But I wasn’t finished. “You think I don’t remember?” I said. “When Rudy was lying out under that ash tree, near death, you just stood there. You couldn’t do a thing but leave the county, left Helen on her own with barely anything just as winter was setting in. And she’d been depending on you. This here’s the same shit, only it’s way fucking worse.”

“You don’t know Helen like I do,” he said. “You don’t know what it was like to live with that woman.”

“Oh, I do,” I said. “I do know what it’s like to live with that woman.”

“You think I should have just stayed with her all these years?” he asked.

“It’s good enough for some of us,” I said.

“She never stopped talking,” Shane said. “Only other person I know who talks that much is Rudy.”

“At least she shows up,” I said. And of course I was thinking, Sometimes too much. Sometimes the woman shows up and shows up and shows up and you end up thinking, Please don’t show up this time. Just maybe sit this one out. Still, I found myself defending her to Shane in the way people defend their family. I’m the only one who has the right to despise this person.

“I’m not a coward, I’m pragmatic,” Shane said. “Everyone makes compromises, Karen. Even you.”

“What happens to Marie?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“It’s up to her,” he said. “She still works, if she’s willing to. I just find a better place for her.”

“What about that fucking guy?”

“Cameron? He still works, too,” he said. “They won’t work together, of course. Everyone needs a job. You think you’re being a hero, but you’re pissing against the wind, and you’re never going to change anything anyway.”

But Shane was wrong. I didn’t think I was a hero. I thought I was a nothing, a nothing person. But I’d run out of patience. My mind had cleared the moment I held that pipe wrench in my hand.

I turned down his offer of a ride. I made it back to the motel and I looked for Marie, but she was gone. The fire ring had been scattered. The low plain drew back like the apocalypse had chosen that place to touch down.