She tugged her shorts down and sniffed.

"Want some coffee?"

"Sure."

"Wait right here." She went into the house.

"Hey, girls," I called out.

Tiffani kept jumping. Chondra looked up. Her mouth hung slightly open and water droplets bubbled her forehead, like oversized sweat.

I went over to her. "Swim a lot?"

She gave a very small nod and splashed one arm, turning away and facing the avocado tree. Young fruit hung from the branches, veiled by a cloud of whiteflies. Some of it was blackened with disease.

Tiffani waved at me. Then she began to chant in a loud voice:

"I went to the Chinese restaurant,

to get a loaf of bread bread bread,

a man was there with a big mustache,

and this is what he said said said.

El eye el eye chicholo beauty, pom-pom cutie…"

Evelyn came back holding a couple of mugs. Bonnie marched behind her carrying a small plate of sugar wafers. The look on her face said she'd been created for better things.

I walked back to the lawn chairs.

Bonnie said, "Here you go," handed me the plate, and sashayed off.

Evelyn gave me a mug. "Black or cream?"

"Black."

We sat and sipped. I balanced the cookie plate on my lap.

"Have one," she said, "or are you one of those health-food types?"

I took a wafer and chewed on it. Lemon-flavored and slightly stale.

"I dunno," she said, "maybe I shoulda been a health fooder, too. I always gave my kids sugar and stuff, whatever they wanted- maybe I shouldn'ta. Got a boy went AWOL over in Germany two years ago, don't even know where he is, the baby don't know zero about what she wants to do with her life, and Ruthie…"

She shook her head and looked over at Tiffani. "Watch your head on that branch, you!"

"Bonnie's the baby?" I said.

Nod. "She got all the brains and the looks. Just like her daddy- he coulda been a movie star. Only time I ever went gaga for the looks, and boy, what a mistake that was."

She gave a full smile. "He cleaned me out thirteen months after we were married. Left me with the baby in diapers and went down to Louisiana to work the deep-sea rigs. Got killed soon after in a fall that they said was an accident. Never took out the right insurance for himself, so I got nothing."

She smiled wider. "He had a temper on him. All my men do. Roddy's got a fuse on him, too, though it takes a while to get it lit. He's a Mexican, but he's the best of the lot."

She patted the T-shirt pocket that held the cigarette pack. "Sugar and bad tempers and cancer sticks. I really go for all the good things in life, huh?"

Her eyes watered again. She lit up.

"All the good things," she said. "All the blessed good things."

She kept the cigarette in her mouth, busied her hands by squeezing them together, letting go, repeating the motion. The lanyard lay on the grass, neglected.

"There's no room for your guilt," I said.

She yanked the cigarette out of her mouth and stared at me. "What'd you say?"

"There's no room for your guilt. All the guilt belongs to Donald Dell. One hundred percent of it."

She started to say something, but stopped.

I said, "No one else should carry that burden, Evelyn. Not Ruthanne for going with him that night, and certainly not you for the way you raised her. Junk food had nothing to do with what happened. Neither did anything but Donald Dell's impulses. It's his cross to bear now."

Her eyes were on me, but wavering.

I said, "He's a bad guy, he does bad things, no one knows why. And now you're having to be a mom, all over again, when you weren't planning on it. And you're going to do it without complaining too much and you're going to do your best. No one's going to pay you or give you any credit, so at least give yourself some."

"You talk sweet," she said. "Telling me what I want to hear." Wary, but not angry. "Sounds like you got a temper on you, too."

"I talk straight. For my own sake- you're right about that. All of us do what we think's best for us. And I do like to make money- I went to school a long time to learn what I do. I'm worth a high fee, so I charge it. But I also like to sleep well at night."

"Me, too. So what?" She smoked, coughed, ground out the cigarette with disgust. "Been a long time since I slept peacefully."

"Takes time."

"Yeah… how long?"

"I don't know, Evelyn."

"Least you're honest." Smile. "Maybe."

"What about the girls?" I said. "How do they sleep?"

"Not good," she said. "How could they? The little one wakes complaining she's hungry- which is a laugh, 'cause she eats all day, though you wouldn't know it to look at her, would you? I used to be like that, believe it or not." Squeezing her thigh. "She gets up two, three times a night, wanting Hersheys and licorice and ice cream."

"Does she ever get those things?"

"Hel- heck no. There's a limit. I give her a piece of orange or something- maybe a half a cookie- and send her right back. Not that it stops her the next time."

"What about Chondra?"

"She don't get up, but I hear her crying in her bed- under the blanket." She looked over at the older girl, who was sitting motionless in the center of the pool. "She's the soft one. Soft as jelly."

She sighed and looked down at her coffee with disdain. "Instant. Shoulda made real stuff."

"It's fine," I said, and drank to prove it.

"It's okay, but it's not great- don't see great around here too often. My second husband- Brian's dad- owned a big place up near Fresno- table grapes and alfalfa, some quarter horses. We lived up there for a few years- that was close to great, all that space. Then he went back to his drinking- Brian, Senior- and it all went to- straight down the tubes. Ruthie used to love that place- especially the horses. There's riding stables around here, too, out in Shadow Hills, but it's expensive. We always said we'd get over there but we never did."

The sun dropped behind the cloud bank, and the yard dimmed.

"What're you gonna do to us?" she said.

"To you?"

"What's your plan?"

"I'd like to help you."

"If you wanna help them, keep them away from him, that's all. He's a devil."

"Tiffani called him an instrument of Satan."

"I told her that," she said defiantly. "You see something wrong with that?"

"Not at all."

"It's my faith- it props me up. And he is one."

"How'd Ruthanne meet him?"

Her shoulders dropped. "She was waitressin' at a place out in Tujunga- okay, it was a bar. He and his bunch hung out there. She went out with him for months before tellin' me. Then she brought him home and the first look I got I said no, no, no- my experiences, I can spot a bad apple like that." Snap of fingers. "I warned her, but that didn't do no good. Maybe I gave up too easy, I don't know. I was havin' problems of my own, and Ruthie didn't think I had a single intelligent thing to say to her."

She lit another cigarette and took several hard, fast drags. "She was stubborn. That was her only real sin."

I drank more coffee.

"Nothing to say anymore, doc? Or am I boring you?" She flicked ashes onto the dirt.

"I'd rather listen."

"And they pay you all that money for that? Good racket you got there."

"Beats honest labor," I said.

She smiled. First friendly one I'd seen.

"Stubborn," she said. She smoked and sighed and called out, "Five more minutes, then into the house for homework, both a you!"

The girls ignored her. She kept looking at them. Drifted off, as if she'd forgotten I was there. But then she turned and looked at me.

"So, Mr. Easy Listener, what do you want from me and my little girls?"

Same question she'd asked me the first time she met me. I said, "Enough time to find out exactly how they've been affected by their mom's death."