SOMETIME JUST BEFORE DAWN, Mano made it to Ruth's, crawled onto the hidden trundle mattress she kept underneath her art desk, and fell asleep. She slept through to afternoon, woke with a pounding headache. Downstairs, Ruth was at the kitchen table with a ham and Swiss sandwich, a coffee mug, a Mason jar full of homemade sweet pickles. The evening newspaper and a hand of solitaire were spread in front of her.

Mano felt a bit ashamed of herself. “Four o'clock already? I'm surprised you didn't get me up earlier.” She got a coffee cup from the shelf, grateful for Ruth's odd hours, the house perpetually full of fresh coffee, a bottomless pot.

“Rick called,” Ruth said. She raised an eyebrow, then looked down at her cards. “And Keith.”

Mano sat across from her. Ruth added a generous pour of Irish cream to her coffee, then Mano's, her face lined with concern. “Listen, Mano, the only good I got from my marriage was the kids, but divorce hasn't exactly been a picnic, either. Just be sure you know what you're hoping for, okay?”

Ruth's unexpected kindness brought tears, and Mano let them run down her cheeks in rivers, let the snot drip from her nose like rain off a roof, let her shoulders shake in deep sobs. She felt sorry for herself, mostly, but also for the Stevies, for the dead kingfisher. She wondered again whether Ruth knew that Rick was cheating too, that he'd been cheating first.

Ruth sniffed and pushed the newspaper toward Mano. “When you pull yourself together, maybe you want to explain this?”

Mano wiped her eyes on her sleeve and then her nose, too. The front page of the newspaper had a grainy black-and-white photo of the construction site on the river, her fish drooping from their branches, the kingfisher, half eaten by some scavenger, attached by only one wing. She felt a quick shiver of excitement—that other people would see what she saw, that she would no longer be alone in seeing it.