The Devil Casts a Long Shadow- Chapter Six: When it Froze Over

Jena felt half-deranged by the time she pulled out of her driveway.

She turned up the music until it drowned out the sound of her own thoughts. The last thing she wanted was another seven-hour journey across state lines, particularly when she had only just returned from Colorado. Yet the prospect of remaining beneath the same roof as Thallea seemed even less bearable.

She needed gasoline before leaving Meadow Partings.

Another expense for her already overburdened credit card.

Nate's medical catastrophe had consumed her savings with astonishing speed. Between the household bills, the repeated trips to Colorado, and the ordinary expenses he had always handled without involving her, she was rapidly approaching financial ruin.

At least her credit history, strengthened during the marriage, still allowed her to obtain credit cards in her own name.

For the moment, she could continue borrowing against a future she had no means of predicting.

But the arrangement was unsustainable.

Sooner or later, the minimum payments would become impossible to meet.

She needed Nate to wake up.

The thought weighed upon her shoulders so heavily that she found herself slumping behind the wheel.

Her request for emergency authority to manage his affairs remained somewhere in the courthouse's scheduling process. Every inquiry produced another explanation, another delay, or another promise that someone would contact her.

Meanwhile, the bills continued arriving.

Jena wondered whether poverty was a kind of slow execution.

It did not require a weapon or an executioner. It merely deprived a person of one choice after another until survival itself became a series of humiliating negotiations.

Nate had always insisted that money was freedom.

Now his money existed somewhere beyond her reach, while she accumulated debt merely to maintain the life he had left behind.

It was a particularly cruel arrangement.

She was legally his wife, socially his dependent, and financially little better than a stranger.

At the gas station outside Meadow Partings, Jena stepped into the night air and shivered.

Winter had arrived while she was occupied with everything else.

She wore only a light jacket, and the cold seemed to penetrate it immediately. As she operated the pump, her fingers grew stiff and pale. The concrete beneath her feet sent a chill through the thin soles of her loafers.

She shifted her weight and curled her toes.

Her car had accumulated an extraordinary number of miles in recent weeks.

She could scarcely remember the last time she had checked the maintenance schedule, much less arranged for a tune-up.

Another thing to worry about.

Jena studied the route on her phone.

The navigation system recommended the main highways, where the roads were better maintained and the journey passed through populated areas.

But she knew an older route.

The abandoned stretches of highway had once served as important roads between Oklahoma and Colorado. Over the decades, newer roads had diverted most traffic away

from them.

Now they were used primarily by people who knew the region well enough to avoid the busier routes.

Jena had traveled them since she was young.

They were familiar, even comforting in their isolation.

She considered the risks.

She was exhausted. Her car needed attention. The weather was turning cold.

But the back roads had fewer stops, and she could maintain a steady speed for long stretches.

Surely the authorities would close them if conditions became dangerous.

That was what she told herself.

She selected the shortcut.

As she returned the pump nozzle, she noticed the darkness beyond the station's lights.

The new moon had left the countryside almost entirely black.

The highway disappeared into it like a narrow passage cut through an enormous, lightless chamber.

Jena felt a momentary reluctance.

Then she dismissed it.

She had already endured more than enough unpleasantness to be frightened by an empty road.

Before leaving, she threw away the accumulated trash from her car.

Most of it consisted of wrappers, disposable coffee cups, and empty snack bags.

She had been eating almost exclusively at gas stations and convenience stores.

Partly because she lacked time.

Mostly because she had no desire to be recognized.

Every familiar face invited questions.

How was Nate?

Was he going to recover?

What had really happened at the birthday party?

Had the girl been murdered?

Jena had no answers that would satisfy anyone.

Even when people expressed genuine concern, she found their curiosity exhausting.

She had begun to avoid restaurants, grocery stores, and other places where she might encounter acquaintances.

It was easier to eat cheap food in her car.

She purchased another coffee and a bag of chips, then resumed her journey.

The road was mostly suitable for long stretches of cruise-control driving.

Only one section demanded particular caution: a sharp, corkscrew-shaped turn near the Colorado end of the old route, where the highway curved around a steep mountainside before rejoining a larger road.

Jena knew it well.

She had negotiated the bend so many times that she could almost picture the sequence of turns with her eyes closed.

