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The tiny girl stands in the doorway, cheeks slick with tears.

His arm shakes. The gun weighs a ton in his hand.

Rocky J, you do it. Do it and you’re in , 8Ball says.

Don’t do it and you’re in a box. He tells himself it’ll only be a second.

That the girl won’t feel anything. He survived seven dudes kicking his ass and the solo carjacking and this third test will be over in the blink of an eye.

The girl, four or five, stands watching.

She’s crying because they are strangers, because her dad is out cold on the kitchen tiles.

She’s too young to know what this gun, pointed directly at her tiny bean-shaped body, can do.

Right? He removes the safety and the decision is so quick he doesn’t realize he’s made it until his hand jerks and the tip of the gun smokes and 8Ball—the motherfucker—crumples to the floor.

He runs from the apartment and doesn’t stop until he reaches an alley five blocks away, where he vomits onto his shoes.

Scared to death. But he’s done taking orders.

John blinked hard to scrub out the visage of the tearful girl, of 8Ball’s slack face. He looked beyond the man sitting at

the table to the great open-ended rectangle of dark water leading out into the night. There were no boats.

Rockwell-formerly-known-as-Rocky-J looked as if he himself had been lifted from a Rockwell painting. Probably it was the red

hair and wavy side part that did it. And like some Rockwell depictions, this Rockwell had a dark side.

“They told me you brought company,” Rockwell said. “Your sister and her famous boyfriend. If I knew you were bringing him

along, I would’ve straightened up.”

“I’ve got the cash,” Parker said. “But I’m gonna hold on to it for a few more minutes. ’Til I know everything’s kosher.”

“I can’t accept that now, anyway. It’s gonna cost you a lot more than sixty-eight grand now that I see you’re rollin’ with

the Holy Ghost.”

Parker shifted. “We made a deal.”

“A hundred K.”

“ A hundred thousand dollars? ”

“You’re right. Two hundred.”

“No—”

“Let’s make it two fifty.”

John reminded himself that notwithstanding the freckles and the copper hair and the general meanness, Rockwell was not his erstwhile tormentor, and anyway John was no longer a child.

He did, though, wonder if perhaps it would have been wiser for Parker to have left town.

John could try appealing to Rockwell’s better nature.

Once, Rockwell had done the right thing.

It hadn’t gone over well for 8Ball, but it was probably the best thing for Rockwell and certainly the best for the little girl and her father.

Yet the Rockwell who’d refused to harm a child had been a much younger and less compromised man.

John said, “I have more money.”

“No,” Persephone whispered. “You’ve done enough.”

“It’s just money.”

These men were crooks, and they’d be caught eventually. Perhaps there was a reason for John’s being in the living world after

all. Perhaps John was here to help save Parker, to help save Persephone. He knew she wasn’t big on miracles, but in this moment

he couldn’t help wanting it to be true. The idea of divine intervention made it easier to believe that at least his friends

would emerge from this unscathed.

Rockwell said to John, “You’ll cover it?”

“I will.”

“All righty, then.”

“Two hundred fifty thousand dollars can be in your account—”

“Bank account? You think I’m stupid? Cash, motherfucker.”

“I can get the cash to you as soon as tomorrow night,” John said. “And you can take the sixty-eight thousand dollars we have

now as a deposit. Parker, why don’t you place the duffel bag on the table?”

Parker’s were the careful steps of a man calculating just where his enemies were standing; how much time they’d have to react;

distances between persons and distances to the door. All this potential thinking on Parker’s part was making John nervous.

When Parker reached the table, he didn’t place the duffel onto it, but onto the boathouse floor planks.

The rest happened quickly.

Parker’s arm blurred—two great steps and there he was, pressed close to Rockwell, his gun shoved into the redhead’s underarm

as he forced Rockwell to his feet.

“Parker!” Persephone said. “Where the hell did you get that?”

“Funny, y’all get to the car. Grab the duffel.”

Persephone shook her head. “Let them have the money—”

“Just do it!”

“You should listen to baby sis, Parker,” Rockwell said, arms raised.

Parker, the fool, responded with a kick to the back of Rockwell’s knee, which sent the man staggering to the boathouse floor.

Parker dragged him up again.

Persephone took a step forward, but John raised an arm to warn her back. “Rockwell,” he said, “you’re going to accept the

sixty-eight thousand dollars cash and I’ll deposit the rest. If you want the money you’ll take the deposit and we will consider

it done. Parker, leave the duffel where it is and walk back to us.”

