flower.
âCanât you understand,â I said, âhow hard it is to be here without Evan?â
Tobyâs hair had fallen in a tangle over his eyes. âWonât it be just as hard somewhere else?â
âI donât think so.â
âWhy not?â
âWell, for one thing,â I said, âwe wonât have to deal with Cindy Ann anymore.â I waited for him to nod, agree. âI mean, seeing her. Seeing her kids. Watching her going about her life as if nothing even happened.â Again, I waited. âFor Peteâs sake, Toby, sheâs driving the same damn car. She killed someone, a human being, and it hasnât made the least bit of difference. Sheâs still a reckless drunk.â
âMallory says sheâs not drinking anymore.â
âMallory would say that.â
âShe says there are days Cindy Ann doesnât get out of bed.â
âIâve had some of those days myself.â
The bubbling sound of the aerators filled the silence between us.
âBut you knew her, Meg,â Toby finally said. âYou knew all those girls. You, of all people, know how hard it was for them, growing up in that house.â
Now I was angry. Of course I knew, as everyone else in town knew, that Cindy Annâs stepfather had shot himself in the shedbehind the veal pens. It was the excuse people always gave: for Cindy Annâs failed marriages, for Malloryâs shrill politics, for the middle sister, Becca, going door-to-door for the Jehovahâs Witnesses. Cindy Annâs mother was barely in her sixties, and yet she was living in a nursing home, disabled by early Alzheimerâs: hunched, forgetful, smiling. The only child sheâd had with Dan Kolbâborn when Cindy Ann was twelveâhad been what was then called mentally retarded . Heâd eventually died in his early teens. This, too, was blamed, implausibly, on Dan Kolbâs suicide.
âSo the family had problems,â I said. âSo what. That doesnât give Cindy Ann the right to drink however many bottles of wine she drank and then get into her car, the hell with everybody else.â I wanted to shake my brother, slap him; my neck and shoulders actually hurt with the effort of restraining myself from doing it. â She had a choice in all this, remember? Rex and I had no choice. Evan had no choice.â
âI know, I know all that,â Toby said, and at last, he was angry, too. âEvan was my nephew, remember? You think it doesnât matter to me, too? You think I donât wake up every single day and think about how awful it is? Iâm just saying I feel sorry for her, thatâs all.â
âSorry?â I spat the word from my mouth, and then I told him what Iâd told no one else: how Iâd sat in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot, hands gripping the wheel, waiting for Cindy Ann and her ice cream.
âMaybe,â I said, âyouâd feel sorry for me if Iâd actually run her over.â
âI would feel sorry, Cowboy,â he said. âSorry for you both.â
I turned, walked out the door. Hurrying past the front window, I caught a glimpse of him standing between the tanks: one side of his face stricken as my own, the other half lost in darkness. The neondartings of the fish all around him seemed like sparks flying out of his body. I understood I was losing something else, someone else. Someone precious.
I didnât go back.
And then.
Crossing the parking lot toward my car, the sky growing dark over the lake, I sawânot Cindy Ann Kreisler, but Cindy Ann Donaldson, sixteen years old. Hurrying straight out of our childhoods, out of the single, charmed summer weâd been friends. There was her Dairy Castle uniform. There were her regulation shoes, the white bib, the hairnet and curved paper hat. Iâd often met her at closing time, and together, weâd walked to the beach, where we sat on a slab of pale