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"Do you have children?" she asked
"I don’t My wife and I are looking forward to that"
She elected not to tell hie in the butt and go on its way He would ask why she didn’t try to go to school afterward People who hadn’t been through it would think it was that siet back on the bus, ride to the next stop He would have no inkling of the great slog of effort that tied up people like her in the day-to-day Or the quaking s that infected every step forward, after a loss Even now, dread still struck her down so fine Meaning her now-living children and their future, those things She had so much more to lose now than just herself or her own plans If Ovid Byron was torn up over butterflies, he should see how it felt to look past a child’s baby teeth into this future world he clai on the ash heap wailing, cutting his flesh with a husk That’s where love could take you
"Great day in the h the expression was probably lost on Lupe, and the kids in the back seat were yelling aht of the crowd Lupe froze, and reached over froer’s side to clench Dellarobia’s wrist on the steering wheel
"Okay, don’t worry I’ you in there" Dellarobia trusted Lupe’s fear, without knowing the specifics She waited for the release of her forearm, and carefully pulled the car over onto the shoulder Tall dead grass swept the undercarriage It hadn’t crossed her ration issues Lupe atching her kids for five dollars an hour and Dellarobia wasthirteen, so even after Uncle Sam took his bite she would come out ahead, that’s what she knew And she knew that her yard had been eo pick up Lupe Now it looked like the county fairgrounds
Lupe whirled around and efficiently shushed the children Her oo boys, wedged in beside Cordie’s car seat, seeer but quickly petered out, getting the lasses and put theh the windshield The house was still more than a hundred yards away They had just rounded the bend in Highway 7 where their farm came into view, but even from here she could count more than a dozen cars parked helter-skelter on both sides of the road directly in front of her house No police vehicles that she could see, and no news- to drive Lupe into theto form a plan
"Okay, here’s e’ll do," she said sloatching Lupe to assess comprehension Their efficient translator, Josefina, was at school with Preston, but for over a week now they’duntil the kindergartners came home on the bus to help sort out the fine print "See that old house behind us?" She pointed back to it "E the shoulder and then pulled forward into the long driveway of the Craycroft house, which had been for sale so long it idely taken to be a lost cause The Craycrofts’ son had put the home and priced the house insanely above market Or maybe where he lived, in Nashville, houses sold for that kind of money Dellarobia’s one hope at present was that it hadn’t turned into a meth lab in the interim It looked more than a tad spooky Some of its uncurtained panes were cracked, and winter-killed weeds stood shoulder high around the foundations The son could drag his city butt out here and do a little maintenance She pulled the car all the way to the back where it could not be seen froine
"Okay," she said to Lupe, "you and the kids stay here You can get out of the car if they want to play Nobody will see you here I’ to walk over there to my house and see what’s up"
Lupe nodded for to the kids that sounded more on the lines of, "Don’ther child and babysitting entourage in the bushes in order to sneak up on her own ho drizzle picked up again as she walked along the edge of Highway 7, avoiding the weedy and muddy ditch She pulled the hood of her raincoat forward to keep the rain off her glasses, the better to observe the occasional car that whizzed past her and then inevitably slowed to a crawl just down the road, at her house Their drivers were rubbernecking, no doubt wondering what the fuss was about You and e of the Cook place, her i unusual up at their house, and was reassured generally by the absence of ambulances or cop cars But she was disether on her own front lawn, all facing the house as if expecting it to perfor trip, in boots and backpacks and puffy down parkas As she drew closer, she saw so A lot of energy directed toward a house where no one was home Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes, she thought, a directive that was never hted people Not until she’d crossed onto her own property did she realize it was kids Teenagers or young adults They looked so slight and fine-boned in the rain
"Children ask the world of us!" they were shouting again and again, giving Dellarobia to know for certain she had lost her e of the fray near the road, where a young couple were getting out of a dented little silver Honda They both wore brightly colored knit caps with dangling earflaps, like so you’d put on a toddler The chant died out, and a new one began A guy standing on her front porch was pu chants that the crowd belted out in an exaggerated, rhyth, stop the lies! Save the monarch butterflies!"
"Oh, crap," Dellarobia said, loudly enough that the knitted-cap couple shot her a glance Shethe kids and up the sidewalk to her porch, expecting at any nized as the butterfly celebrity here, but no dice Not in her present guise, with a hooded raincoat covering everything but her water-speckled glasses A raincoat purchased in the boy’s depart the cheer and looked down at her, puzzled The shouting abruptly died out