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of her neck. “You tell your precious matchmaker father that he matched our mother to her murderer, and we need to talk to him.”

SIX
    E LLEN A HERN STOOD WITH shears in hand, stabbing at the blackberry vines that invaded her garden. She snapped the blades through a skeletal arm that reached for her out of the fog. Most of the time, she missed because tears clouded her vision worse than the fog. After a while, she punched out in any direction until, energy spent, she sagged against the rock wall. She managed a feeble last chop before dropping the shears. Scratches crisscrossed her arms from the blackberry thorns, but she didn’t care.
    It was no use hacking at the mess this way. She must eradicate the bloody weed by its roots. She’d stared at the blackberry invasion all summer while her marriage continued to flounder, and now that it was too late, she attempted a salvage. She was pathetic. Once in, blackberries took over like chaos itself, overwhelming everything.
    She let her head sag toward her chest. The mist muffled sound but not scents. Peat smoke, that comfort; lingering berries like bottled summer; baby shampoo that she’d let Petey rub into her hair during their shower. That last, the smell of innocence.
    Without little Petey, she’d not have showered at all today. Couldn’t be bothered. But he’d recently started bathing with her again. At five years old, was he too old? She hoped not because that token of time with her son was one thing she could manage. He’d concocted elaborate games to prolong their showers, such as drawing on the tiles with his bath-time crayons and insisting he write the whole alphabet, then his name, then hers on the shower walls. This morning, he’d graduated to older sister Mandy’s name.
    She almost smiled at that, but felt her lips sag when she realized that Petey was leading her into a conversation. Day after day getting closer to his da’s name. Danny. Petey already knew all the letters and sounds; he could spell out the word himself. By the end of the week, he’d ask her how to spell his father’s name anyhow, and she’d teach him, and then Danny would be in the shower with them like a steam-ghost.
    “Damn you, Danny,” she said, turning away from the vines he’d promised to eradicate months ago. Every now and then, blaming her husband helped. She balled her fingers into fists, felt the pressure rub pain into her blisters, and then made for the house, the insides of which were no more cheerful than the outdoors. The gloom sank into rips in the sofa cushions and dulled the shine off the crystal stemware she’d inherited from her mother. Some might say her home was homey, but to her, it looked threadbare and empty.
    At first she didn’t catch the sound of sobbing, but once she did, her heart wrenched. Petey. Jesus, Petey. She’d spent too long with her self-pity, as usual. She followed the sound of his tears to her bedroom, where he lay with her pillow clutched to his chest.
    “Petey, my love,” she said. “I thought you were sleeping.”
    He froze, and then a second later sprang off the bed. Ellen dropped to her knees. Petey patted her cheeks and let loose a series of wails. She picked him up and burrowed the two of them under the comforter. She inhaled baby shampoo. Between sniffs and little-boy gasps, he said, “I couldn’t see you. I looked out every window, but you were gone, and I thought Grey Man got you too.”
    “Grey Man’s not real, I told you that.”
    Petey shot out his lower lip. “He is too real.”
    After five minutes trying to reassure Petey, Ellen gave up. She gazed at the snotty smears he had left on the window. She wouldn’t survive the day if she had to stay cooped up listening to him munge on about Grey Man.
    “I have an idea,” she said. “We’re going for a walk.”
    “No.”
    “Oh yes we are.”
    “Why? You can’t make me.”
    Oh yes she could. She checked his forehead. Satisfied that he no longer had a temperature, she