In a few minutes, Rachel stood on the porch before the woman in green. Marigold noted how the two couldn’t have looked more different. Rachel looked younger than the woman and less sophisticated. The woman set her child on the porch. She smoothed her dress and stepped toward Rachel with slow steps. She placed inches between their noses and made her eyes small.

“So you’re the one?” the woman said.

Marigold could see the faces of the others looking through the windowpanes.

“It’s you?” the woman went on. “You’re the one Lawrence keeps coming to see?”

Rachel looked embarrassed.

The woman took another stride forward. Then she reared back and slapped Rachel. The loud sound made Marigold cringe.

But Rachel only looked at the woman. Silence passed between them. Then Rachel touched her own face and started to cry.

The woman pointed to the children who stood behind her. “You see those children?” she said. “They belong to Lawrence. And me. I want you to have a good look at them.”

The children stood motionless, wide-eyed.

“Look at them,” the woman said. “Do you see them?”

Rachel nodded.

“Now you listen to me,” the woman said. “You’re nothing to him. Nothing. And that ain’t even the saddest part. The sad part is Lawrence don’t even have the guts to tell you what a nothing you are to him, and he sent me to do it for him.”

The woman held her gaze, almost as if she were daring Rachel to do something. Finally she lifted a child onto her hip and gripped the other by the hand. And then she was gone.

Marigold stepped toward her. She let Rachel collapse into her arms. Rachel began to sob with groans that were too deep for words. Marigold felt the heat build in her palms, like it had before when she’d laid her hand on the hairy man in the bar. This time her hand was so hot it stung. It frightened Marigold, but with an unexplained urge, she touched Rachel’s face. When she did, she felt a sharp pain in her chest, just below her breastbone. The sensation was so piercing, it made her moan. Rachel touched Marigold’s hand and pressed it harder into her own cheek.

“Oh, Marigold,” said Rachel. “I feel like my heart is bleeding inside me.”

“I know,” said Marigold. “I feel it too.”

And the crickets sang all night long.

Thirty-One
Best Friends

The morning light spread across the uneven cobblestones. Coot stood before a bus holding a brown leather bag containing the money box, a few sets of clothes, and the collection of trinkets he held dear.