Colette had put her father in his bedroom, found a flickering black-and-white movie for him on his television, and came out onto the porch to wait. She scowled at the empty space in the street where Bucky Tyler’s car should have been. He had invited himself over for supper and now was late. Walking into the kitchen, she stirred a pot of red beans and sausage, banged the spoon or the pot much too hard, and returned to the porch to sit and tap her foot. When he did show up, he did not apologize. His sport coat had a rusty smudge on it, and he smelled of fuel oil. They ate under the dim brass light fixture in the dining room, and everything she swallowed, the baby kicked at. Bucky seemed preoccupied with his food, saying one thing during the meal: “Did you ever learn to make chili?”

They watched television in the front room while one block over on River Street an ambulance screamed east out into the woods. With a slow turn of her head, Colette followed the sound like radar.

The next day was Saturday and the phone got her out of bed a half hour after sunrise. Her aunt Nellie was on the line.

“Colette, chère, I don’t know how interested you gonna be, but I got some bad news for you.”

The baby tumbled once in her stomach. “What? What is it?” she said, blinking the burning morning out of her eyes.

“There was a accident down at the stink plant last night and Paul’s almost dead. They brought him over to Lafayette to that hospital they bring blowed-up oid field people to.”

She grabbed her hair and pulled it back out of her eyes, as though she needed to see better. “What happened?”

“I don’t know—he just got burnt up is what I heard. You want me to come look after your daddy?” Colette heard the clink of Nellie Arnaud’s Zippo lighter as she fired up the first cigarette of the day. A long pause followed, and then the cough. “Colette?”

She sat on the edge of her bed, thinking that the baby might never see its father, and she didn’t know how she felt about that. “Yes,” she said, “come right over.”

At one point she looked down at the speedometer and was surprised to see how fast she was driving. At the hospital an intern stopped her and told her obstetrics was in the other direction, and she realized how big she looked, her belly swaying as she navigated the halls. She found Paul’s family gathered outside intensive care. No one was smiling, and Father Clemmons was coming through the swinging doors, folding a vestment. They all greeted her as though they’d gathered on her account.

She took a breath. “Well, what happened?”