She peers through the side of the curtains, watches the lights as he turns the car around and then speeds down Cemetery Road, leaving a patch of rubber on the pavement. And then she unlocks the door just enough to reach outside for the bottle of whiskey. She sees the bag. The spilled candy crushed underfoot when he fell. The Lady of Guadalupe on her side like a rolling pin.

She takes a long drink from the bottle, and as soon as the warmth hits her throat, down, into her belly, her face floods with tears. Everything that has been held so tight, so hard, rushes out of her, and she doubles over onto the living room floor. She drinks again.

Her phone buzzes deep inside her bag, and she assumes it’s him, it’s Bear Miller, taunting her now via text. She digs it out and sees instead a text from Hurt. You still in the office Fisher?

“Ugh, fuck you,” she says at the phone. What she wants is a girlfriend, another woman whose house she can go to and stay up all night in, cry in if she feels like it, yell if that’s better. She has never been good at keeping women as friends. They compete. She’s threatening, or she’s threatened, and a man gets in the way. She closes her eyes and thinks there’s nothing more she wants than to see her grandmother one more time, to sit across from her at the kitchen table, for her to say complete bullshit to her like everything’s going to be fine, just so Kateri can hear her voice.

She lets herself sob for a minute. Then she gets up and checks outside to make sure he’s really gone, and by then, her phone is buzzing again.

It’s Hurt, and he’s calling.

“Yeah,” she says.

“Anyone come to your door?” Hurt says, and for a moment she stiffens with panic, thinking that Hurt was in on it somehow. That he set her up for a test she didn’t see coming. That somehow, in addition to her accident and her drinking, he found out about the men she’d slept with in Syracuse, that he was trying to tempt her to ruin everything.

“What?” she snaps.

“Kids,” he says. “Trick-or-treaters.”

“What?” she says again. “No.”

“You sound weird,” Hurt says. “Where are you?”

“Home,” she says.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

He pauses. “Are you drinking?” he asks.

“Yeah, Hurt.” She rolls her eyes, even though he can’t see it. “I’m fucking wasted,” she says. “I have to go.”

“Fisher,” he says, sharp.

She inhales a raggedy sob.

“Do you need me to come by?” he asks.

She feels the yelp come out of her like it’s a stone, projecting from her mouth. Her legs collapse on the floor, and she sits, unable to answer him.

“I’ll be right there,” he says.

She opens the door again, because she wants to hear him coming, wants to see that it’s his car and not be surprised by a knock on the door after ten o’clock at night, in late October, when the whole town is reveling in dead things and darkness.