“So he wasn’t always like that?” Thomas asked.

She glanced in the back and saw that Sara was still listening to them in the shadows.

“Like what?”

“Mean.”

“No. Thomas—no. Your father wasn’t always like that. Now, his father, yes. That man was the meanest son of a gun on the face of this earth. That’s what your father wanted to get away from. His family. My family. All of the craziness.”

“Then what happened?”

The car stopped at a stop sign. Lynn paused for a moment before answering.

“Sometimes life is harder than you expect it will be when you get older.”

“I don’t ever want to get older,” Sara said suddenly.

“Yeah, kinda stinks, huh?” Lynn said.

“No,” Thomas said, looking at her. “Dad’s the one that stinks.”

She tapped his leg with her hand. “Your father isn’t a bad man. He just—times are hard. And he’s like the rest of us. He’s flawed and broken. Sometimes it’s hard to let others pick up the pieces.”

“Mom—how can you say that after everything?” Thomas asked.

“Are we going to go back home?” Sara added.

“No—I just . . . No, Sara, we’re not going back home. No. We’re—we’re going to figure something out. We might have to move.”

“With Uncle Jesse?”

“No,” she answered Thomas. “No—not there either.”

“So, then what are our options?”

“I don’t know. I just—well, I’d prefer not living with someone who has pit bulls and a Gatling gun.”

They reached their trailer, a black box that looked more like a lone railroad car off its tracks. Lynn turned toward both Thomas and Sara before shutting off the car.

“I want you both to listen to me and listen good. Don’t hate your father. We’re all sinful and God is working in all of us. You, me, Sara, your father.”

“Is Daddy going to get better?” Sara asked.

“It’s harder to change when you get older,” Lynn said. “I don’t know why that is. Sometimes you just have to hit bottom before you realize some things. And then—some people never change.”

“Do you think he will?” Thomas asked.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

Doug’s Bike Shop

He was a motivational poster gone bad.

Kevin remembered the generic posters adorning the walls of the company he worked at years ago. Not only were they simplistic designs that he and his colleagues could have arranged in their sleep, but the posters bore clichés like “Some people dream of success . . . while others wake up and work hard at it.” It would have some moving, pithy photo attached to it, like a green on a golf course with early-morning dew glistening on it or a crew of a ship guiding their vessel during a raging storm.

He thought of this now in his office as he surveyed a humorous, antimotivational Web site for a laugh. This was one of his outlets. A cheap laugh, but sometimes that was all it took.