“What?” Emma sat back, but she was still there, waiting.

Dan leaned in just as the air-raid siren began to wail and blare.

Earlier that Sunday, Anne stood in front of the frozen pizzas, the door to the freezer open, the cold, freon-laced air anointing her face, frosting the glass. She pulled out a Totino’s pepperoni. The idea of turning on the oven in this heat depressed her, but she had to feed her family something, and this seemed easiest. She lingered in the frozen-food aisle, trying to cool off. In front of the ice cream an old blue-haired crone was licking her thumb as she tried to separate the coupons she’d pulled from her pocketbook. But for the grace of God go I. Anne recognized that the store, full of food and fluorescence and Sunday shoppers, was actually a cold, miserable box sitting on an endless torched prairie. My life in Dallas is a series of moves from one box to the next, Anne thought, surrounded by strangers and emptiness.

She pushed her cart into the next aisle and stared at the rows of cereal boxes. A hundred choices, more empty boxes.

The Raleigh trial had ended. Anne had tried to hold out, resisting her fellow jurors, but she had failed Peggy and was still miserable about the verdict. Another false choice.

It was too hot, too soon, and Anne couldn’t bear the thought of an endless Texas summer. Now that Pat had completed the Irish trifecta—Drinking too much, lost his job, and sick—she was losing her grip. With the MS, it was too late to leave him. What is the greater sin really: to walk away or to resent him? Anne stood there in the cereal aisle paralyzed by all the choices and downsides. And there was the old woman again, creeping along with her cart and coupons.

After a long, tired pause, Anne walked away from her own cart and headed toward the front of the store. I don’t want any of this. I don’t want Pat, this place, the priest, any of it. In the produce section an old couple fought like jays over the seedless grapes. No. I refuse. Everyone seemed to be in slow motion, and a checkout girl stared at her cow-eyed. A fierce wind blasted the electric eye and triggered the double doors to open. Hot air squalled through the front of the store. And in that moment, Anne didn’t have any choices in her life.

An air-raid siren stared to wail and blare.

Anne drove home through the start of hail and rushed up the driveway into the house to find her husband completely out of it.

“There’s a huge storm coming, Pat. Where’s Dan?”

The air-raid siren answered before Pat could. Anne dropped her purse on the kitchen table. The windows strobed with lightning. Thunder tore through the sky above them.