Amelia

The mouse jerked this way and that between her fingers. It squeaked with urgency, gnashing its teeth to bite at her. Delia held the creature by its tail, watching with fascination. “C‘mon,” Lucas instructed. “like I showed you.”

She held her breath and moved over to the wooden table in the middle of the barn.The table was crowded with trinkets and pictures, a time capsule in sepia, black and white, and color. Empty candle holders and rusty bracelets with cracked stones lay among flowers that had long ago withered and dried into crisps. Pushing aside some of the clutter with her arm, she braced herself and whipped the mouse against a sharp corner. With a final yelp and a sickening crunch, the rodent fell still.

Brandy  cocked his head. He crouched in the corner, following Delia’s footsteps. Lucas and Elijah had been taking care of the ancient barn owl since they’d found him, but they never thought of him as theirs. He was always their grandmother’s.

Delia tossed the mouse in Brandy’s direction; the owl pecked the ground twice before finding its meal and swallowing it whole. She thought she could hear the mouse crackle, thin bones snapping as it made its way down Brandy’s gullet.

Delia took a few steps forward. This close up, she could tell how ancient Brandy was, with coarse, yellowed feathers and eyes reduced to milky white slits. She reached out her hand slowly, whispering to him, until Brandy accepted her pets.“See?” Lucas grinned. “He’s friendly.”

“He eats rats whole.”

“He needs to,” Elijah was sitting cross-legged, drawing shapes on the dusty wooden floor with his finger. He smiled at her as well, but on his pinched face, the twist of the lips looked painful. “He was programmed for it.”

“Delia!” All three of them flinched. Even though Delia knew that Katherine wouldn’t come inside — she hadn’t in years — she hurried to re-set all of the trinkets, candles and pictures on the table to their proper place. “Delia, are you in there? We’re late.” Their mother’s voice echoed through the large building.

Delia sighed as she headed for the barn doors, hesitating just a moment to look back at Lucas and Elijah. Both of their mouths had turned into red slits against the pale of their faces. The only thing that broke their stillness was a purple vein throbbing in Lucas’s forehead. She could feel their dark eyes on her as she walked, head down, into the blinding blue-white of noon in Georgia.

The second Delia stepped outside, Katherine’s hand was wrapped around her arm.

“What were you doing in there? I got scared when you weren’t in the house.” Katherine started walking them to the pick-up truck. “Actually, never mind. Here.” She thrust a thick blue headscarf in Delia’s direction, a soft and heavy thing, long enough to wrap several times around her face.

“This one’s itchy,” Delia wrinkled her nose but started putting it on regardless.

Katherine pursed her lips. “Can you drive?”

“Yes.”

Their pick-up truck started with a whine. As they drove past fields of sweet corn and rye that baked in the sun, Delia could feel beads of sweat forming on the back of her neck and collecting on the headscarf. The cracked leather of the seats stuck to her back and arms. Watching the shimmering road, Delia’s vision seemed to distort, becoming fuzzy at the edges. She blinked hard and shook her head, trying to dispel the strange feeling.

The church looked painfully bright to her as they pulled into the parking lot. Squat, square and scrubbed white, it seemed immune to the thick dust that coated everything around it. “Hello Katherine! Delia!” Pastor Walker greeted them from the entrance. “My, Delia, you look more like your grandmother every day.”

“Doesn’t she!” Katherine beamed.

“Yes! I remember Amelia loved that scarf. Is that her dress as well?” Pastor Walker looked Delia up and down, thin pink lips curling into a smile. He was tall and gaunt, with a face browned and hardened like a tree root in the sun. Though he was not a young man by any means, he looked no older now than he did in the black-and-white pictures from when the church had been built.

“It is! It was one of her favorites, I just patched it up a few weeks ago so Delia could wear it.”

Delia let her eyes wander while her mother caught up with the pastor. She scanned the bulletin next to the entrance. There was a play scheduled for the beginning of August, and a call for new chorus members. Somewhere inside, she could hear someone crying.

“Delia?” She looked back towards the pastor at the mention of her name. “Would you like a strawberry?” He proffered a wicker basket full of them along with the program for the day. She plucked one between two fingers and bit it slowly in half.

