Mrs. Daniels doesn’t correct me—oh, you aren’t bothering me—but she doesn’t kick me out, either. She picks up her glass of iced tea, sips it, and puts it back down on the coffee table with a click. I have the feeling that she and I are conducting some kind of elaborate stage play. My head is still buzzing and I’m itching for a confrontation, but for the moment I can deal with whatever game Mrs. Daniels and I are playing. I pick up my own glass of tea and sip it, tasting mint and lemon and sugar.

“You have a nice house, Mrs. Daniels,” I say. “Very trim, as my mother would say.”

She gives a hmmph. “Are you surprised, Miss Faulkner?” she says. “To find such a house in this neighborhood?”

Her question surprises me. I’ve only been in one house in the Bluff before, and it was nothing like this one. “I’m just giving you an honest compliment, ma’am,” I say.

“Flattery,” she says, as if the word were a disappointment in her mouth. “But I shall receive it in a spirit of love. I keep my house straight because the Bible tells us to keep to the straight path. The righteous keep their ways straight, while the wicked fall by their own wickedness.”

Now she’s throwing Bible quotes at me. I throttle the urge to pull out my boot knife and clean my fingernails with it. “Do you see me as one of the wicked, ma’am?” I ask.

Mrs. Daniels hmmphs again. “I don’t see you wearing a halo,” she says. “You are bringing your own wickedness with you.”

“That’s certainly true,” I say, looking her in the eye. “But I’m not the only one.”

We stop speaking for a short time, sipping our tea and looking everywhere except at each other. The minutes drip away, one at a time, each more agonizing than the last. I think of Uncle Gavin lying in the hospital, his room probably dark now. I wonder if he’s sleeping, and if he knows he’s sleeping. I wonder what business he has with Peaches.

“Ah,” Mrs. Daniels says, sitting a bit straighter in her BarcaLounger, just before I hear someone outside walking up the path to the front door.

“I wouldn’t make any quick movements,” she says, just as if she were saying I think I’ll have another glass of tea. “Just sit still.”

Before I can come up with a smart-ass response, the front door opens. The first man through wears dreadlocks, a red tank top, and mirrored sunglasses. Behind him is a big man in an oversized blue Braves jersey, his head shaved, tattoos circling his muscled arms. Both men come into the room and stand on either side of the front door, staring at me. Underneath his tank top, the dreadlocked man has something tucked into his waistband.