I jerked down the rearview mirror and looked at myself in the dim light of the parking lot. I pulled out my ponytail holder and ran my fingers through my hair, pinched some color into my cheeks, slicked some sheer gloss onto my lips. Jimmy Ray, for all his bravado and bullshit, was a fairly simple guy. He liked his women pliable and pretty. I couldn’t give him the first one, but I could bluff my way through the second.

The smell was the first thing that hit me when I pushed through the heavy door. Sweat and spilled beer. Something dank and musky that made you immediately think of sex. And not the good kind. The dirty, hopeless, borderline-mean kind. I paused inside the doorway, let my eyes adjust to the darkness. Cheap strobe lights blinked on the edges of the long narrow stage that extended out into the middle of the bar, studded at intervals with stripper poles where a couple of topless women slid along their lengths, gazes somewhere far away. Music pounded into my skull, way too loud for the relatively small space and even smaller crowd. A few men hunched on bar stools pulled up to the stage, slack gazes pinned on the women above them. A table of guys in the corner, one of whom was getting an unenthusiastic blow job from a middle-aged stripper wearing only high heels and a silver G-string. His friends watched, too bored to do more than stare, too turned on to look away.

On the other side of the room, a bartender lounged behind the bar talking to a couple of men nursing beers. No one seemed to have noticed my arrival, which meant Jimmy Ray probably wasn’t here. Everyone lived on high alert when he was around. I was the only woman in the place other than the ones working, but I wasn’t worried. I was used to places like this, even though they hadn’t been part of my life in years. If nothing else, my childhood had taught me how to navigate the world’s seedy underbelly.

“Hey, Sam,” I said, sliding into the empty bar stool next to the man on the end. He turned and looked at me, his face breaking into a slow smile. I’d always liked Sam. Of all Jimmy Ray’s hangers-on, he was the most human, with his scruffy beard and tiny paunch of belly. He’d always had the decency to look sorry, at least, after Jimmy Ray had a go at me. Which is more than I could ever say for the rest of them, Jimmy Ray included.

“Well, look who the cat dragged in. Jesus, Eve. How you been?” At the last second, it hit him and his whole face shifted. “Oh God, sorry,” he said. “I just . . . I forgot for a second. About your daughter. I didn’t hear until yesterday.”

“Junie,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam said, snapping his fingers. “That’s right. Junie.” He glanced down at his beer. “Sure am sorry.”