When she chewed, something crunched between her molars. The remainder of the strawberry sported a squashed mass of wings and legs and a segmented beige thorax. When she looked to Katherine, Delia saw her snack had a companion too, a mayfly with half its body embedded in the strawberry and the other half squirming as her mother popped it into her mouth. Delia felt her mouth open slightly in disgust. How had Katherine not noticed? She took a deep breath and ate the rest of her strawberry in silence.

“Well then, let’s go inside!” the Pastor grinned at them and waved them toward the pews. The strawberry had stained his mouth black.

Delia could hear them snickering behind her, the varsity footballers with their broad shoulders and a miasma of sweat enveloping them like a cloak. She rolled her eyes; she’d almost made her through the school day without having to interact with anyone. “Hey, Delia!”

She stopped in the hallway and turned around slowly, unsure what to expect. Cory had detached himself from the herd of jocks and was walking towards her with a cocky smile. “Hey, uh…” he looked down, stifled a giggle, looked back at her with watery blue eyes. “I have a confession to make. I… have a crush on you. A… really big crush.” He scratched the back of his head absentmindedly, revealing a sweat stain on his tank top and a scraggle of wiry armpit hair. “And I was wondering if you wanted to go on a date with me. Today.”

Delia scrunched up her forehead in confusion. His face was splotchy and soft-looking, like dough. She was convinced that if she pressed a finger to his cheek she’d leave an indent. “Uh… I have work today.”

Cory’s face broke into a confused smile. “Emm, okay, tomorrow? Cuz, you know, I reallllly like you.”

She had already half-turned to go. “No. Thanks, though.”

She didn’t catch his expression, but she heard the gaggle of boys dissolve into hoots of laughter. “Fuck, bro,” one of them said, loud enough for her to hear.

“Bro, not even the grandma wants you.”

“Shut up, dude. She’s probably just stupid. Fuckin’ crusty. Fuckin’ smells like shit anyways.”

Looking up briefly from the tiled ground and her worn flats, she saw Lucas by the juniors’ lockers. He gave her a smile and a quick thumbs-up. She ventured to curl her lips upward in response.

Once out of the building, she started towards the pick-up truck, squinting her eyes in the sun. Cory’s little stunt had delayed her, and she needed to get to Culver’s on time to start her shift.

“Delia!” She almost groaned when she heard another voice call her name, although this time she recognized it. She turned around to see her mother walking through the throng of teenagers, leading three old women behind her. “Delia, darling!”

“Katherine? What are you doing here?” She stood uncertainly by the door of the car.

“I wanted to introduce you!” Katherine smiled , wide-eyed,  and waved to the three crones with a flourish. “This is Tiffany, Agnes, and Rose. They were good friends of my mom’s.”

The women all smiled down at Delia. “Nice to meet you,” Delia mumbled. She went to open the pick-up’s door.

“Oh, nono! I thought you guys could hang out! You can get to know them—  they helped raise me!”

“Uh, I have to go to work.”

“Oh, come on! Just call your job and tell them you can’t go. It will be fun! You guys can go to Tiffany’s place, watch some TV!”

“No, I — ” Delia’s eyes flicked towards her mother’s companions. They were all still smiling, cloudy cataracted eyes trained on something slightly to her left. “I can’t just call off like that. They need two days’ notice.”

“Amel — Delia-a-a-a-a-a-a-a,” Katherine started bouncing up and down on the tips of her toes. “Come on-n-n-n-n-n.”

Looking at Katerine’s pleading eyes, Delia’s vision started to blur. She rubbed her forehead and blinked until things became relatively normal again. Even still, the edges of her sight shimmered. She gritted her teeth. “Okay. Do you guys want a ride?”

“Yes! I wanna ride in the back!” Katherine laughed, near-tantrum forgotten, and went to climb into the truck’s bed. Two of the women went with her, and the third one  sat next to Delia, filling the air with the smell of perfume, hypoallergenic soap and, under that, the insidious odor of piss.

When Delia finished the call with her manager — “can’t make it today, sorry, family emergency” — she turned the key in the ignition and gave the crone next to her a nod. It was Agnes, she thought. Or no, Tiffany. The old lady returned a wide grin that made Delia’s stomach drop. There were too many teeth. She stared at them, some of them a perfect white and others rotten. They crowded the crone’s bleeding gums and spread through the roof of her mouth.

The urge to scream was cut by a sudden click in her brain, a brief moment during which her sight whited out completely. When she blinked again, Tiffany was still smiling at her, with a perfectly normal, gap-toothed grin..

