“You think I have that for nothing?” my mother said, and pointed at the TV. “I know when there’s people lurking,” she said.

“There are people in the woods all the time. We’re on a trail,” I said. “You can’t just shoot at people going by.”

“This wasn’t a hiker,” she said. “No one hikes in a fucking suit,” she shouted.

I let go of the barrel and she let it down, pointed at the floor.

“And I don’t know where you decided to sleep last night,” she added. Then she looked out the front door at the Land Rover, parked in the gravel, and whipped around. “Who is here?” she yelped. “Shannon, who did you bring here?”

“No one!” I shouted back. “I’m driving that,” I said.

She peered again.

“The hell you are,” she said. “Whose is it?”

“He’s my friend,” I said, and hesitated just an instant.

“Uh-huh. Your friend drives a fucking Land Rover?” Her eyes scanned my clothes, but I was wearing my own. “Since when do you have a friend with a Land Rover?”

Birdie sniffled, still holding on to my knees.

“She’s scared,” I said softly to my mom.

“She should be,” she said.

I patted her on the butt, and she headed into my mother’s room for toys or books, or maybe to cry herself to sleep, and my mother pulled the gun back up and held it across her chest like a shield.

“What does he know?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Bullshit,” my mother said

“Nothing, Mom,” I said. “I haven’t said anything.”

“You were there all night.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We spent all that time talking about my crazy-ass mother and my secret sister.”

She swung the barrel of the gun at me. I ducked, but I heard it whip past my head.

“You don’t remember,” she said, “what it’s like to have someone try to kill you. Because you were little, because your brain did you a favor and blacked it out for you.”

“Mom,” I said.

“But you will,” she said. “And when you do, remember that I warned you.”

I took the gun with me. I wanted to give her the impression that I was taking care of something. I also didn’t trust her with it. I laid it in the back of the Land Rover, tucked under Buddy’s blanket, and left the car parked in town. No one hikes in a suit. I knew only one person who even wore a suit.

I walked. It had been warm in the sun, and as it got dark, a sharp wind blew through. The trees shivered with gusts. I pulled my collar around my neck. The flannel wasn’t enough.

I was afraid of finding him. Always. Whenever I went there, I feared walking in on something awful. A crime scene. Blood. His body, stiff and blue in the bed.

They had found my great-uncle Marion that way. Hanging from the rafters in the basement of the house we lived in now.