“What Jamal told you not to do?”

“No—Dylan. The whole fucking mess was Dylan’s idea in the first place.” She sucked her cigarette till the filter smoldered. “Dylan always used to say the point of being this young is to fuck up and get away with it. So when he said, ‘How ’bout you and Jamal give things a shot,’ I thought fuck it. Jamal’s hot. He’s nice. He’s been single ever since that Shanice girl moved away. Why not?”

“But Dylan wasn’t with you last weekend. That wasn’t the idea—the three of you together?”

“I just told you Dylan was at the coast,” Bethany snapped. “Dylan set things up between Jamal and me because he felt guilty we weren’t fucking anymore.”

“You and Dylan had stopped sleeping together?”

“Of course we had. I mean, we tried to keep it up for a while. I tried. But you can’t fix it, can you? You can kick and scream and say it isn’t fair or you can live with it, right? That’s what the women around here have always done. It’s a goddamn way of life for these bitches—acting like you can’t see what’s right in front of your goddamn face.”

Joel blinked at the night, at the shallow river puddled with stars.

“Bethany,” he said. “What did you accept?”

“You mean—but Dylan said you must have known. Dylan always said you must have known about him because he always knew about you.”

CLARK

On the edge of town, long past dark, Clark was dozing fitfully at her kitchen table when she heard the sound of tires on the gravel outside. By the time a car door slammed, she was pressed against the front wall of her living room, her truck’s keys in her pocket and her father’s old revolver in her hand. Her heart was thudding, her mouth was dry, but she was frightened of more than just an unexpected guest. She’d been briefly certain, the moment she’d awoken, that someone outside had been watching her sleep.

There was a brisk knock at the door.

She eased back the hammer of the revolver. “Who is it?”

“Just me,” shouted young Deputy Browder, their brash man-child with two nice arms and half a brain. “Don’t you ever check your phone?”

Clark cracked open the door on its chain. He looked like a Boy Scout come to sell her coupon books. He held up a brown bottle of rum. He was alone. “A nightcap?”

It would do. She unlatched the door.

Browder stepped inside, taking in her small front room, her kitchen scattered with papers, the gun in her hand. He smelled of sweat and boot polish, a blend Clark was surprised to discover she didn’t entirely dislike.

“Are they helping you sleep?” Browder asked.

She folded up the case files on her kitchen table. “If by ‘they’ you mean ‘these,’ then no.” She grabbed two glasses from the cabinet by the fridge. She said, “Just one drink, yeah?”

“Long as it’s a double.”