Delia opened the door to the barn, correctly expecting to find her brothers sitting with Brandy. They shielded their eyes to see her. “Delia?”

“Can I come in?” She started coming in regardless, breathing deep the scent of dirt and hay.

“Uh — ” Elijah hesitated.

“Yeah, for sure!” Lucas waved her in with an easy smile. “What’s up?”

“I wanted to be out of the house for a bit,” Delia said with measured words. She ambled toward the back of the barn, past the table with her grandmother’s altar and the darker splotch on the ground where they all suspected   Amelia had fallen and died. “Pspspspsps.” She reached out to stroke Brandy’s head.

“Hard day?” Lucas asked. “I saw you had to put up with Cory,”

“What happened with Cory?”

“Oh, she served him good,” Lucas replied, turning to Elijah. “His friends and him were teasing her, pretending to ask her for a date, and she was all chill, like ‘no.’ You should have seen his face!”

“Wait, he was pretend-asking?” Delia frowned.

The two brothers looked at her with cocked heads. “Yeah, it was a — they were being sarcastic. So they could leave you stood up somewhere.”

“…Huh.”

“Wait. You thought he was being serious?” Delia looked to the ground and shrugged. “And you said no anyways?”

“I had work. And he smells bad,” she explained. Lucas guffawed, and Elijah allowed himself a rare smirk. Encouraged by the reaction, Delia smiled back at them.

“That’s fucking funny.” Lucas sniffed and wiped a bare arm across his face.

“Serves him right,” Elijah agreed. “So why was it a hard day then?”

Delia looked back at the ground, and scratched Brandy behind the neck. The bird looked a little better than last time she’d seen him; she suspected one of her brothers had managed to brush his feathers. “Katherine made me skip work. To hang out with, uh. With some of grandma’s old friends.”

Her brothers looked at each other, then back at her with genuine alarm. “What? Really? And you did it?” Lucas was the first to speak.

“Well, yeah. She seemed like she was gonna cry if I didn’t.”

“That’s really weird,” Lucas observed after a pause.

Delia’s shoulders relaxed. The words started to tumble out of her faster.“It is, isn’t it? And she almost called me by grandma’s name, again. And I had to miss work, and I don’t know if that’s going to get me in trouble.”

“That’s not right.” Elijah shook his head, looking up from the surprisingly accurate rendition of Brandy he’d traced in the dirt. “She’s your mother, Delia. she shouldn’t encourage you to be irresponsible.”

“Well. She’s our mother,” Delia corrected. “And she’s had a hard life. I should help out when I can. But it was weird.” She pulled at a loose string on her collar. “And it—it makes me… feel bad. How she’s asking me for stuff all the time. And.” Here she lowered her voice, looking at Lucas and Elijah from under her eyebrows. “The ladies were scary. There was something wrong with them.”

The boys looked at each other again, and Delia started to worry she’d made a mistake. “Ye-eah!” Lucas stammered out finally. “No doubt, they were fucking ancient. What was up with them?”

Ohgodohgodohgod. Katherine opened her eyes, her heart beating hard against her chest and the blood hissing in her ears. She looked around the darkened room, convinced she’d find some kind of pale, chittering monster perched on the wall.

She’d had a nightmare, though she couldn’t remember what it was. Instead she was thinking about Lucas’s birth, the great emptiness she’d felt in her stomach when they pulled him out of her like the contents of an egg. The way the room had smelled of sweat and pussy and the shit she took while pushing. She remembered how hopeful she was as she craned her neck to look at the baby, asking what it was. How Billy had knelt next to her and told her. A boy . Oh, how her stomach had fallen!  Billy sat for hours with his lips on her knuckles, begging her to reason  — Elijah was only two years old, they were strapped for money, they had all they needed.

Stupid, stupid man. How she had pleaded with him, trying to get him to understand that they did not, in fact, have everything they needed. She needed a girl, needed one so badly it hurt. She would have let him fuck her right there on the hospital bed, bloody and sore as she was, if she could just get pregnant with a girl.

He left a few months later, unable to handle — he said — her begging for another kid and the constant crying over her mother’s death. She had filed a protection suit and a restraining order, just to show him. Let him try to say he was leaving her, when the court had deemed him unfit!

