“What’s insurance?”

“Well, it’s like if your house burns down they build you another one.”

“For nothing?”

“Think so. Said they’d pay us for all kinds of things, ’cept flooding. Said we should have had insurance for my mom.”

“What, they get you a new mom?”

“No, chowderhead, they give you money to bury ’em and stuff. Pop told him we didn’t own the farm or nothing.”

“You could run my papa’s store. Then we could eat anything in it we wanted.”

Lew flung a couple of wild grapes into the water.

“So we’re going to get married then?” she said.

He shrugged. “Sure.”

“Then you have to kiss me on the mouth.”

Lew bunched his shoulders. “Don’t want to.”

Annie grabbed his cheeks and threw her mouth against his. Screwing up his face, Lew pushed her away just as they heard a splash.

They stood as Roh doggy-paddled toward the bank. The light had faded, the inside of the sinkhole turning dark. Roh reached the shallow stone shelf that extended out a few feet into the pool, before the drop-off, and waded toward them. Once he was at the edge, Lew pulled him up out of the water and slapped his hand.

“Don’t hit him, Lew.”

“He’s always running off.” Glancing at her, Lew seemed to notice something. “Annie, your mouth’s bleeding.”

Feeling the blood trickle down her chin, she wiped it off. “I hit your teeth.”

Roh, shivering but completely passive now, stared at the raw scalp of reddish light over the trees. He looked like a normal seven-year-old, not one who was touched in the head, who didn’t speak and seemed to respond to nothing but patterns of light. They didn’t take his hand because he didn’t like to be touched, so they marched Indian file, one in front of him, one behind.

Lew asked Annie if she wanted supper, but she told him she had to get home. She didn’t like to stay at his place. The farmhouse was dilapidated and damp, the roof covered with a patchwork of tar paper and tarp. The only traces of his mom were those funny-looking candlesticks on the sideboard and a pair of her tiny boots just inside the door—Annie’s own feet were twice as big. There was still a square patch of less faded paint above the fireplace where a mirror had once hung. His papa, for some reason, had cleared out all the mirrors the day she had died, dumping them behind the smokehouse.

She helped Lew peel the potatoes he brought up from the root cellar, most of which were rotten. She often fantasized about him being saved: sometimes that Roh, who was now rocking himself in the corner, would get better, but more often that he would pass on, gently, in his sleep. Then she would find someone for his papa. Miss Kelly maybe.

She heard footsteps on the porch and the door opened.

“Hi, Mr. Tivot.”

“Getting dark out there, Annie.” He took off his straw fedora. His right hand was wrapped in a blood-soaked rag.