The thought was oddly reassuring.

There were still a few things in her life she knew how to manage.

As the miles passed, Jena attempted to organize her thoughts.

She needed a plan.

There was Nate's care, the court proceedings, the mounting debt, the condition of the house, and Thallea's increasingly intolerable behavior.

Every problem depended upon another problem being resolved first.

She could not access Nate's accounts without legal authority.

She could not maintain the household indefinitely without money.

She could not leave Thallea alone without worrying about what the young woman might destroy.

And she could not bring herself to evict Thallea because doing so would likely send her back to Sue's overcrowded cabin, where Beau's children would suffer the consequences.

Every path seemed to lead toward another unpleasant obligation.

Jena had once believed that making good decisions would eventually produce good outcomes.

Now she was beginning to wonder whether some people existed solely to consume the efforts of others.

The thought disturbed her.

It seemed dangerously close to the contempt Nate had always shown toward people who needed help.

Yet she could not deny how exhausted she had become.

At some point, she realized she had been driving for hours without noticing the passage of time.

The coffee had begun to work its way through her system.

She pulled onto the shoulder of a deserted stretch of road.

There were no buildings, lights, or visible vehicles.

Only the dark highway and the surrounding wilderness.

Jena stepped outside.

The cold immediately seized her.

She walked behind the tailgate, crouching where she believed she would be concealed from any passing traffic.

Then an engine roared out of the darkness.

A small imported car hurtled past at an astonishing speed.

Its headlights swept over her vehicle.

For a fraction of a second, Jena thought it was going to strike her parked car.

She recoiled and lost her balance.

The vehicle flashed past without slowing.

Then it vanished around a distant bend.

Jena fell backward into the dirt.

Her heart hammered.

For several seconds, she remained where she was, stunned by the suddenness of it.

The driver had been traveling close to a hundred miles per hour on a road posted for fifty-five.

Reckless.

The word came to her immediately.

Reckless and indifferent.

The driver had probably never even noticed her.

That was the trouble with the old highway.

Its isolation attracted people who wanted to travel without interference.

Speeders.

Drug couriers.

People who preferred roads where witnesses were scarce and law enforcement was unlikely to appear.

Police officers avoided some of these stretches because radio communication was unreliable.

Nobody liked patrolling a place where calling for backup might be impossible.

Jena scrambled to her feet.

Her fall had left dirt on the back of her clothing, and urine had soaked into her loafers.

The humiliation was almost enough to make her cry.

She had reached a point where even the simplest bodily necessity seemed capable of becoming another catastrophe.

She hurried back to the car.

The cold, damp leather clung unpleasantly to her feet.

She started the engine and pulled onto the highway.

She wanted as much distance as possible between herself and the place.

Snow began falling shortly afterward.

At first, the flakes were sparse, drifting through the headlights like pale ash.

Then they grew thicker.

Jena switched off the music.

She needed to concentrate.

The road climbed gradually toward higher elevations, and the temperature continued dropping.

On the Colorado side, snow had accumulated along the shoulders.

Then it began covering the roadway itself.

Jena frowned.

Why hadn't the highway been closed?

She slowed.

The snow had been compacted by previous vehicles, leaving two faint tracks that allowed her to continue with considerable caution.

Every so often, a car passed in the opposite direction.

Each one reassured her that the road remained passable.

If those drivers had made it through, surely she could as well.

She continued.

The countryside had disappeared beneath a white covering that softened every shape and erased familiar landmarks.

The darkness beyond the headlights seemed absolute.

Jena thought of the old religious paintings in which Hell was depicted as a landscape of fire.

She had always found those images theatrical.

This place seemed more frightening.

There was no fire.

Only cold, silence, and the possibility of dying without anyone knowing where she had gone.

Perhaps damnation did not require flames.

Perhaps it could be a deserted road beneath a moonless sky, where a person continued forward because turning back seemed even worse.

An hour passed without another vehicle appearing.

Jena's exhaustion began to overwhelm her.

Her head throbbed with a hot, relentless pain, and her eyes struggled to remain focused.

She had been sleeping poorly for so long that wakefulness itself felt unnatural.

The road seemed to move beneath her.

She blinked repeatedly.

At last, she pulled onto a widened section of the shoulder and stopped.