Katherine had just started to calm down when a loud creak came from somewhere above her head. She jumped from the bed, her feet petering on the hardwood floor all the way to Delia’s room. “Delia! Delia!”

Delia started awake. It took a couple of seconds for her eyes to focus on Katherine’s face. “Wh-Huh? Wha’s going on?”

“I had a nightmare.”

“ — Okay?”

“Can I get in here?”

Delia’s expression morphed from confusion to annoyance. “Seriously?”

“I’m scared.” Katherine pouted, eliciting a resigned sigh.

“Okay.” Delia’s voice seemed to break when she spoke, but Katherine guessed it was that she was sleepy.

“You gotta hug me though.” She climbed into the warmth of the bedsheets, where her frail frame fit easily into her daughter’s arms.

There was someone crying in the church. Again. The insistent whimpers hounded Delia as she tried to focus on Pastor Walker. She was zoning out so much, she’d forgotten what the sermon was even about. Her vision was acting up again: the room looked like it was full of smoke, the way the kitchen got when Katherine burned rice.

The crying grated on her ears. Her neck started to itch. How could no one else notice? She whipped her head around, trying to see something — anything — that indicated where the sound was coming from. She scanned the uniform walls and ceiling, everything power-washed to the same insipid shade of beige.

Katherine elbowed her. “What’s going on with you?” She asked under her breath.

“Who’s crying?” Delia replied.

“Don’t be rude.”

“You— ” Rude? Delia wanted to yell. You’ve been waking me up almost every day! With effort, she set eyes forward and focused on the service, just in time to recite the Our Father with the rest of the congregation.

When they all bent their heads to pray for themselves and each other, Delia’s mind started to wander. Somewhere out there was a bed where she could get a full night’s rest and where no one forced her to hang out with old ladies. She saw a place without Katherine. The closed lid of a plain wooden casket.

Delia’s eyes shot open. With a hitching breath, she stole glances at the other bowed heads in the room. She half-expected a horde of accusing eyes aimed at her. No one was looking though, and, barring the insistent crying, the church was silent.

Eventually, Delia’s eyes trained on the lady in front of her. Her dry, pink scalp had only a smattering of hair and, every time she reached up to scratch her head, dead skin sloughed off and floated down to the pew. Watching the white flakes fall, something gave inside of Delia. Bile rising in her throat, she pushed her way out of the pew and to the parking lot.

The low-pitched beep rang against Katherine’s ear. She sat on her bed, sucking on the tip of her thumb, waiting for Bill to answer the call.

His phone went to voicemail twice before he picked up. “Katherine?” He sounded drowsy. A cat meowed in the background.

“Bill! H-hi. How are you doing?”

“What’s going on?”

“I, um. I know this is really sudden. And it’s been a really long time. I — I lost my job.” There was silence on the other side of the line. “I’m having trouble with—with the bills and stuff, and food for the kids.”

The cat was still meowing.

“Bill? Are you there?”

A long sigh sounded. “You’re kidding, right? It’s been fifteen years, Katherine! You put a restraining order on me! I pay my child support and I leave you alone, like you wanted. Why don’t you have savings? Why aren’t you calling friends for this?”

Two tears slid down her burning cheeks. She could barely get the words out. “I — I’m doing my best, Bill. You try raising three children on your own.”

He sputtered. “Th-three? You had another one?”

“Yes, Delia, she’s fourteen next week, and growing into a fine young lady.” Pride seeped into her voice.

Bill breathed deep again. “You named her Delia? Who’s her father?”

“Joseph… No, his name was Jason.”

“You don’t remember?”

“We met at a bar.”

“Why don’t you ask him for money?”

“He doesn’t know he has a kid with me.”

“Jesus, Katie.” His voice took on a familiar cadence, the exasperated concern he had for her during the third — and last — year of their marriage. She’d always found it condescending. “Can you put Elijah or Lucas on the phone, please?”

She tensed up. “What for?”

“Because they’re my kids?”

“You’re not allowed to talk to them, remember? And your kids are turning out badly, by the way. They’ve been a really bad influence on Delia since they started hanging out.”

“Since they star — you’re the one that just called! Katie, please put one of my sons on the phone.”

“No. I didn’t call you to be judged like this!!”

“I’m not judging, but Katie, you clearly need help. You’re broke, you’re raising three kids and I don’t know how good of a job you’re doing. Where are you living now?”

