It was a drawing of three little square houses, each with two windows that looked like big, sad eyes and a frowning door, alongside a huge house that towered above them all, with an expressionless door and squinty window eyes. That house had a red X drawn through it. He gave one to anyone who would sign the petition. A lot of the lawns in town had them up now, and it made Jillian feel secretly proud when she saw them.

“I’m off to get more signatures. Want to come, Jillian?”

“Homework,” Jillian said.

“Rehearsal should be over by ten,” her mother said, kissing the top of Jillian’s head.

Jillian laid her books across the kitchen table, still slightly moist from the sponge. She didn’t have much homework, a half hour maybe. Unless she did the Greek temple project. But Lindy had assured her that that would be taken care of. How weird was that? She wanted to watch TV, but their TV sucked too much to bother. She sighed and settled into her homework, looking up now and then to see the changing images on the Coxes’ TV next door, a vivid reminder of all she didn’t have.

SUZANNE ROLLED FROM SIDE TO SIDE LIKE A ROTISSERIE CHICKEN, UNABLE to stop thinking about Adam, unable to get away from Grant. They slept in a double bed now, a so-called full, but all it filled was the room. Their king-size bed was too big, a fact they’d discovered when the movers tried to get the mattress into the room on moving day. Grant was always touching her now, accidentally, if not on purpose. His foot would graze hers, which would remind him that he wanted to have sex, which meant he was constantly pulling at the waistband of her pajama pants. “Hey, hot mama,” he whispered now, nuzzling her neck.

“I am not your mama!” she snapped.

“Whoa, there! I meant it carnally, not maternally.” He started rubbing her shoulders. She softened a little, silently forgiving him for yet another cowboy exclamation.

“Adam’s doctor today called me Mom, the nurse—they all do, the whole staff, like I’m Old Mother Hubbard. I hate that.”

“What’s the prognosis?” he said, working his thumbs into the hollows just below the base of her skull, where tension had calcified nearly to bone.

“She thinks it might be a sinus infection. She put him on antibiotics. Do sinus infections cause headaches? He’s had a headache for a month, Grant.”