I knew I’d have to go talk to my brother. Though I’d told Jason to stay away from me, he wasn’t listening. When had he ever? Maybe he’d taken the temporary truce caused by Crystal’s death as a sign of a new state of things.

I sighed and went out the back door. Since I’d slept so late, I’d showered before I’d even made my coffee. I grabbed my old quilted pink jacket off the rack by the back door and pulled it over my jeans and sweater.

I put a mug of coffee on the ground by Jason, and I sat on the upright folding chair close to him. He didn’t turn his head, though he knew I was there. His eyes were hidden behind dark glasses.

“You forgiven me?” he asked after he’d taken a gulp of coffee. His voice sounded hoarse and thick. I thought he’d been crying.

“I expect that sooner or later I might,” I said. “But I’ll never feel the same about you again.”

“God, you’ve gotten hard. You’re all the family I’ve got left.” The dark glasses turned to face me.You have to forgive me, because you’re all I have who can forgive .

I looked at him, feeling a little exasperated, a little sad. If I was getting harder, it was in response to the world around me. “If you need me so much, I guess you should have thought twice before you set me up like that.” I rubbed my face with my free hand. He had some family he didn’t know about, and I wasn’t going to tell him. He would only try to use Niall, too.

“When will they release Crystal’s body?” I asked.

“Maybe in a week,” he said. “Then we can have the funeral. Will you come?”

“Yes. Where will it be?”

“There’s a chapel out close to Hotshot,” he said. “It doesn’t look like much.”

“The Tabernacle Holiness Church?” It was a peeling, white ramshackle building way out in the country.

He nodded. “Calvin said they do the burials for Hotshot from there. One of the guys in Hotshot is the pastor for it.”

“Which one?”

“Marvin Norris.”

Marvin was Calvin’s uncle, though he was four years younger.

“I think I remember seeing a cemetery out back of the church.”

“Yeah. The community digs the hole, one of them puts together the coffin, and one of them does the service. It’s real homey and personal.”

“You’ve been to a funeral there before?”

“Yeah, in October. One of the babies died.”

There hadn’t been an infant death listed in the Bon Temps paper in months. I had to wonder if the baby had been born in a hospital or in one of the houses in Hotshot; if any trace of its existence had ever been recorded.

“Jason, have the police been by any more?”

“Over and over. But I didn’t do it, and nothing they say or ask can make that change. Plus, the alibi.”

I couldn’t argue that.

“How are you fixed as far as work goes?” I wondered if they would fire Jason. It wasn’t the first time he’d been in trouble. And though Jason was never guilty of the worst crimes attributed to him, sooner or later his reputation as being a generally okay guy would simply crumple for good.

“Catfish said to take time off until the funeral. They’re going to send a wreath to the funeral home when we get her body back.”

“What about Hoyt?”

“He hasn’t been around,” Jason said, sounding puzzled and hurt.

Holly, his fiancée, wouldn’t want him hanging around with Jason. I could understand that.

“Mel?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Jason said, brightening. “Mel comes by. We worked on his truck yesterday, and this weekend we’re going to paint my kitchen.” Jason smiled at me, but it faded fast. “I like Mel,” he said, “but I miss Hoyt.”

That was one of the most honest things I’d ever heard Jason say.

“Haven’t you heard anything about this, Sookie?” Jason asked me. “You know—the way youhear things? If you could steer the police in the right direction, they could find out who killed my wife and my baby, and I could get my life back.”

I didn’t think Jason was ever going to get his old life back. I was sure he wouldn’t understand, even if I spelled it out. But then I saw what was in his head in a moment of true clarity. Though Jason couldn’t verbalize these ideas, hedid understand, and he was pretending, pretending hard, that everything would be the same . . . if only he could get out from under the weight of Crystal’s death.

“Or if you tell us,” he said, “we’ll take care of it, Calvin and me.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said. What else could I say? I climbed out of Jason’s head and swore to myself I wouldn’t get inside again.

After a long silence, he got up. Maybe he’d been waiting to see if I’d offer to make lunch for him. “I guess I’ll go back home, then,” he said.

“Good-bye.”

I heard his truck start up a moment later. I went back in, hanging the jacket back where I’d gotten it.

Amelia had left me a note stuck to the milk carton in the refrigerator. “Hey, roomie!” it said by way of opening. “Sounded like you had company last night. Did I smell a vampire? Heard someone shut the back door about three thirty. Listen, be sure and check the answering machine. You got messages.”

Which Amelia had already listened to, because the light wasn’t blinking anymore. I pressed the Play button.

“Sookie, this is Arlene. I’m sorry about everything. I wish you’d come by to talk. Give me a call.”

I stared at the machine, not sure how I felt about this message. It had been a few days, and Arlene had had time to reconsider stomping out of the bar. Could she possibly mean she wanted to recant her Fellowship beliefs?

There was another message, this one from Sam. “Sookie, can you come in to work a little early today or give me a call? I need to talk to you.”

I glanced at the clock. It was just one p.m., and I wasn’t due at work until five. I called the bar. Sam picked up.

“Hey, it’s Sookie,” I said. “What’s up? I just got your message.”

“Arlene wants to come back to work,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell her. You got an opinion?”

“She left a message on my answering machine. She wants to talk to me,” I said. “I don’t know what to think. She’s always on some new thing, isn’t she? Do you think she could have dropped the Fellowship?”

“If Whit dropped her,” he said, and I laughed.

I wasn’t so sure I wanted to rebuild our friendship, and the longer I thought about it, the more doubtful I became. Arlene had said some hurtful and awful things to me. If she’d meant them, why would she want to mend fences with a terrible person like me? And if she hadn’t meant them, why on earth had they passed her lips? But I felt a twinge when I thought of her children, Coby and Lisa. I’d kept them so many evenings, and I’d been so fond of them. I hadn’t seen them in weeks. I found I wasn’t too upset about the passing of my relationship with their mother—Arlene had been killing that friendship for some time now. But the kids, I did miss them. I said as much to Sam.

“You’re too good,cher ,” he said. “I don’t think I want her back here.” He’d made up his mind. “I hope she can find another job, and I’ll give her a reference for the sake of those kids. But she was causing trouble before this last blowup, and there’s no point putting all of us through the wringer.”

After I’d hung up, I realized that Sam’s decision had influenced me in favor of seeing my ex-friend. Since Arlene and I weren’t going to get the opportunity to gradually make peace at the bar, I’d try to at least fix things so we could nod at each other if we passed in Wal-Mart.

She picked up on the first ring. “Arlene, it’s Sookie,” I said.

“Hey, hon, I’m glad you called back,” she said. There was a moment of silence.

“I thought I’d come over to see you, just for a minute,” I said awkwardly. “I’d like to see the kids and talk to you. If that’s okay.”

“Sure, come over. Give me a few minutes, so I can pick up the mess.”

“You don’t need to do that for me.” I’d cleaned Arlene’s trailer many a time in return for some favor she’d done me or because I didn’t have anything else to do while she was out and I was there to babysit.