“Hey, sweetheart,” Keith said when I came through the door, sweatshirt thrown over my pajamas and flip-flops on my feet. “Hated to bother you, but I didn’t want him driving. I tried to get his keys, but he wouldn’t hand them over.”

Keith’s call had woken me from the first deep sleep I’d had in what felt like years. Actual slumber, not simply skimming the surface of rest with thoughts of Junie floating against my closed eyelids. “It’s okay,” I said. “How long’s he been here?”

“Most of the night,” Keith said. He was wiping down the bar and paused where Cal’s head rested on the wood. “Poor fucker. I think it all caught up with him. I wasn’t gonna bother you, but the usual suspects were sniffing around. Brenda Longmont, that Candy girl you went to school with. I figured he was gonna have enough regrets in the morning, didn’t need to add waking up next to one of them to the list.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Good call.” I slid onto the stool next to Cal’s, ran my hand over his hair. “Hey, Cal. Come on, wake up.”

Cal had never been a drinker, not even when we were younger and I was a little too friendly with the bottle. He’d watched our mama and went the other way, a decision I mimicked as soon as I got pregnant. But while I’d given up drinking for good, Cal still had the occasional beer after work or while watching the game. But I’d only seen him really drunk once before, when his high school girlfriend, long since moved away and on with her life, had gotten married to some lawyer in St. Louis. I don’t think it was a broken heart over her that made Cal hit the bottle so much as it was the knowledge that the life he was living in Barren Springs—working for Land, helping me raise Junie, taking Mama groceries once in a while to keep her from starving—was the one he was most likely going to live forever. We’d never talked about it, though, because Cal would have never admitted that to anyone, probably not even to himself.

I pushed gently against his shoulder, said his name again, and he raised his head, fastened his bleary eyes to the right of me. “Eve?” he said, and I leaned backward, out of the range of his whiskey-fume breath. “What’s going on?”

“You’re drunk,” I told him, trying to lay hands on my patience, my kindness. Because if anyone deserved a night of oblivion, it was Cal. It wasn’t fair to always expect him to be the strong one. I wondered how many hours he’d been putting in since Junie’s death. Cal was the one who always worried about me, but who worried about him? Made sure he was eating and sleeping, gave him a hug even when he tried to shrug away? Told him everything would be okay? I made a vow to myself to do better by him when all this was over. Assuming I was still around to keep such a promise. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you home.”