“I’m not a baby. I’m Mommy’s big girl.” Maya turned to her aunt. “Where’s Mommy?”

Here it comes, Letty thought. Time to tell truth. For five days now, she’d dodged the child’s questions about her mother’s whereabouts.

She lifted Maya onto her lap and smiled sadly. “Mommy’s gone to heaven, ladybug.”

Maya frowned. “You take me to see Mommy in heaven, Letty.”

“I can’t,” Letty said, kissing her niece’s forehead, already sun-browned despite the layers of sunblock Letty slathered all over both of them. Unlike Letty, whose fair skin freckled and burned after only fifteen minutes at the beach, Maya tanned easily and beautifully, like her mother.

“I want you to,” Maya said, her upper lip quivering. “I want to see Mommy in heaven.”

“Someday,” Letty said. She and Tanya had attended church and Sunday school strictly as a matter of convenience to Terri. Her own grasp of theology was sketchy at best, so she felt totally inadequate to the task of explaining death and mortality and the hereafter. How was she supposed to explain the hereafter to a four-year-old when she wasn’t sure she understood it herself?

Instead, she fell back on the only coping mechanism she’d ever learned from her mother. Denial, with a strong helping of distraction.

“Come on,” Letty said, standing up. “I’m hungry. Let’s go get some lunch.”

Letty had taken to opening the windows in the mornings in an effort to air out the room.

After lunch she sat in a chair by the door, watching, as Maya drifted off to sleep. She wished she had a television, or a book, or something to keep her mind off the avalanche of anxiety that seemed to be her constant companion.

Instead, she picked up her phone and scrolled through the Craigslist ads for help wanted, which was yet another depressing, anxiety-inducing time suck.

It wasn’t that the pickings were lean. This was Florida and tourist season seemed to be a year-round state of mind. Restaurants needed servers and experienced cooks. Hotels needed housekeepers. Stores needed cashiers. She’d found a few listings for real estate management, but these all seemed to be full-time jobs. And right now, her full-time job was softly snoring from inside a pillow fort.

A wisp of acrid smoke drifted into the room. She jerked the door open and stepped outside.

An elderly man lounged in a folding lawn chair directly in front of her window. His bald head gleamed in the sunlight. He was bare-chested, exposing a narrow expanse of wrinkled, sun-bronzed skin and a hairy, beach ball–size belly. Spindly legs poked out from baggy shorts that reached to his knees. His eyes were half closed and a cigarette hung limply between pale lips.

“Mr. Jensen!” she said sharply.

“What?” He didn’t even open his eyes or bother to look at her.