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I print out the rest of the Hometown Henley Headlines from the long stretch, knowing that coverage of the Boggs murder will continue, interest fading only as it becomes clear that whoever killed him isn’t going to be easily captured and that nobody was all that upset about him dying in the first place. Out on the sidewalk, I hand Bristal the rest of her copies, which she dutifully folds into a square and jams into her back pocket. I pull out my phone to check for texts, only to find one from Bristal with twenty-six iterations of her newly found pee emoji.

“Thanks for all the research help,” I say bitterly, flashing the screen at her. “You’re an inspiration.” I veer toward South Lincoln Street, Bristal keeping pace beside me.

“I may not think microfiche is sexy,” Bristal says, “but I was doing research, YouTube-style. I looked up old news footage from the tornado.”

“Oh?” I say, pausing by a monument for the tornado victims to take her outstretched phone. To my surprise, Bristal leans down and starts pulling some of the weeds that have overtaken the geraniums the village council plants every year. I push play on the video and turn up the volume, walking alongside Bristal as I head for home. Her phone screen is cracked, adding to the feeling of destruction. I’m no longer just being told what people said, I hear their voices. And these people are desolate.

“We’re just hoping she finds her way home,” Betsy Hemming says, concern for her elderly mother stamped on her features, while a man behind her winds a wheelbarrow through a field of debris.

“It’s like taking a spoonful of water out of the ocean,” I say to myself, and Bristal straightens beside me, glancing over my shoulder.

“Check out this next bit,” she says.

A young man appears on the screen, his entire head wrapped in a bandage, a bright red oval of blood already seeping through from his temple. One eye is swollen completely shut, the skin around it a deep purple, his nose bent at an awkward angle. He’s wearing the Henley classic—a wifebeater and a pair of loose-fitting blue jeans. But his skin is nicely tanned against the white of his shirt, and even I can’t deny that the outline of muscles there is worth a second look. He’s motioning at the pile behind him, but his words are lost in the reporter’s voiceover.

“Dover Jamison, eighteen, was staying with family in town when the tornado hit,” she explains.

“They got air-conditioning, and I don’t,” Dover says helpfully. “Thought I’d be able to get some rest, but . . .” He shrugs, an aw-shucks move that seems to work some sort of magic on the blond reporter, who moves in closer to him.

“Was it worth it?” she asks, with a coy smile.

“Well . . .” Dover scratches at the bandage above his ear, the grin still spreading. “That AC unit is sitting in the nonfiction section of the library now, and the couch I was on at the time got moved down to Third Street, but hey—at least I didn’t get hurt.”

“‘At least I didn’t get hurt’!” Bristal echoes, clapping her hands together. “His face is barely attached to his head and he’s just glad he didn’t get hurt. That’s a Jamison for you,” she says, taking the phone back from me. “We’re hard to kill.”

“So, Dover would be your . . . ?” I spin my finger in the air, waiting for her to fill in the blank.

“Uncle,” she says. “Most everybody is my cousin, but he’s actually my legit uncle. Mom’s brother.”

“Most everybody is your cousin?” I repeat dubiously.

“I mean, like, we don’t differentiate second cousin, third cousin, once removed, twice removed. All that stuff, you know?”

“Genealogy?”

“Yeah, that,” she says dismissively. “It’s just easier to say cousin for everybody. And also like my mom’s uncles or aunts, we grew up with her calling them Uncle Steve or Aunt Joan, so all my brothers and sisters, we call them Uncle Steve and Aunt Joan. But they’re really not.”

“They’re your great-aunt and -uncle,” I clarify, pausing at the end of my driveway.

“Yeah, sure,” Bristal agrees half-heartedly, gazing down the length of the drive, past the tall pines to the broad expanse of our front porch. “Being rich looks fun.”

“We’re not rich,” I snipe back. “We don’t even use the third floor; it’s just one big ballroom.”

Bristal cocks her head at me, the wind playing with her dark hair, her half smile barely visible in the twilight. “Do you even hear the words that come out of your mouth sometimes?”

I reconsider what I just said, and don’t see a way to backpedal from it. “Good job with the old news reels,” I say instead. “It looks like your uncle was right in the thick of it. Would he want to come onto the show?”

“I don’t know,” Bristal says. “How do you feel about airing an episode from prison?”

Seven

“Mom? I’m home!” I call out as I kick my shoes off on the side screened porch. Dad’s car isn’t in the garage, which doesn’t surprise me, with the Lytle case being in court today. It’s also a nice bonus for me, because without Dad at the table, we’ll be indulging in some grazing and snacks instead of a proper sit-down of a supper. Mom doesn’t always play the straight and narrow game as well as he might want her to, and I don’t rat her out when we do Cheez-Its and Pop-Tarts for a meal. It takes me back to my childhood, when Mom would tell me to make sure to hide my Happy Meal toys so that Dad thought we still had some self-respect when he wasn’t around.

“Up here!” Mom’s voice trails down the grand staircase. It’s wide enough to drive a car up and takes a lofty bend to the left at the top, some ancient oak that grew at just the right twisted angle now transplanted as our hand rail.

I grab a bottle of water and follow Mom’s voice to the upstairs living room, suddenly very aware of the mental distinction. . . . We have a downstairs one as well. I imagine Bristal’s reaction to that and decide to close my thoughts to her for the moment. I don’t feel guilt that the Chass name means I live in this house. We didn’t break other people’s backs to get here; my great-great-grandparents worked their asses off, and I have this as a result. Still, I can’t help but wonder what Bristal’s house looks like as I plop onto the love seat and twist the cap off my water bottle. Mom mutes the television and the man on-screen telling us all about the amazing attributes of arctic foxes falls mercifully silent.

“How’d it go?” Mom asks. “Get anything good?”