Scot puts his cards down, gets up, and leaves the room without comment.

“Where’s Daddy going?” asks Zack.

“It was a swimming hole, not a pool,” I explain to my mother’s furious face. “In the stream in back of Grimshaw’s.”

Scot turns around and comes back in the room. “She took our kids where today?” he shouts at my mother.

“I’ve taken them to the Grimshaws’ before,” I say. “It’s no big deal.”

“Do you know how they make their money?” Scot shouts at my mother.

“I don’t think it’s so bad,” says my mother. “It’s almost legal.”

“Oh, that’s great.” Scot lifts both hands in the air. “Just great. Almost legal, the principal says. You heard it here.” Scot turns in the doorway and points at me. “I don’t want my kids hanging out at that place anymore. It’s dangerous.”

I start to laugh. “Dangerous?” I say to my mother. “That’s really ridiculous.”

“Serena fixed their car today!” Zack yells.

“Yeah!” chimes in Nora. “She fixed their car! Then we went swimming in their swimming pool!”

“I know those people,” Scot says between clenched teeth. “They don’t have enough pride to bend over and pick up their own trash.”

“You can’t just say that about them!” I say to Scot.

“Melody’s different,” my mother pleads with Scot. “I really pray for that girl. And I’d like to think it’s having some effect.”

“I think,” he says quietly, ignoring my mother, “in my own house, I can say whatever I want.”

“No, you can’t,” I yell back. “You can’t just talk trash about people.”

Nora and then Zack start to cry. Scot sticks his chin out at me. “If it’s true, I sure can.”

“You want to know what people say about you, then?”

He is right in my face. “Okay,” he says. “Tell me.”

“Serena,” says my mother, getting in between us. “Go upstairs to your room, right now.”

“If we’re being so free with what we’ve heard other people say,” I tell him over her shoulder. “I hear things, too, you know, if we’re passing rumors around. That’s what you’re doing. Talk about trash.”

Scot rushes toward me with his fists clenched, and for a second I actually think he might punch me. “Go ahead, then,” he says quietly. “Say it.”

“Scot,” my mother says behind him. “You are reasoning with a teenager. You won’t win.”

He spins toward her. Now he gets in her face. “Oh,” he says, “I won’t win, will I? And why is that? Because you’re all so educated and I’m just a guy who works with his hands?” Now he’s shouting at her, the dog is barking, and both kids are screaming in earnest. “Every day, I face my problems, even the ones I didn’t create. I face another guy’s problems who was too weak to hack it. I’m not as smart as him, I’m too dumb to kill myself. I just get up, every day, to keep a roof over his kids’ heads. It’s all on me.”