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tearing stuff apart, food all over everything. It was a good fight. We was really stoked. We won, too, ‘cause Grandma got into it. Her and those high heels, bashing everybody who took a shot at Mama and me. It was a lot of fun, Jeanie. My grandma, she’s a real scrapper.”
    Sorrel grinned at the look on Jeanie’s face. Jeanie was such a baby. If she’d lived Sorrel’s life, she’d have died. “What’s the matter? It was nothing big. A few people needed stitches, but nothing big-time. No cops called in, nothing like that. Angie and her guy got out just fine, no trouble. You can bet, though, people showed some respect after that. They’d better. Grandma, she’s something else.”
    “Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever met your grandmother.”
    “No? I’ve got a picture, right here. Yeah. See? Me, Mama, Grandma, and Tiffany. That’s Tiffy’s party, when she was two, they let me out on furlough for it.”
    “How about Tiffany? You could write about her.”
    “Boy, yeah, Tiffany—” Sorrel’s voice was low, gruff. “I remember, she was born, I was screaming, crying. I mean, I never hurt like that, not even when— Well. And then, they give her to me, all red and bawling, got this white stuff all over her head. God, she looked like shit. I touched her, and it was like, she quit crying, right then. Like she knew, somehow, it was me.” Sorrel raised a hand and touched something invisible, shifted her arms and cradled it. “I was never so happy in my life, and there I was, just all bloody and hurting. ‘Cause we was together. It’s always been like that, her and me. Just like it was with Mama and me. Always.”
    “See, you could write about that. She touched your life.”
    “Yeah, I could. I could write about Tiffany.” Sorrel picked up pencil and paper. “Tiffany.” Fear and despair mingled. She couldn’t run, not from the cops, and not from him either. If she ran, she’d never see Tiffany again. And if Dillon knew, she was in deep shit. What the hell was she going to do?
    Time passed, and Jeanie was there again, crowding her.
    “Sorrel? Sorrel, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize—”
    Her mascara must be running. The paper had blotches on it. God, she’d been crying again. She must look like shit. A room divider blocked Sorrel’s view of the room. Brynna couldn’t see her. Dimly, she felt this was good thing.
    “Sorrel, I really like that picture you showed me. Your grandma looks like a spunky lady. I’d like to meet her sometime. Sorrel? Sorrel, let me give you another piece of paper. Maybe you’d do better, writing about the wedding after all.”
     
    CHAPTER THREE
    The house had the cluttered emptiness of a way station, of a temporary haven between catastrophes. It existed in a time warp, post-war tract housing for low-income families at a time when paint-splattered linoleum set the fashion. Jeanie’s armchair, her sofa, and her table perched uncomfortably on the industrial carpeting.
    She’d been lucky to find the two-bedroom house. The same property owner owned all the buildings down this side of the street, including three other houses and a few old apartment units. Given the contents of the back yards, it wasn’t worthwhile to rip them down and replace them with higher density complexes. Train tracks weren’t standard decorative items.
    Geoff, her older son, had argued that she’d never sleep, with the trains coming through at night, blaring their horns through residential neighborhoods. She couldn’t explain without upsetting him. Insomnia lurked in the darkness. She cherished the companionship of the twice-nightly trains. The steady clacking vibration shook the house and her twin bed. The sudden glare of the headlights through the window shifted sideways to leave patterns on her wall. Usually after loading her worries onto the train, she managed to collapse for a few hours’ sleep.
    Jeanie opened the freezer, groped for something of marginal nutrition, and threw it in the