She reclined the driver's seat.

Just a few minutes, she told herself.

She would rest her eyes and continue.

The engine idled.

Snow gathered silently upon the windshield.

For the first time in days, nobody was asking anything of her.

There were no ringing phones.

No complaints from Thallea.

No demands from Ivy-Mae.

No bills to pay.

No hospital machinery reminding her that Nate might never recover.

She was perfectly suspended between the problems behind her and the problems ahead.

The stillness was almost heavenly.

Then the cold began creeping into the car.

It rose through the floorboards and around the pedals, finding her wet shoes and soaking into her already numb feet.

Jena opened her eyes.

The windshield was becoming obscured by snow.

She looked at the dashboard.

The outside temperature had fallen sharply.

She was at a higher elevation than she had realized.

There were no blankets in the car.

No heavy coat.

No emergency supplies.

Her shoes were wet, her clothing was inadequate, and she had no reliable way to summon help if the vehicle failed.

The peacefulness vanished.

She imagined the engine stalling.

The snow continuing to fall.

The car becoming buried along the shoulder while the highway remained empty for hours.

She pictured herself sitting there, growing colder and sleepier until she could no longer make herself move.

It was a dreadful thought.

A person might perish without struggle, lulled into surrender by the very sensation that ought to have warned them of danger.

Jena sat upright.

She could barely keep her eyes open.

But she knew she could not remain there.

Fear, which had become the principal force governing her life, once again compelled her forward.

She cleared the windshield and resumed driving.

Within another hour, she approached the corkscrew turn.

Something flashed in the darkness ahead.

Red.

Blue.

Then red again.

Emergency lights.

Jena frowned.

She eased off the accelerator.

The road curved sharply around the mountainside, concealing whatever lay beyond.

She glanced at her phone to check the time.

It was a momentary distraction.

When she looked up again, a highway patrolman was stepping into the roadway from the blind side of the curve.

Jena slammed on the brakes.

The tires lost traction.

The car lurched sideways.

For an instant, she saw the edge of the road and the black emptiness beyond it.

The steering wheel fought against her hands.

She thought she was going over the cliff.

Then the tires caught.

The car shuddered to a stop.

The patrolman stood scarcely an arm's length away.

He stared at her.

Jena stared back.

His face had gone pale.

Neither moved for several seconds.

She could hear her own breathing.

The officer's hand was raised, but he seemed to have forgotten whatever signal he intended to give.

Jena slowly eased the car forward and lowered her window.

"I'm so sorry," she began.

The officer did not answer.

He looked as shaken as she felt.

Jena wondered why he had stepped into the roadway without reflective equipment or a light.

Then she saw the scene beyond him.

A small imported car had crashed into the mountainside.

Its front end was mangled against the rock.

Emergency vehicles were positioned along the shoulder, their lights washing the snow in alternating colors.

Only a few responders had arrived.

The accident appeared recent.

Jena recognized the car.

It was the same one that had hurtled past her earlier in the night.

She stared at the wreckage.

The driver who had nearly struck her had apparently reached the mountain before she did.

And the mountain had been less forgiving.

For a moment, the entire scene seemed unreal.

The snow.

The twisted metal.

The flashing lights.

The officer standing motionless beside her window.

It resembled a tableau arranged for her benefit, as though some unseen intelligence had taken the recklessness she witnessed earlier and displayed its consequences at the precise moment she was beginning to forget them.

The patrolman finally gestured for her to continue.

He appeared to have no desire to speak with her.

Jena did not wait for him to reconsider.

She drove past the wreckage.

As she rounded the bend, she glanced once into the rearview mirror.

The emergency lights receded into the darkness.

She could not tell whether the driver had survived.

The uncertainty troubled her.

She had no reason to wish harm upon a stranger, however recklessly that stranger had behaved.

Yet some small, ugly part of her felt vindicated.

The driver had endangered others and suffered for it.

The thought frightened her almost as much as the accident.

She wondered how easily the desire for justice could become satisfaction in another person's suffering.

Perhaps that was one of the Devil's quieter talents.

He did not always need to inspire cruelty.

Sometimes he merely persuaded people to enjoy witnessing it.

Jena turned her attention back to the road.

