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her.
    The detective says they’re all done. She has to sign a list of everything they’ve taken, Eileen double-checking it over her shoulder. The detective turns his clipboard sideways and carefully tears off a copy for her.
    “When will I get everything back?” Patty asks.
    “That depends on the outcome of our investigation.”
    “Is that a week, a month, what?”
    “That’s as soon as we can, ma’am.”
    She chains the door after him, shoots his car the finger as it eases down the drive, then stands there, making sure he leaves.
    “Well,” Eileen says, “at least they didn’t take the TV.”
    “Yeah,” Patty says, “great.”
    They clean up, going room to room. The garage looks empty without his weights and his toolbox, like they’ve broken up and the cops have helped him move out. She wishes she could remember seeing the dirtbike before. Outside, snow coats the pines. The drive is a switchyard of tire tracks. She should scrape off her car and bring it in, but just rolls the door closed and goes upstairs.

IN A HEARTBEAT
    SHE HAS TO CONSCIOUSLY PREPARE TO CALL HER MOTHER, TO PSYCH herself into the right frame of mind, as if she has only this one shot. Eileen understands, and offers to run out to the P&C and grab something for supper. She won’t take the twenty Patty shoves at her, and then she’s out the door and the house is finally quiet. For the first time today, Patty’s totally alone.
    She gathers what little information she has on the lawyers and squares a pad and a pen with her chair at the kitchen table before bringing over the receiver and sitting down. She can’t get too emotional or her mother will turn cold and logical on her, as if Patty’s incapable of dealing with this rationally.
    She stands and hangs up, circles through the living room and the kitchen and the bedroom and then back again, pausing at the front window to stare at the bare trees crossed against the sky, trying to find an answer that will satisfy any questions her mother might ask. Because she can’t just give her the money, that would
be too easy. Patty’s fear is that she’ll say it’s just not possible, meaning Patty’s being unrealistic.
    She looks at the estimate she scratched down last night and thinks it won’t be good enough. Her mother will want to know exactly how much this is going to cost her, to the penny. She’ll ask Patty to come up with a number before she makes any decision, and they don’t have time for that.
    She wonders how much she could really get for the truck.
    The fucked-up thing about it is that Shannon would have the money.
    She brings the phone over again and stabs at the buttons before she can think. For the hundredth time today she wishes for a cigarette.
    “I was wondering when you’d call me back,” her mother says.
    “It’s been kind of crazy here.”
    “I can imagine.”
    “I saw him. He’s doing okay.” She gives her mother a chance to interrupt, but the line is silent. “They’re saying he broke into this house with Gary—”
    “I heard,” her mother says. “Mrs. Tuthill was good enough to call me and tell me all about it.”
    “He didn’t do it. I know he didn’t.”
    “But he was there?”
    “He was with Gary. They were drunk.”
    “That makes me feel better,” her mother says.
    “Mom, come on.”
    “Are you aware that you knew her?”
    “I haven’t been listening to the news.”
    “Patty, it was Mrs. Wagner.”
    Her mother waits. Patty’s so overwhelmed by the idea that she can’t place the name.
    “Elsie Wagner’s mother. You remember. Elsie used to lifeguard at the Y when you girls were little. Tall blonde, freckles, wore her hair in a ponytail?”
    Patty doesn’t completely remember her, but she can’t say that.
    “Her mother went to St. Ann’s with the Tuthills. They’re going to have the funeral there on Saturday.”
    She mentions this as if Patty should go.
    “I didn’t know” is all Patty can say.
    “So, how are you in all of