Of course, the sound brought Ty out of his house with a guitar. They ended up jamming until Ty was late for his shift and noon had come and gone without a thing done. Then he had to feed Mama scraps of two nights’ worth of leftovers before he hoofed it down to the brand-new corner store the Lower Ninth had gotten before he left. It was crowded, and still small and understocked compared to the Rouses that reigned over the whiter neighborhoods.

He’d prayed for years for a grocery store for his home. Now that it was here, every shelf in every aisle made him grit his teeth at the thought of what still wasn’t there. When he got home, he put a smile back on his face and helped his mama to bathe, the need for which had made her cranky enough to snap at him before she drifted off to sleep.

All of that meant when he opened the front door and pushed out into the thick evening air, he’d barely had a chance to think about Andra all day. He dropped into the old porch swing, the chain creaking under his weight. The air felt swampy in his lungs after the crisp-paper dryness of a Montana summer. But it was warmer, too, like a home-cooked meal that’d be too spicy for anybody who wasn’t raised at your same table.

He hadn’t called Andra the whole way out here. His Datsun had coughed and protested through the miles, keeping him busy with worrying about a breakdown he couldn’t afford. Every time he’d fallen asleep in the metal coffin of the truck bed, his mind had felt sludgy—too dark to try to pour through a phone line. As much as he ached to hear her voice, he didn’t know what to say.

There was no excuse for how he’d ruined their first time together. He hadn’t made her feel safe with him, and even thinking of that made him sick with remorse. And then he’d had to run out the next morning before he could even feed her breakfast. It was the worst kind of timing, and yet his guilt mixed nauseatingly with undeniable relief. If Mama hadn’t gotten sick, there would have been no way to hide the fact that the more he wanted Andra, the more it scared her. He had no answers, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was a coward for leaving, even if he hadn’t had any other choice.

All those thoughts just fed his superstitious dread. Every time his wheels had gone still long enough to pump gas or grab a sandwich, he’d had flashes of his mama dying before he could get home. Now that he was back in New Orleans, Montana seemed like a kid’s cowboy fantasy of a different life.