She dragged and winced in a smoke cloud.

“Car hit him when he was checking his tires near Memphis. That was bittersweet. Percy left me with debts. They took what he had, the truck, the house and whatever savings, left me with this place. Never knew he had it. Used to be his mom’s before she died. I live here on food stamps and part-time work cleaning motel rooms.”

“And you live without hope.”

Rita’s eyes narrowed. “Screw you. Who the hell’re you to judge me?”

“I’m your sister, Rita. Remember? No kids?”

Rita dragged hard on her smoke. “Daughter. Tara.”

“A daughter?” Lucy looked around as if Tara would appear.

Rita shook her head. “She drowned in the tub when she was ten months old. Percy was watching her and was drinking, got careless. I was at bingo. He said it was my fault and beat me.” Rita stubbed out her cigarette, then looked at Lucy. “What about you? I’m thinking you ain’t won no lotteries.”

For the next ten minutes Lucy recounted her pain-filled life since completing her sentence for the murders.

“So it’s been no bed of roses for you, either.” Rita shook her head. “And how’re you going to ‘make things right’?”

“I found our other sister.”

“You found her?”

“Just like I found you. But I’ve come to you first.”

Lucy reached into her bag for one of her burner phones, the good one, and began showing Rita a sampling of photos.

“Do you know who she’s married to?” Lucy swiped to a photo. “Him.”

“Who is he?” Rita said.

“Some famous author.”

“Really? But how did she—” Rita stared at Lucy, a new question dawning, then answered. “He doesn’t know about her.”

“Probably not.”

“Well, well, well. That’s just—wow, I don’t know what that is.”

Lucy put her phone away.

“I’ll tell you what it is, Rita. It’s wrong. She betrayed me. Now, you didn’t betray me, did you?”

Rita didn’t answer, finding something icy, something decided, something dead, behind Lucy’s eyes. Rita swallowed.

“No, I didn’t.”

“But our sister in California betrayed us. And for twenty years, while we’ve been burning in hell, look how she’s been living. She never gave a damn about us, never tried to find us, to help us, living like she’s better than us. It makes her just like the Tullocks in Eternity.”

“The Tullocks,” Rita repeated before looking away. “All these years, I think if only Connie Tullock hadn’t said what she said to us that night, then maybe it wouldn’t have happened. But she just had to prove how goddamned superior she was and then it was like a bomb going off for us.” Covering her mouth with her hand, she blinked several times. “I see them all the time you know.”

“Who?” Lucy asked.