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night to the geriatric Wagon Wheel on Lake Avenue. Just two, Jim, she told the bartender.
    I heard about everything, Patsy, he said. And I shouldn’t do this. But okay, two. Any fuss after that, I’m calling the sheriff.
    He poured her one big one, generous as god, then another, then said, It’s time. Ah, Jim, she said, but he reached for the phone, so she left on her own accord and was home in time to answer when her mother called out. In the kitchen, Mom, she said. Just drinking a glass of water. Which was true.
    •
    The morning of the sentencing, she was dressing when she looked out her window and saw, on top of the wooden fence, a squirrel holding an orange. His rusty tail was fluffed and curled over his back to rest between his ears. He grasped the orange the way a child holds a large ball, and efficiently spat peelings aside until the top half of the fruit was all luminous white pulp. Slowing, he ate calmly, sank his face into the meat, his small hands rotating the sphere in quick, tiny adjustments. His cheeks shimmered with movement; he regarded her with a shiny black challenging eye. Abruptly he tossed the half orange to the grass,where it tipped toward her, a hollow bowl. The squirrel scurried along the fence top and down the other side. Patsy fastened her skirt.
    •
    The man and the two women were also at the sentencing, today seated several rows apart.
    Hers was the third case called, after a robbery and a domestic assault. The district attorney—appearing older, more severe, yet even lovelier in a charcoal gabardine suit—announced that the probation report had been filed. She corroborated no previous felony convictions and attested to Patsy MacLemoore’s reliability as a citizen and college professor. Thus she recommended that the plea, as agreed upon by herself and opposing counsel, should be accepted by the court.
    However, Your Honor, she continued with her relentless, dire calmness, family members of the victims have expressed the desire to file victim impact statements prior to sentencing.
    Benny had warned Patsy about this; the mother, he said, was in a swivet about the plea. Indeed, the older woman rose and worked her way out of the long, narrow bench and up to the front, where she faced the court in a mint green dress and paste pearls the size of filberts. She held a gray cardboard folder and opened it to reveal two color photographs, and she held them up as if sharing a storybook with the court. Both pictures revealed the cool, mottled blue background of department store portraiture, and even from a distance were heartless in their detail. A plump dark-haired woman on the left, a young girl with lighter braids on the right, the two in matching red Christmas sweaters. Jane and Jessica, the woman said, and shook the pictures and began to cry. My daughter and granddaughter, she added, her voice breaking. They never hurt anyone, not even accidentally.
    Patsy’s mother, skinny and tanned, tightened her grip on Patsy’s wrist.
    My Jane and Jessica, the grandmother continued, and waved the photographs at Patsy. I know that you were drunk. I know the truth.
    She turned to the judge. How can she kill two people and get only four years in prison? Four years—
less!
—when my girls are dead forever? She sobbed in deep, painful gasps before them until the other, younger woman came up and led her away.
    Anyone else, Counselor? asked the judge.
    The man came forward. Mark Parnham, he said to the recorder, and waited as she typed it in. He wore a suit, pressed well enough—it was his posture that gave him a crumpled, staved-in look. In front of the court he seemed to fight his way up from some deep private place and into the room. He blinked and searched her out. I’ve driven drunk, he said. More than once.
    He reached over and put a finger down on the corner of the bailiff’s desk and leaned over it, a pivot. He frowned. I guess the law has worked out the sentences and stuff. It’s not for me to say how