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“It’s a good thing,” she insists.

“Then don’t tell me to sit down first,” I tell her, bopping her gently in the face with a pillow.

“Okay, let’s start over,” she says gamely. “Lydia, I have something great to tell you. Now lie down on the floor and receive your news properly.”

“That sounds like the beginning of a porno.”

“You are really stealing my thunder here,” Mom says. “I can’t compete with porn.”

“We’re definitely done talking about porn now,” I tell her. “Seriously—what is it?”

“Two things,” Mom says, holding Steven’s front paws to illustrate. “First of all, we know who torched our yard.”

“What?!” I yell. “How? Who was it? What happened?”

“Keep your knickers on, Nellie Bly,” Mom says. “Just let me tell the story.”

“Don’t do it like Dad, though, okay?” I plead.

Mom holds her hand up in a solemn vow. “Chronological, I swear.”

“’Kay, but I’m holding you to it.”

“All right.” She settles back into the pillows, Steven nestled against her chest. “Yesterday I got a call from Michelle Denney—Bob’s mom?”

“Right,” I say slowly, wondering where this could be going.

“She’s good friends with Jess Childress—”

“Brandon’s mom,” I say, filling in all the cracks on my own, in case she’s tempted to draw this out any longer. “Whose little sister was on the bus that Lytle hijacked.”

“And it turns out that . . .” Mom looks down into Steven’s adoring eyes, her hair falling in a dark sweep over both of them. “It’s hard. People can be so horrible.”

I don’t know if she’s talking to me or Steven, but there’s true distress in her voice.

“What, Mom? What happened?”

“You can’t be repeating this,” she says sternly, looking back up at me and sweeping her hair out of the way. “I wouldn’t even tell you if it wasn’t pertinent—”

I raise an eyebrow and she sighs.

“Dale Childress has been sleeping with Randi Bean—”

“The Sweet Corn princess?” I ask.

“How would you even know that?” Mom asks, perplexed, and I wave toward my laptop, letting that stand for an answer.

“Anyway, Jess found out that Dale was cheating. So she hit back. Called Michelle Denney and told her that it was Dale who stole those signs and put them in our yard. Michelle called me, and I called your dad, and the sheriff went out to talk to Dale about it. Turns out he had all these scratches on his face, and a busted lip, with no real good explanation of where they came from.”

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “He could’ve said Bristal Jamison and I’m pretty sure that would cover it.”

“Well”—Mom shakes her head—“I don’t know that Bristal really strikes me as the scratching type. I bet Jess got a few licks in, herself, once she heard he’d been cheating. Regardless, Dale wasn’t a hard nut to crack. He folded right off, told the sheriff things haven’t been too great lately and he’s been making a lot of bad decisions.”

“Aww . . . ,” I say, clutching my chest with one hand while holding up my middle finger with the other.

“Now, seriously, Lydia. It’s not funny. He got laid off, you know? And I guess Dale got all down on himself. His marriage was falling apart—”

“His fault,” I interject.