways? All traumatized by something—poverty, neglect, unstable or missing parents. Seth’s mother had left when he was a baby, Nephy and Izzy had never felt like they belonged in their families, and Cyrus had been adopted. Seth cut himself; Nephy slept with everyone before she and Seth got together; Cyrus still jumped at loud noises; Izzy clung to him. She tried not to, did her best, but growing up in a trailer by the Salton Sea, with a crazy mother and an unpredictable father, she couldn’t exactly call herself secure. At least she had Cyrus and Nephy and Seth. At least the four of them had each other now.

“You okay, queen?” Izzy asked Nephy. “Is it too hot out here?”

“My nails are frickin’ wrecked.” Nephy, who had somehow managed not to break a sweat, looked up from under her straw cowboy hat and held out hands tipped with white acrylic talons. Or—they had been. Most had broken off since morning. No matter; she’d replace them by tomorrow, Izzy knew.

Nephy’s rounded belly protruded under her white tank top. “I popped,” she’d said that morning, patting her small baby bump. Her breasts, and her ass in the cut-offs, were already fuller, too. Her hair and skin lusher. But her waist still appeared narrow as always above the bump; Seth liked to show how his hands could encircle her, with room to spare.

“And you, my queen?” Nephy said, checking her nails again.

Izzy said, “I’m good.” She didn’t like to complain. Wanted Cyrus to know she was up for this. She looked at her own hands then. The short nails ached with dirt. Seth’s hammer rang out in the hot silence.

Just then a bell chimed and a red-haired girl came riding up on a pink bicycle, Mylar streamers tied to the handlebars. A little white basket entwined with fake pink flowers. She paused, watching the four people planting in the garden, and Izzy got up, wiping her hands on her black jeans. The streamers gleamed like water or a desert mirage.

“Hi, there,” Izzy said. The girl seemed close to the age of the child Izzy and Cyrus would have had if she hadn’t miscarried, and even though that was a long time ago, this thought still stung. “How are you today?”