She felt as though Death itself had been traveling that highway with her.

Twice in one night, she had nearly met it.

She had no desire for a third introduction.

By the time Jena reached the city near Nate's care facility, she was trembling from exhaustion.

She wanted a proper hotel.

A clean room.

A comfortable bed.

A place where she could close the door and feel safe.

She found an upscale establishment with an elegant entrance and warmly illuminated windows.

Inside, the lobby was beautifully appointed.

Polished stone floors reflected the chandeliers. Expensive furniture stood beneath carefully arranged artwork, and the air carried a subtle floral fragrance.

Jena felt an immediate, painful familiarity.

She and Nate had stayed in places like this countless times.

They had once entered such lobbies with expensive luggage and the easy confidence of people who expected to be welcomed.

A well-dressed young couple stood ahead of her at the front desk.

The man wore an immaculate coat, and his companion carried a designer handbag.

They looked relaxed, attractive, and entirely at home.

Jena watched them complete their check-in.

For a moment, she remembered herself standing beside Nate in similar circumstances.

She had never considered how much of the welcome extended to her had depended upon his presence.

When the couple moved away, she approached the desk.

"Good evening," she said politely. "Do you have any rooms available?"

The concierge looked at her.

His gaze moved over her clothing, her disheveled hair, and her stained shoes.

He did not touch the keyboard.

"I'm sorry. We're fully booked."

Jena hesitated.

"Are you certain? I only need a room for tonight."

"Nothing available."

His expression remained impassive.

"I suggest trying the motels on Third Street."

Jena glanced toward the seating area.

The woman who had checked in before her was sitting in an ornate chair.

She looked Jena up and down, then recoiled slightly.

Jena became acutely aware of herself.

She had not properly bathed or changed clothes.

Her shoes still carried the unpleasant consequences of the roadside incident.

Her face was drawn, her hair untidy, and her entire body felt unclean.

She looked nothing like the woman who had once accompanied Nate through the doors of expensive hotels.

Yet her money was still good.

Or at least her credit card had not been declined.

She wanted to protest.

She wanted to ask the concierge to check his reservations rather than dismiss her on sight.

But she was too exhausted to argue.

"Thank you," she said.

She turned and left.

As she crossed the lobby, she felt the eyes of strangers following her.

The chandeliers glittered overhead.

The polished surfaces reflected her shabby appearance from every angle.

It was as though the room had been designed to multiply her humiliation.

How far I've fallen, she thought.

Outside, the cold struck her again.

She stood beside her car for a moment.

It occurred to her that the concierge had not necessarily lied.

Perhaps the hotel really was full.

But she knew how he had looked at her.

She knew what the woman in the chair had seen.

And she knew that people who had once greeted her warmly would probably have treated her quite differently if she arrived without Nate, without money, and without the outward signs of belonging.

She had spent years living among people who measured human worth through appearances.

Now she was discovering what happened when those appearances deteriorated.

The Towny Inn on Third Street was modest but clean.

The woman at the front desk looked Jena over with concern rather than disgust.

"Long night?" she asked.

"You have no idea."

The woman gave her a sympathetic smile.

"Well, let's get you settled."

She found Jena a room without difficulty.

The kindness was so ordinary that Jena nearly cried.

For days, every interaction had seemed to involve a demand, an accusation, or some calculation of what she might provide.

Here was a stranger who simply recognized that she was exhausted and needed somewhere to sleep.

Jena thanked her repeatedly.

In the room, she removed her shoes and stained clothing.

She broke a bar of hotel soap in half and used a washcloth to scrub the worst of the dirt and odor from them.

Then she arranged the damp items near the heater, careful not to place them directly against its hottest surfaces.

She showered until the water ran lukewarm.

Afterward, she wrapped herself in a bath towel and collapsed onto the bed.

Everything about her felt frayed.

Her body ached.

Her head throbbed.

Her thoughts seemed to have been pulled apart and scattered across the miles of highway behind her.

She was astonished that she had arrived in one piece.

For a while, she lay staring at the ceiling.

She thought of the reckless driver and the wrecked car.

She thought of the patrolman standing inches from her bumper.

She thought of Nate lying motionless beneath the sheets in Colorado.

Three men, each confronted by death in a different way.

One had apparently driven toward it at tremendous speed.

