JOEL

His analyst’s mind ran the odds. Of all the residents of Bentley, how could the first person Joel met upon his arrival be the one woman he was truly afraid to see? The woman who had been just as unpopular in high school as he but ten times harder, the woman permanently outshone by her famous older brother, the woman who would always be Joel’s first and final girlfriend: Starsha Marilynn Clark, though God help the man dumb enough to call her by all three names.

Three thousand to one, he thought. He supposed his luck could only improve from here.

Joel went for a handshake, saw her hesitate. Nodding toward the dim line of trucks, where he’d just enjoyed the pleasure of watching an old bully’s arrest, Joel said, “You’re a professional.”

“And we have an audience.” She shook his hand quickly, lit her cigarette.

“Jason turned out about how I expected.”

“We’ve all gotten a little worse for wear around here.”

She held the cigarette with her teeth, adjusted a bun of muddy brown hair. She’d always been short and oddly proportioned: legs too long, arms too brief—“the velociraptor,” they’d called her in school—but there was a nervy strength to her limbs now. Her nose had been broken at some point. She still had her brother’s startling jade eyes, and Joel saw that she was running odds behind those eyes, just like him. She wasn’t happy.

In a way, Joel was grateful for Clark’s chilliness. After everything he had put her through ten years ago—and wasn’t that a polite way of putting it—he was relieved she hadn’t decided to knock a few bright teeth from his mouth.

The young deputy beside her, a cute guy covered in tattoos, smiled with a cordial scorn Joel remembered well from his time here. The man nodded at the convertible. “You think that little beauty can handle these roads here?”

“I’m sure Mr. Whitley will put on a good show if it can’t,” Clark said.

Whatever Joel might have said in response was lost to a little whoop of greeting from the crowd. “My goodness, Officers, y’all never catch a breath of peace.” At the sound of her voice, Joel felt a knot loosen in his chest. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been so grateful to know his mother was nearby.

She strode toward them with a hot dog in either hand, a massive leather bag dangling from the crook of her arm and a goggle-eyed Bison cap perched on her head.

“My Lord,” she said, looking Joel up and down and turning to Clark. “Don’t he look expensive?”

“Good to see you, Mrs. Whitley,” Clark said.

Browder tapped the brim of an invisible cap. “Your son’s a hell of a boy, ma’am,” he said, and turned very seriously toward the field as if to leave no doubt which son he meant.

“You two are pure charity,” said Joel’s mother. “Let me get this instigator out of y’all’s hair, no? Tell your father I said hello, Clark.”