Linda is still clutching her book bag, eyes round in the gloom as she slowly takes in her surroundings, and Christy-Lynn is struck by how it must look to a stranger seeing it for the first time. The dingy shag carpet, worn to the jute in places. The rump-sprung couch left by the previous tenants, the battered coffee table that has seen too many moves. The lamp with the dented shade her mother had salvaged from the dumpster after their last eviction. Thank God, at least, the curtains were closed.

It’ll be better once they get to her room, she tells herself. Not that her room is great, but it’s not as shabby as the living room. There are her Beanie Babies—the ones not ruined by the rain—and her precious books, painstakingly scored from library sales and secondhand stores. The kinds of things any fourteen-year-old girl might have in her room. Normal things. She tries not to think about what Linda Neely’s room looks like. She doubts her books are secondhand or that her things have ever been tossed into a parking lot. The thought stings.

“I thought you said your mother wasn’t home.”

Christy-Lynn turns back to her guest. “What?”

“Your mother—I thought you said she’d be at work.”

“She is.”

Linda jerks her chin at the floor. “Is that her stuff?”

Christy-Lynn follows Linda’s gaze to the trail of items strewn on the carpet: purse, shoes, keys, jacket. They look like they’ve been discarded hastily. But that doesn’t make sense. Her mother never misses work. At least not for a while now—not since she dumped Shane Taylor and got hired at the Piggly Wiggly. But Charlene Parker has been feeling a little off lately and looking a little off too, since she started picking up bartending shifts at the Getaway Lounge, burning the candle at both ends to keep the rent paid and the lights on.

And then Christy-Lynn catches a whiff of something sour over the lingering aroma of last night’s supper. It’s acidic and vaguely familiar, like the stench of spoiled milk. She knows that smell, knows what it is and what it means. There’s a moan from somewhere down the hall, a low, grating sound that sends a chill down Christy-Lynn’s spine. It comes again, louder now, ending in a series of coughs and spluttered retches.

Something hot and hideous scorches up into Christy-Lynn’s throat as she heads down the narrow hall. Rage. Dread. The awful realization that it’s starting all over again. Please, please, let her be wrong.

But she isn’t wrong.

Charlene Parker is draped over the toilet when Christy-Lynn walks into the bathroom. Her hair and clothes are streaked with vomit, her cheeks smeared with a soup of purple eyeliner and melting mascara.

“Mama?”

Charlene lifts her head, her pale face a ruin. “Baby . . . I’m sick.”

Her voice is thick and slurred, her eyes unfocused. And then suddenly she’s scrambling onto all fours, back arched as she retches emptily into the bowl, heaving as if she’s trying to turn herself inside out.

Panicked, Christy-Lynn drops down on one knee, doing her best to avoid the splatters of yellow-green goo that seem to be everywhere. The mingled reek of alcohol and bile is overpowering.

By the time the retching finally subsides, her mother’s face has become a blur. Christy-Lynn swipes impatiently at her tears, but they keep coming, running unchecked down her cheeks. “You promised, Mama. You said no more.”

Her mother’s eyes open slowly, heavy lidded as she drags a hand across her mouth. “Thirsty . . .”

It’s little more than a cracked whisper, and for a moment, Christy-Lynn’s anger turns to pity. She is reaching for the glass on the sink when she notices that her mother is still wearing her bartending clothes—jeans and a skimpy black tank top—instead of her cashier’s uniform. Had she not even bothered to come home last night?

“Mama, how long have you been here like this?”

“Thiiiirrrsty!” Charlene wails like a petulant child. The word rings in the tiled space. And then, without warning, she begins to cry, great ragged sobs that rack her knobby shoulders. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.” She reaches for the front of Christy-Lynn’s shirt, using it as leverage as she curls her body in on itself. “Don’t be mad,” she croons as she begins to rock. “Please, baby . . . don’t be mad.”

A bit of movement, perhaps an intake of breath, makes Christy-Lynn turn. Linda is standing in the doorway, transfixed by the sight of a grown woman whimpering like a baby on the bathroom floor.

Christy-Lynn blinks at her, her throat suddenly full of razor blades. “My mother’s sick,” she manages, struggling against the fresh round of tears she will not let come. “You’d better go.”

Linda nods slowly, her expression part horror, part fascination. “Sure. Yeah.” She backs slowly out of the doorway, unable to tear her eyes away. “See ya in class.”

Christy-Lynn says nothing, wondering as Linda backs away how long it will take for the story to spread through the halls of Berkeley High. Then she looks down at her mother, asleep or very near to it, her sticky dark hair fanned out on the bathroom tiles. She had been the prettiest girl in Monck’s Corner once—a poor man’s Ava Gardner. At least that’s how her mother told it. And once upon a time, it might have been true.

NINE

Sweetwater, Virginia

November 29, 2016