One had nearly stepped into its path.

And one lay suspended in a condition that seemed to defy any ordinary understanding of life.

Jena closed her eyes.

She had once imagined Hell as a place where the wicked were punished.

Now she wondered whether the living spent much of their time constructing it for themselves.

She slept longer than she intended, though not long enough to feel rested.

The following morning, she dressed in her hastily cleaned clothes and drove to Nate's care facility.

She had brought his extravagant replica Super Bowl ring.

Jena had no desire to encounter Ivy-Mae.

Nor did she particularly want to visit Nate.

She felt ashamed of the latter admission, but could not deny it.

Every visit forced her to confront the terrible stillness of his body and the increasingly implausible hope that he might someday return to the life they had shared.

She approached the staff and asked whether the ring could be passed along to Ivy-Mae.

After arranging for it to be received, she left.

The errand had required hundreds of miles of driving, a night spent in dangerous weather, and another charge on her credit card.

All to deliver a sixty-thousand-dollar ornament that Nate had barely worn.

Jena wondered whether Ivy-Mae would ever understand the absurdity.

Probably not.

The ring would be valuable to her.

That seemed to be sufficient justification for everyone else to accommodate the request.

Jena returned to her car.

She had to be at work the following morning.

There was no time to linger.

By the time Jena reached Meadow Partings again, most of the day was gone.

She had agreed to cover an additional shift at the childcare center.

Nobody else wanted it.

Her coworker Nikkola would arrive around lunchtime, leaving Jena to open the facility alone.

Jena generally enjoyed working with Nikkola in small doses.

The woman meant well and could be pleasant company.

Unfortunately, she had a habit of offering unsolicited advice with the certainty of someone who had solved every problem life could present.

Having been divorced four times by the age of thirty, Nikkola possessed an abundance of personal experience but not always the judgment to distinguish experience from wisdom.

Jena found her exhausting when they spent too much time together.

Still, she needed the money.

She would tolerate the advice.

There were worse things than listening to someone explain how she ought to manage her marriage.

Jena had been living with several of them.

When she entered the barndominium, the smell struck her first.

Cigarette smoke.

Heavy, stale, and deeply embedded in the air.

Jena stopped in the entryway.

She had considered collecting Tiki from Mrs. Flossie before returning home, but decided against it.

She wanted to inspect the house first.

The decision proved wise.

Thallea's dirty clothing lay scattered across the floor.

Ash burns marked several surfaces.

There were cigarette butts in places no reasonable person would have considered appropriate.

The house looked and smelled as though it had been occupied by someone who regarded destruction as a form of leisure.

Jena walked through the rooms in silence.

She thought of the obstetric appointments she had accompanied Thallea to.

On more than one occasion, she had heard the young woman assure her clinician that she had quit smoking or was in the process of doing so.

Yet at home, Thallea smoked constantly.

Jena had tried to raise the issue with Beau.

He told her to stay out of it.

He insisted Thallea was doing her best and that the pregnancy was difficult enough without other people criticizing her.

Jena had reluctantly honored his request.

She wondered whether Beau genuinely believed the explanations Thallea offered him.

He seemed to.

She had begun to suspect that his devotion required him to accept whatever version of events allowed him to continue seeing her as the woman he loved.

The possibility saddened Jena.

It also frightened her.

Because Beau's refusal to confront Thallea's behavior did not protect his family from its consequences.

It merely ensured that someone else would have to endure them.

Jena went to the kitchen.

She had purchased several hundred dollars' worth of groceries only a few days earlier.

The pantry had been well stocked.

There should have been enough food to last most of the month.

Instead, she found devastation.

Packages had been opened and abandoned.

Food had been bitten into and left uncovered.

Perishable items had been allowed to spoil.

Other groceries had simply disappeared.

Jena searched the refrigerator and pantry.

Her remaining options amounted to canned chili and a loaf of expired bread.

She stood in the kitchen, staring at the shelves.

Money had become a constant source of anxiety.

Every grocery trip required calculation.

Every utility bill represented another portion of her dwindling credit.

Yet Thallea seemed incapable of understanding that food cost money or that throwing it away imposed a burden upon someone else.

Jena had begun to feel as though she were pouring her remaining resources into a bottomless pit.

