I was conscious of Marshall, lying prone on the floor, and the tick of each second. I leaned over to press my mouth against my husband’s, hard and fast.

“Trust me,” I said. I could feel how tough it was for him to let me get out of the car, close the door, and leave him there, but he did it.

I hurried toward the entrance. I had just shy of seven minutes. The concrete stairs were wide and steep, with four metal railings breaking them into three sections. I went straight up the middle, fast and steady. As I ascended, I thought, Get into character. But who was this person climbing up to see Coral Lee Pine?

Betsy’s black Visa could not help me here. I could almost feel it fall away. So many things were falling away. For this meeting, our first, our last, I had to be a mother, like her. A woman from small-town Georgia. Like Lexie, the only daughter of a hardscrabble single mom. This was the person who might move her to relent.

Going up, it did not feel like I was putting on a role. It felt like being peeled. I shrugged off anything that wouldn’t help me. The corporate wife with her closetful of thousand-dollar dresses. The stay-at-home mom with a cleaning lady and the luxury of no job beyond her family, able to help at every rehearsal and robotics meet. The wealthy woman on the board of two prominent nonprofits. Even the young, pretty Bree who’d gone strolling through the High Museum, so confident, catching Trey’s eye in her expensive, borrowed sundress.

It all fell away, until I felt like little more than a child. I was a girl who’d never had dialect classes to sand her accent away; I could feel my mouth resetting itself for extended vowels and dropped g’s. I was Betsy’s friend, tearing down the pitted, pale gray asphalt of our street on a hand-me-down Big Wheel. I was Shelly Ann Kroger’s daughter, making tuna casserole with crumbled potato chips on top after school, because my mom worked two jobs and she would come home so tired and hungry.

This was where we had connected, Coral and I, and it wasn’t a character. It was only me. My most basic, beginning self.

The steep stairs shortened my breath. Above me a huge blue cowboy hat appeared over the crest of the hill. As I hurried up, the rest of Funtime Jack rose, his face splotched black with mold that turned his wide smile into a threat. His blue pack mule stood beside him, one eye a fuzzy black pit. The end of its round nose had fallen off. The ticket booth came into view last. It had rotted in on itself, deflating into a pile of wood and shingles and signage. At the top a path snaked between Jack and its remains, leading to the carousel.