He turned his face to his arithmetic book.

The numbers looked friendly to him, because he liked them and because they wouldn’t avoid his eyes. And thus, his sterling academic career began that day in Heather Davidson’s classroom, where the only companionship was to be found in his teacher’s kindness and in the impersonal facts in the book on his desk. He desperately wanted Mrs. Davidson to be proud of him and to continue to like him, and Collin decided that the way to do that was to listen very hard and always do his homework and make A’s on all of his tests. For a moment he had a terrible sinking feeling as he thought, It isn’t as if I have anybody to play with now, so I might as well study all the time. He forced those feelings and thoughts down, along with the traitorous ones about his mother. As he looked at 7 + 2 =?, he realized-without even looking at the row of seven apples and the row of two apples-that it equaled 9, and he raised his hand to show Mrs. Davidson that he was the first one with the correct answer.

“Forty plus twenty equals sixty,” a voice behind him whispered.

Collin doubted very much that particular boy knew that fact about prison sentencing, and he wondered if his mom or dad had told him to say it.

“Yes, Collin?”

“Nine.”

WHILE COLLIN CROSBY adjusted to his painful new reality in school, Jody was still going out to the front porch of the ranch house every night to watch for her father’s silver truck. She lived with her grandparents now, and had the nearly constant company of her daddy’s two dogs, which her family had brought along with her and all of her belongings.

She often took her uncle Chase’s hand and made him go out to the porch with her and the black Labs.

“He’s coming home,” she assured him. “Daddy’s bringing me a surprise.”

After they had stood there together for a while, looking down the long driveway, Chase would walk her back into the house, where her grandmother would give her a bath and put her into her pajamas. Then Chase would read to her, sitting by her bed and holding her hand until she fell asleep, while the scent of dog filled the bedroom with a kind of animal reassurance and comfort. They were the first and only animals ever allowed to live in the ranch house, but even Hugh Senior seemed glad to sometimes find them at his feet in his office.

After a few more weeks, although Jody still went onto the porch after supper to look down the road, she stopped taking her uncle with her and she stopped talking about it. As for Chase, every night after his niece fell asleep, he cleaned up and drove into town, where he drank too much and pursued women as if his life depended on their acquiescence to him. During that fall and the first winter, he worked so hard and loyally for his father that Hugh Senior had to order him to stop at the end of their long days. Once, his father found Chase still driving in fence posts at ten at night, after dark, and when he told him to stop, his big, tough, handsome son bent over the top of a post and sobbed. Hugh Senior patted his middle son on his back and wondered if any of them were ever going to be able to be happy again in this life where even the most simple tasks were now so hard to do.

“WELL, HERE WE ARE, HONEY,” Annabelle said at the start of one of those tasks. She slanted the Caddy into a parking spot in front of George’s Fresh Foods & Deli on Main Street across from the library and City Hall. At the five-and-dime, the windows were full of cardboard cutouts of Santa Claus and his elves. “Let’s go buy a chicken and some potatoes for supper.”

It was an unseasonably warm day for December, not requiring coats.

Jody didn’t move except to turn her head and stare in a direction that, if she’d had X-ray vision, could have let her see through the two-room City Hall, on through a couple of houses, and directly into her former home. The big stone house with her bedroom on the second floor was two blocks away. Her mouth was open a little, but there was no expression on her face except for a dull resignation that belonged on the face of a defeated adult and not on a three-year-old girl.

Annabelle said, to distract her, “Let’s get you out of your car seat.”

Resuming a normal life-walking into the bank, shopping at the grocery store, going to the co-op-was challenging. Every time Annabelle went into Rose, she had to gird herself. People tried to be correct, but nothing they said or did could be right. She knew people were doing their best. She knew she was being unfair. But she was doing her best, too. She couldn’t help it if she felt annoyed with them or wanted to run away from their sympathy. She didn’t like being the object of pity. She felt grateful to the people who expressed their concern these days with warmth and genuine affection in their eyes but didn’t make a big deal of it. She was grateful to the bank teller who simply asked, in a conversational tone, “You want this in twenties, Mrs. Linder?” and to the clothing store clerk who said, “Annabelle, do you know it’s three bras for the price of one right now?” Even in such ordinary transactions there were hazards, though. “Three” made her think of three sons, and how she had only one left at home. “Twenties” made her think about how Hugh-Jay was that age when he was murdered.

She couldn’t control people’s responses to her.

She could barely control her own reactions, so why expect more of other people?

All she could do was breathe, and grit her teeth when need be, and put all her energy into buying a bra without weeping over it the way Chase had sobbed over the fence post. She could only smile and reply, “Twenties will be fine, thanks,” and, “Oh, good. I’ll add a black one.”

She had learned to take Jody with her wherever she went, partly to get the child to do something besides follow her around in the house all day, but also for the selfish reason of manipulating people’s reactions. Only the crass would risk talking about Hugh-Jay or Laurie around their orphan. To protect Jody, Annabelle felt no qualms about saying firmly to people, with a reminding glance down at the dark top of her small head, “Let’s change the subject, shall we?” She couldn’t easily say that for herself, alone, but she could get the words out in defense of her granddaughter-even though she was the person who put Jody in the position to hear such words. But taking Jody along also solved the problem they were having with the child being afraid to stay anywhere without a member of her family near her. Babysitters were still out of the question. The child who hadn’t been afraid of much of anything, seemed now to be frightened of everything. Nothing upset her as much as thunderstorms, though, and it didn’t take a child psychiatrist to understand that she associated them with the loss of her parents.

Annabelle thought that was desperately sad.

She wanted the child back who clapped her hands at thunder and lightning.

“She’s afraid of God,” she had told her husband. “She’s afraid of God because Laurie made her say that awful prayer every night. You know the one: ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.’” Annabelle had thought it was a bad idea to begin with, because good grief, what a thing to put into a child’s head that she might die in her sleep! But it turned out to be bad for an unforeseen reason-nobody had warned the child that it was her parents who might die while she slept. Jody didn’t trust God anymore. She thought he’d been tricky. He’d distracted her into praying for herself while he sneaked in and stole her parents away.

Tricky ol’ God, Annabelle thought bitterly as she helped Jody out of the backseat. The child has a point, you know, she said silently, with a sardonic glance to the sky. You ought to be ashamed of Yourself. She heard a deep voice in her mind retort: I never told anybody to say that stupid prayer, and she laughed a little at her own ridiculous fancies.