Samuel was no longer in her line of sight. She pocketed the phone, pressing back her tears, and sped up. What was that saying? It didn’t rain until it poured.

Samuel was already in his room when she walked through the front door. She slid into a chair in the kitchen and sat with her face in her hands, trying to make sense of what was going on. First the envelope with the clippings, which, aside from the actual night of the incident, was the single worst day of Winnie’s life. Then there was the library card ordeal—she still didn’t know what to think of that. And now the Froot Loops. Samuel was acting like a complete stranger.

25

JUNO

The obituary was short:

Josalyn Russel, daughter to Terry Russel and stepdaughter to Mark Gordon, died unexpectedly on February 8, 2008. Her funeral service will be held at the First Baptist Church in Lima, Ohio.

Icy, Juno thought. That was not the obituary of a well-loved girl. Juno had seen parents over the years who were distraught over the behavior of their children. They brought their children to her like an ingredient for a recipe they didn’t know what to do with. One parent usually looked anxious and put out, the other hopeful. It was like good cop/bad cop in the family department: What is this? How do we make it work in our family? And there were too many times when the therapy wasn’t working that Juno saw parents harden their hearts against their own children—a lost cause, the problem child, the child who just couldn’t be reached. Emotional detachment was a survival skill. The person subconsciously muted their emotions in order to protect themselves. Josalyn, Juno thought, had been a problem child. She could see it in the wording: Died unexpectedly.

Drugs, she thought. That’s what always got them young. “Died unexpectedly of an overdose” would have been too honest for an obit.

The Russels’ number was listed. She wrote it on her hand, the pen making sharp, black lines on her skin. Then, sitting at the dinette in the kitchen, staring at the checkerboard floor, Juno dialed and waited. A stately woman’s voice said “Hello,” and Juno detected both class and vinegar in that voice. Here was a woman who had lost a child, who’d been forced to alter her reality to accept that she’d outlived the child she’d grown in her own body.

“Hello, Mrs. Russel. My name is Juno Holland. I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m calling to talk to you about Josalyn.”

There was a long silence, so long Juno thought that Terry Russel had hung up, and then she heard a release of breath that she supposed was a sigh. Juno pushed on. “I’m a retired clinical psychologist, Mrs. Russel, and I was wondering how—”