Parker didn’t budge.

“Best do as he says, half-breed motherfucker,” Rockwell growled, to which Parker answered with an elbow to the temple.

“Rocky J,” said John, “or was it only 8Ball who called you that, before he died?”

Across Rockwell’s face, a grimace of confusion and flashes of realization and fear.

“Rocky J will consider this matter finished,” John said. “No retaliation. As for my part, Rocky, I won’t say a word about

any of this if you—”

Parker kneed Rockwell in the groin and sent him stumbling toward the water’s edge. Rockwell stayed down, curled up and groaning,

as Parker grabbed the mini duffel and threw it at Persephone’s feet.

“Just leave it, Parker!” she said.

“Pick it up, Funny! I got my hands full!”

She hesitated but lifted the duffel, shaking her head all the while.

Parker grabbed Rockwell’s leg and kept the gun pointed at the man’s head as he dragged him toward the boathouse door. “Don’t

none of you move! I will shoot his ass!” he shouted to his former friends. And to Persephone: “Go on!”

Ruben took the duffel from Persephone and hurried behind her through the door. “What the hell, dude. This is so freaking bad.”

Ruben repeated so freaking bad the entire distance to the Cadillac, which felt so much longer now that they were stealing back sixty-eight thousand dollars in cash while dragging a murderous ringleader by his leg at gunpoint while his gang of menacing footmen waited to make their move amidst what John was sure was a stockpile of weapons.

The Cadillac was unlocked. Parker shoved Rockwell onto the dirt and there was a sharp, thin popping sound. John knew immediately

what it was. He’d only just heard the sound minutes ago, when he’d caught glimpse of Rockwell shooting 8Ball so many years

ago.

“ Dude! ” Ruben shouted.

Rockwell was screaming, cursing, and grabbing his bleeding foot as the gang spilled from the boathouse door. Parker dove into

the driver’s seat and John ran straight through the door into the passenger seat as Ruben tossed the duffel into the back

seat and scrambled inside. Parker revved the engine and by some miracle they were all in one piece.

And that’s when John heard it again: a second pop!

It hadn’t come from inside the car.

Her body flew into the left rear door, her blonde hair splayed across the window like silken seaweed, waving to him as she

fell.

29

“Persephone!”

Her name burst from her brother’s mouth, its syllables condensed into a single firecracker.

Persephoneeee... They’d found a crack in time and shimmied it open and fallen into a moment that moved so slowly, it might as well have been

a freeze-frame.

Everyone looked so much more dramatic when moving slowly, their motions overly large as if dancing for an audience relegated

to the rafters. Ruben’s mouth was cavernous when he yelled and his lips were remarkably animated, and here was Parker’s face,

super close with eyes bulging like a dancer trying to emote from upstage center, way in the back, earnestly attempting to

set himself apart from the corps. That vein, the thick one that always popped up on his forehead after a run or whenever he

was super pissed off, pressed against his shiny skin.

Her ears rang and her skin burned.

Fire pierced her through, jagged and hot.

It was love.

It was guilt.

It was the weight of responsibility that had been wedged beneath her ribs for so long finally collapsing on itself like a

dying star. Because it wasn’t her fault. She could have said something that day but she didn’t, and Parker got in trouble

but he let that become the story of his life, and that was not her fault. Never had been. Life wasn’t like the movies or the ballet, where someone else wrote your lines, choreographed

your moves. In life, you wrote them, delivered them; they were yours.

She couldn’t be blamed for all of Parker’s bad decisions, and she couldn’t blame him and Mama and all of Corpus Christi for

how she felt about what had happened after the accident because it wasn’t their fault she was so angry.

When she looked down, she saw that her shirt was red, a scarlet letter in slow bloom front and center for the universe to

see. She’d blamed them all, but it wasn’t anyone else’s fault that she’d stopped wanting to be a person so she could be an

Idea instead. The burning sensation in her chest affirmed it; finally she was forced to stare it down.

Love, guilt, responsibility, acceptance. The fire that impaled her could have been all these things.

Or maybe she’d just been shot.

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Parker, tearing down the road, slammed his hand against the steering wheel.

In the back seat, Persephone lay draped in Ruben’s robe with her head on his lap, face blanched, lips pale. He held her head

with one hand, his thumb against her temple as he whispered to her, head bowed.