She didn’t bother to smile at the women, the way she did when she was younger, so at least they couldn’t say she was rude. By then, Lily knew they would say whatever they wanted. Instead, she pushed off the church wall and turned away from them, knowing she’d have to do a loop of the parking lot to get to her car but also knowing it was worth it. Still, she could hear them whisper.

“That’s Lily Thompson, Silas Harrison’s wife. What on earth is she doing here?” And then, as if they all didn’t already know, “Her brother-in-law was Philip Harrison. The one who killed Sarah.”

PEYOTE

“WELL, THAT WAS A motherfucking rush,” Cal said, wiping blood from her cheek. It was our third war zone of the day, and every inch of me was coated in a thin layer of sand.

“That was a good haul,” I said, calculating our deals on my tablet. Four in total. Not bad at all.

“Want to see if we can beat those cadets at poker before we go?”

I shook my head. “Let’s quit while we’re ahead.”

“Come on, we could make one hell of a bet!”

I knew that Cal’s childhood was traumatic, to say the least. But there was no denying the sheer joy she got from war. It made me wonder if her father had, in fact, seen something in her, something he attempted to nourish and encourage the way some parents coach their kids’ Little League teams. I couldn’t tell, as I watched her eyes glitter in the lingering grenade smoke, if her love of the bloody came from nature or nurture, or some twisted combination. But it was clear that here, she thrived.

“Come on, Pey,” she whined, pulling all of the syllables long and sharp. “I don’t want to leave yet.”

“We need to get back; we have a team meeting.”

Cal kicked a rock, rousing dust from the desert’s camouflage. Anything around us could have been the body of a snake. I was about to argue my point when my tablet gave its insistent beep. Cal pulled her army helmet straps and beamed.

“Okay,” I said. “One more.”

I don’t know why the tablet picked up this one. It was in a different time and a different time zone, all the way across the world. Maybe it was a coincidence, luck of the draw. Or maybe someone was testing us, testing Cal. I accepted the request before I had time to think about it.

We came to in front of a house that wasn’t quite abandoned but was too far gone to be called something cute like “rickety.” The lawn was all rough edges and the ghostly heads of dandelions, bent and huddled as if gossiping in the late-afternoon light. Cal picked up the mailbox, which lay on its side with the red flag rusted permanently up.