Gloria opened her dark tanning oil bottle and spread a fresh coat over her browning legs. Suze eyed them enviously. Gloria started giggling.

“What?” Suze asked.

Gloria capped the oil and looked up with a devilish grin.

“Would you rather . . .”

“Oh, Lord, Gloria,” Suze rolled her eyes and looked around to make sure her kids were out of earshot.

They were still in the pool, though Bryce was trying to hoist himself up the wrong way onto the waterslide now, followed by Savannah. Melody and her overinflated water wings watched. Suze moved her baby to her other breast.

“Go on,” Suze said.

“Would you rather screw a black or a spic?” Gloria asked, her voice low, her wicked smile wide.

The shriek of Walton’s whistle pierced the air.

“Not allowed!” he bellowed from the chair above them. “Stop right this second, that is NOT ALLOWED!”

He pretended he was screaming at the kids. Startled, Gloria and Suze covered their ears, and Suze’s newborn started wailing.

The first thing Bo saw when he pulled up to his aunt Lyn’s house was Jiminy sitting on the porch. He hadn’t expected her to be there, and he felt unprepared for an encounter. He shifted into reverse to back out before she saw him, but he was too late. She looked up.

He shifted back into drive and continued rolling up to the house, feeling silly for even contemplating flight.

“Hey,” he said as he climbed out. “I was surprised to see you here.”

“I came with Carlos,” Jiminy explained. “He’s talking with Lyn.”

Bo had yet to meet Carlos, though he appreciated what he and Jiminy were trying to do.

“How’s it all going?” he asked.

Jiminy shrugged her pointy shoulders.

“It’s going,” she said.

She sighed and looked up.

“I don’t mean to be like that, it’s going well, actually. We’re uncovering a lot. I’m just not sure how I fit into it all sometimes.”

She couldn’t keep the sadness out of her voice, and looking straight into Bo’s eyes had been a mistake. She longed to be comforted by him in ways that were no longer possible.

“It seems to me you’re the reason it’s all happening,” Bo replied. “I think that makes you God of the entire operation, which is a pretty good way to fit into anything. Though occasionally thankless, sure. People doubt you, turn their backs on you, take you for granted, take your name in vain. They’ll come back to you in the end, though. You just gotta hang in there. Take comfort in your omnipotence.”

Jiminy smiled, which made her almost beautiful. Her turned head set her face at a fresh angle, and Bo felt himself falling for her all over again. It wasn’t up to him, which was frustrating. It never was.

“Maybe I should come back another time, if they’re gonna be a while,” Bo said as he turned to leave.

“Are you studying a lot?” Jiminy asked.

“Not enough, probably,” he answered. “But I’ll pick it up,” he continued. “I’ve just been a little distracted.”

“By who?” Jiminy asked sharply.

Bo appreciated the jealousy in her voice and let himself fantasize briefly about reconciliation, but he knew it wasn’t a responsible option. For her sake, he had to be strong.

“No particular who. More of a what. Regular life stuff,” he answered. “Listen, I’m gonna head out now and come see Aunt Lyn this evening. I’ll catch up with you later on, okay?”

“No!” Jiminy protested.

She hadn’t meant to shout. She hadn’t meant to say no at all. It had just forced its way out of her, in visceral response to the idea of Bo leaving her again. The power of her objection startled them both.

“Everything all right out here?” came a voice from behind them.

Carlos was in the doorway. Behind him, Lyn looked concerned.

“Everything’s fine,” Jiminy said, struggling to regain her composure. “Carlos, this is Bo. Bo, please meet Carlos.”

“Hey, man,” Bo said, reaching out his hand.

“Pleasure,” Carlos said, smiling at him.

As the two men shook, Lyn moved out onto the porch.

“Anything wrong?” Lyn asked her great-nephew.

She hadn’t been expecting Bo in the middle of the afternoon. She worried something unpleasant had driven him to seek her out when he otherwise would have been studying under the hickory tree, divining the secrets of the mass of blood and muscle and tissue we humans dragged around day after day after day.

“Everything’s fine,” Bo reassured her. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, didn’t know you had company. Just wanted to check in.”

Lyn looked from him to Jiminy. She saw the flush in the girl’s cheeks and the agitation in both their postures. She sighed.

“There’s absolutely no reason you two can’t be friends,” she said.

Jiminy and Bo looked quickly at Lyn, surprised.

“We know that, Aunt Lyn,” Bo said.

“And we are,” Jiminy chimed in. “We will be.”

“No reason,” Lyn repeated. “No reason at all . . .”

She trailed off, suddenly feeling completely worn out. She knew they were all staring at her as she sank down to take a seat on the porch steps, but she kept her head bowed. Gravity had gotten the best of her for the day—she was ready to concede defeat.

From her new vantage point, she could see a village of ants stretching themselves thin from their hill toward unknown destinations through the grass and into the woods. She wondered if they ever slept as she watched a group of them carry a dead cricket on their backs. Such strength! Such endurance! She marveled at their ability to march steadily on, underneath such an outsized burden, myopically undeterred.

Later, at the Comfort Inn, Carlos flipped through the channels of his small, unsatisfactory television. He didn’t care what he watched; he was in search of the numbness that comes with staring at a screen in an artificially dark room on a sunny day. He needed to give his brain a rest.

He settled on a national newscast, which was breathlessly covering the story of a missing eighteen-year-old from a suburb of Minneapolis. Apparently, the girl had made a cell phone call to her boyfriend from the parking lot of a mall and mentioned that she was scared someone was following her. Her phone had turned up two days later in a Dumpster four miles away, but there still hadn’t been any trace of her. The newscaster gave an update on the hundreds of volunteers conducting all-night searches and urged anyone with information to please call. He showed a full-screen photo of the missing young woman, who had curly blond hair and a cherubic face, complete with dimples. She was adorable, and, Carlos guessed, also dead.

He sighed and turned the TV off. When Carlos was on the road, he didn’t let himself think too much about home, but at the moment, he was missing it. He closed his eyes briefly and let himself imagine he was back there. Not where he lived now, but where he had grown up, in a house in the woods by a creek.

This was the place he mentally went to relax. He’d never taken a meditation class, but he was familiar with the essential “go to your happy place” concept. Carlos didn’t consider himself a well-adjusted person generally. He was haunted and driven, with little time for comfort-seeking. But he understood the value of a calm, clear mind, and over the years, he’d developed his own mode of achieving it.

The creek had been his constant companion as a youth. His bedroom window had opened up to it, so he’d read and dressed and slept to the sound of rushing water all his growing-up years. He’d ridden a raft down it, caught crawdads in it, and studied all the various plants and trees beside it. Along its banks, he’d become fascinated with sweet gum, tupelo, bald cypress, Spanish moss, prickly pear cactus, and all different species of pine. When the rain came, the creek would swell and spill, threatening to swamp the little house his family owned. Carlos had always been aware of the potential damage, and he was sensitive to his parents’ stress, but he couldn’t help but side with the creek. If it wanted to go for more, he was with it all the way.