“I told you, you can’t see us! I’ll call the cops!”

His voice was still calm. It infuriated her. “I don’t care. Where are you? Are you still living at the farmhouse?”

“Oh, no you don’t! You don’t get to decide now to show up and tell me that I’m doing a bad job. We’re doing fine, and me and Amelia are keeping things together, just like we always have!”

She slammed the phone to the ground without hanging up. The other side of the line was silent anyway.

The three of them were playing Hangman on the barn floor, using the dust to spell. It was Elijah and Lucas— both of them dismal at spelling — against Delia and, losing so badly, Lucas was grateful none of them had change to bet.

“Katherine’s been waking me up. Apparently she’s been having nightmares?”

“This has happened multiple times?” he asked.

“Yes! Several times this week! I don’t know what’s going on with her.”

“She’s being irresponsible,” Lucas said. He scanned the nearly-complete hanging man drawn on the floor and the letters they had traced and scribbled. “B?” He guessed. “No? Shit.” They were going to lose soon.

“Yeah.” His sister lowered her eyes and fidgeted with the dirty lace on her sleeve cuffs. “Thank you guys for letting me hang out here recently. It’s been nice.” Delia had a voice that always unnerved Lucas, slow and monotone, but she’d loosened up a bit lately. He watched her grab the mouse that they’d bought at the pet store — Elijah had killed it already — and toss it at Brandy. Brandy had molted recently, and his new feathers were much cleaner and healthier.

Lucas turned to his brother with arched eyebrows, gesturing towards their sister. She could come with us, he mouthed.

Elijah shook his head vigorously— a clear no— but Lucas pretended not to notice. His sister was weird, no denying that, but her mother tortured her as much as she tortured the two of them. Just in a different way. It surprised him, but he didn’t want to leave her behind.

“Listen,” he started. “You know that Katherine isn’t… well. She is not a good mother to us, and Elijah and I think that she’s… well… in her head — she’s not all here.”

Elijah sighed. Delia waited.

“And we—you don’t deserve that. So we were thinking of leaving.”

Their sister sat still, eyes moving rapidly from one of them to the other, then to an empty spot in the corner. “No,” she finally declared. “No, we can’t abandon her.”

“Delia,” Lucas sighed. “Delia, please. We need to leave. Our lives would be better.”

“She loves us!”

“Damn it, man, help me!” Lucas turned to Elijah. “You came up with this in the first place.”

“I didn’t come up with bringing her along.”

“We can’t just leave her!”

Elijah looked at his sister. “When has she ever shown us love? When has she ever shown you love? She doesn’t even get your name right.”

Delia was getting agitated. “Well—Where are you guys going to go? Lucas, you’re not even done with high school. You have no money, no jobs, and no one is going to rent us a place.”

“I’ll lie about my age so I can start my car mechanic apprenticeship early. You can get another food industry job. We’ll figure it out. I’d rather sleep on the street than stay here.” Lucas spit on the floor.

“I— No.” She stood up, her worn sneakers kicking up a cloud of dust. The sun framed her slouched figure as she walked out the barn doors. She didn’t look back.

“Goddamn it!” Lucas barely waited until she was gone. He was surprised to find tears blurring his eyes. “Goddamn it!”

“What did you think would happen?” Elijah, usually calm, was rapidly losing his composure. “Delia’s fucking crazy as well.”

“She’s not crazy, Katherine’s got her brainwashed!”

“She’s got nothing behind her eyes!” Elijah screamed. “I know you hate Katherine, Lucas, and believe me, I miss having parents too, but you can’t save Delia. They’re perfect for each other. We need to leave soon, before Delia snitches.”

Lucas smacked the ground, lifting up a swirl of dirt. “At least you get to miss it.”

“Huh?”

“Having parents. At least you get to miss it.”

Delia stood in the cramped bathroom, Katherine next to her. Her mother was spreading out the contents of an old makeup bag next to the sink.

“Okay, so — this was all your grandmother’s! I’ve been waiting until you were old enough to give it to you. The colors would suit you.”

Delia scanned the palettes and glosses with her eyes: blushes that were too red, eyeshadows in bronzes and browns. “It’s all very old… doesn’t make-up expire?”

“Well. Yes, but this has been put away for so long, I’m sure it’s fine! Come, I’ll do it for you.”

