I smiled at that, held out my hand for a drag off her cigarette. She rolled her eyes, but handed it over.

“You know where Jimmy Ray lives,” she reminded me. “Why you asking me?”

“Yeah, but you know I can’t just roll up there. Not if I want my head to stay attached to my body.” Jimmy Ray’s house, tucked even farther into the holler than my mama’s, was more like a fortress. No one approached without an invitation. No one who wanted to keep breathing, at least. Truth was, I didn’t care much about breathing anymore. But I was the only one who could speak for Junie. I didn’t trust anyone else, not even Cal, to see this through, to follow this path to the dark place where it surely led.

My mama glanced at my hand. “Are you going to give that back or should I light another?”

“Light another,” I said, holding the half-smoked cigarette out of her reach. I hadn’t smoked a cigarette in more than a dozen years, and the nicotine rushed through me, leaving me light-headed.

She shook her head, lit up a fresh cigarette. “Jimmy Ray could be anywhere. But I hear he spends a lot of time at that titty bar down the way, on 50. You know the one?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know it.” Grimy and dark and full of desperate women. Exactly the kind of place, and women, Jimmy Ray loved. I experimented with blowing a smoke ring, but netted only an amorphous cloud.

“What was she like?” my mama asked, her gaze fixed on the woods creeping up around the trailer as if the trees were anxious to reclaim the ground they’d lost. “Your girl?”

Her words pierced me, but for once I didn’t think she was trying to be cruel. I flicked the cigarette away, watched it smoke on the dirty gravel at our feet. A bird cawed nearby, and another answered in the distance. “She was smart,” I said. “So much smarter than the rest of us.”

“Huh, guess that wouldn’t be too hard.” My mama bumped her shoulder gently against mine.

“She was curious about everything. She loved animals, could sob for days over every stray dog I wouldn’t let her bring home. All the kids liked her, but she was picky about who she became friends with. Science was her favorite subject. She wanted to know how things worked. She wrote poetry. Kept it in a little notebook she carried around.” My words were coming too fast, slopping out of my mouth like water from a broken faucet. “Her hair was prettier than mine, thicker. She had the same freckles across her nose.” I ran my fingers over my face, surprised when they came away wet.

“She sounds like a special girl,” my mama said. “Like you raised her the way you thought best.”

“I tried,” I choked out. “I tried hard to do better than you did. I read to her every night when she was little. I never hit her or ignored her. She always had enough to eat, even if it meant I went to bed hungry. I told her I loved her every day.” A wail burst out of me. “But it wasn’t enough. Cal and I are here, we’re grown and alive, and my daughter is dead.” I turned and looked at her. “After everything, you still did better than I did. Go ahead, I guess you can have the last laugh now.”