“You don’t care. You sit up in that naked attic drinking purple syrup and feel smug because nothing ever quite reaches you. You talk and laugh and bring presents, but you’re not fooling anybody. You leave the lights on when you go to sleep and you spend too much time with people you don’t like. So don’t you tell me what I ought to do. Because you don’t really give a shit about me or whether my baby is alive or dead. It’s just gossip to you one way or another. And gossip’s all you want. That’s all you can handle.”

She strolled away, her back straight. I watched her long black braids tap softly at the small of her back. The trees were tall here, and bare for thirty or forty feet before the first branches began. Nothing moved but the flicker of Carlotta in her red dress walking between the trees. Without deciding to, I sat down.

After a while I got up again. I walked back through the trees and brush, and crossed the lawn away from the house. Kate was making noises somewhere out of sight. Hung up again, probably. My boots crunched in the gravel of the drive. I walked down the dirt road, up the paved road, past the old folks’ housing development to the highway.

Exactly four days later I had just finished my weekly shopping. I had a six-pack of grape soda, four paperback mysteries, and a few packages of cookies. The white Rambler was sitting in front of my house when I came up the street. Rennel leaned out of the driver’s side, watching till I got up to him. He wasn’t putting on any faces that morning. I don’t think I’d ever seen him with a relaxed face before. He even pouted in his sleep.

“The baby came yesterday.”

I stopped and put the six-pack on the fender.

“No shit.”

“Sam called me this morning. He’s been trying to get you. He wants you to come out.”

“Are they all right?”

“I guess so.”

“I don’t know if Carlotta’s going to want me around.”

“Will you get in? I’ve been sitting here for an hour.”

My fine black boots were falling apart. Bent up at the pointed toe. My legs were clammy inside. Didn’t put my socks on when I went out. I threw the stuff into the back and climbed in beside Rennel. He started off toward the highway.

Sam was standing at the foot of the drive when we got there. His face was white. There were shadows in his cheeks. His eyes were rimmed red. Rennel pulled up beside him and he grabbed at my window as I rolled it down.

“Boy, am I glad to see somebody!”

“What’s wrong?”