Delia waited while her mother applied a thick layer of foundation, some powder, and eyeshadow. Everything felt cakey, like dried mud, and most of the palettes were cracked. The brushes tickled her nose and her eyelids.

“Okay!” Katherine said finally. She handed Delia a closed lipstick. “Final touch, the lips.”

Delia uncapped and rolled out the lipstick. It was a garish cardinal color, and had clearly been well-loved: it was flattened and chapped, with a small, thin hair stuck to it. “Katherine…”

“Oh, go on, don’t be a prude! You’re almost fourteen, you can wear lipstick now.”

Holding her breath, she applied the tint to her mouth, feeling as if her face was being sealed away from the outside. It was suffocating.

When she looked at the mirror, she almost broke out into a run.

Her face was rotting.

She could see the shape of insects crawling under the foundation, feel them burrow into her skin. Her lips were shriveling, and her eyes swam in their sockets like lazy ducks. Delia yelped and grabbed for a kleenex, dipping it in water from the sink, and scrubbing at her face until the gunk was gone.

“What are you doing? You looked so pretty!”

“I don’t like it,” Delia gasped, out of breath.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t wanna wear that,” she said, more firmly this time.

“Well — it’s not your choice! I’m giving it to you to wear!” Katherine’s voice had climbed half an octave and Delia was suddenly very tired..

“Mom…” She finally pleaded.

Katherine’s face distorted. The slap came so quickly that, by the time Delia connected the sharp crack with her mother’s punishment, her cheek stung and she’d taken a step backwards.

“Don’t call me that!” Her mother screeched. She slapped her again, the other cheek this time, and went to push her — by now Delia was able to sidestep the aggression.

“I’m — ”

“You’re nothing! You’re nothing but what I gave you, goddamn you! And you’ll never be as good as her!” Katherine’s yells were nearly unintelligible. Delia turned around and ran down the stairs, followed by her mother’s light footsteps and haunting screams.

She sprinted through the house, across the yard, and through the barn door. Bursting into the single-room, she fell panting into Lucas’s arms.

“Help me!” She sobbed. “Katherine  — I called her mom by accident, she’s flipping out. You guys were right, we need to go. We need to go!”

Their mother’s labored breathing drew closer, barely pausing at the door of the barn before she too ran inside. Her stringy gray hair fell wild around blood-red cheeks. In her right hand, she clenched a wooden spoon so hard her knuckles turned white.

All three of them recoiled, frantically pushing their grandmother’s table between themselves and Katherine. Delia threw herself on the ground, her head under her palms.

“Come here, you fat whore!” Katherine yelled. “What, you think because you hang out with these idiots that you’re better than me? That you don’t have to respect me?”

She gave a step towards the kids. From the ground, Delia watched as Katherine’s shadow blended with the dark stain of blood where Amelia had died. She saw Lucas grab a vase from their grandmother’s altar and heft it up in defiance.

“Come on, which one of you rats is gonna get it first?! I am going to splatter your filthy fucking brains on the fucking walls, goddammit!”

A loud caw sounded from somewhere behind Delia. She looked behind her in a panic, barely in time to see Brandy rearing up. He seemed to be looking directly at her, despite his whitened eyes.

The mass of feathers flew past the children’s heads. Clawing and screeching, Brandy struck Katherine across the face. Their mother’s screaming stopped. The sound of tearing fabric — or was it skin?---was interrupted only by Brandy’s shrieks. Blood periodically hit the already-darkened floor in sudden, matter-of-fact splatters. Delia, Elijah and Lucas could only watch, petrified.

Brandy stopped on his own and, undisturbed, began cleaning up his feathers. Delia found herself a few inches from Katherine’s twitching form. Her mother’s injuries were caked with dirt, and from what Delia could see—or rather, could not see—half her face was gone. Delia shook her head, blinked hard, but the scene remained the same. The exposed jawbone stayed there, the holes on Katherine’s cheek continued to ooze saliva and blood. She reached a hand out to touch the pink liquid dripping from Katherine’s pierced eyeball, shuddering at the wet warmth on her fingers.

Jerkily, Delia got to her feet and turned back towards the door of the barn. Someone grabbed her wrist, and she heard Lucas say something she could not understand.

She shook herself free and started walking. It seemed to take an eternity to get there, but eventually she stumbled outside, into the blinding blue-white of noon in Georgia.