What was that guy’s sin, the sin that had ruined his life, so that now, at Scouts, he was nearly always drunk and during Pinewood Derby he’d gone charging out the exit door when one of the little cars flipped, leaving his kid, Maury, standing there like, That’s just my dad, sorry, he once killed a lady?

One bad knot.

Nine stupid pages.

Fuck.

She hated this feeling. This guilty feeling. She couldn’t live with it.

The parkway was curving west, looping her away from the river into a region of failing strip malls and three lavish mega-churches in a row.

That time with the squirrel, she’d gone home, confessed to Keith. They had a habit of mutual confession. Keith always forgave her, then contextualized her sin. Squirrels died all the time, he’d said. We’re constantly killing thousands of living things (bugs), every time we drive. But what are we supposed to do? Not drive? Once Keith forgave her, it was only a matter of time before her guilt would start to fade. Even when she’d been crushing so bad on Ed Temley from church, she’d confessed to Keith. Well, Ed’s hot, Keith had said, even I can see that, and the day we stop noticing hot people we’re pretty much corpses, right?

She imagined sitting across from Keith at the kitchen table.

Oh, hon, by the way? she’d say. Turns out? We gave that innocent old guy a limp. Which he’ll take to his grave. So.

Keith would just sit there, stunned.

Maybe we offer to pay his hospital bill, he’d finally say. Or set him up with, you know, an orthopedic surgeon? Something like that?

Well, that opened some doors you didn’t want opened. This was not a hippie with insurance. They’d be paying out of pocket. For his surgery. And there would go Derek’s college money. That they’d worked so hard to save. And which wasn’t going to be enough, anyway. If they kept saving at the current rate, they’d be good for freshman year, maybe. If the school wasn’t great. There were limits. To what one could do. She’d fucked up, they’d fucked up, but they weren’t gods, they were people, limited, emotional people who sometimes made ill-advised—­

That guy was—you know what?

He was not getting their money.

That was one step too far. That was unreasonable. Kind of weird.

Neurotic.

Overinvolved.

She pulled up to the house. It looked crisp. Clean. All the work they’d done really had made it nicer.

A flock of geese came out of a low cloud, emitting this weird, non-goose sound. A second group joined from the left and a third from the right and the greater flock flew off imperfectly in the direction of the high school.