The more she provided, the more Thallea demanded.

Nothing was ever enough.

When Nate had been home, Jena had gone to extraordinary lengths to satisfy him.

His expectations were often unreasonable, but at least they generally had an identifiable

objective.

He wanted a particular meal.

A clean shirt.

A favor.

An errand.

A person to blame.

Once the demand was satisfied, there was usually a temporary reprieve.

Thallea was different.

She seemed to derive satisfaction from the act of wanting itself.

The object of her desire mattered less than the opportunity to insist that someone else provide it.

If Jena complied, Thallea quickly found something new to resent.

If Jena refused, she became cruel.

If Jena explained why a request was unreasonable, Thallea accused her of being controlling.

There was no resolution.

Only repetition.

Jena thought of the punishments described in ancient accounts of the underworld.

The condemned were forced to perform impossible labors forever.

They carried water in vessels that could never be filled.

They pushed stones uphill only to watch them roll back down.

They reached for food that withdrew whenever their hands approached it.

Jena had always considered those punishments imaginative.

Now they seemed disturbingly familiar.

She was beginning to understand how a person might be driven mad by a task that could never be completed.

She resolved to store the next supply of dry goods in her bedroom closet.

It was humiliating to consider hiding groceries in her own home.

But humiliation had become one of the few reliable features of her daily life.

She found Thallea downstairs in the den.

The young woman was sprawled across the couch in a stained camisole and ill-fitting underwear.

It was the same couch on which Jena had discovered Nate unconscious.

The sight made her pause.

For a moment, she saw him there again.

His half-unbuttoned shirt.

The vomit.

His discolored face.

The terrible coldness of his arm.

Then the memory dissolved, leaving Thallea in his place.

She was smoking.

A plate beside her held a small mountain of cigarette butts.

Jena stared at it.

"Thallea, I thought you quit smoking."

Thallea looked up.

"I did! Jeez!"

Jena glanced at the cigarette between her fingers.

Then at the overflowing plate.

She was too tired even to point out the contradiction.

Thallea took another drag.

The smoke rose slowly toward the ceiling.

Jena imagined seizing her by the hair and dragging her outside.

The thought was so vivid that it startled her.

She had never considered herself a violent person.

Yet the relentless provocations were beginning to awaken feelings she scarcely recognized.

For a moment, she understood why people sometimes described anger as a fire.

It seemed to rise from somewhere beneath thought, consuming reason as it climbed.

She stepped away.

There was nothing useful to be gained from another argument.

Thallea would deny whatever Jena said, accuse her of persecution, and call Beau to complain.

Beau would defend her.

Jena would be left explaining herself to people who had already decided she was wrong.

She went upstairs and closed her bedroom door.

Then she locked it.

She missed Tiki.

His cheerful company would have been a comfort.

But she was relieved that he remained with Mrs. Flossie, away from the smoke and disorder.

At least one innocent creature had been spared the atmosphere of her home.

Jena sat on the bed.

Her only consolation was that Thallea was scheduled to work the following afternoon at

Turner's ghost kitchen.

For several hours, the house would be empty.

Jena could clean, inspect the damage, and perhaps recover some sense of ownership over her surroundings.

She sent her supervisor a message asking whether she could leave early the next day.

She needed the wages.

But she also needed to know what had been happening inside her house while she was away.

At first, Jena fell into a deep sleep.

Then the noise began.

Footsteps thundered along the stairs.

Doors slammed.

The television blared downstairs, its bass vibrating faintly through the floor.

Thallea made lengthy telephone calls, speaking so loudly that Jena could hear entire portions of the conversations.

She laughed.

Complained.

Shouted.

Played another movie.

The hours passed.

Jena drifted in and out of sleep, never remaining unconscious long enough to feel rested.

Eventually, her dreams became feverish.

She dreamed that her teeth were falling out.

At first, only one loosened.

Then another.

She touched them with her tongue and felt them moving.

When she opened her mouth, they began spilling into her hands.

She tried to call for help, but the words would not form.

More teeth came loose.

She could feel the empty spaces multiplying.

In the dream, she understood with absolute certainty that something essential was being

taken from her piece by piece.

She could do nothing to stop it.

She awoke with her heart racing.

The television was still playing downstairs.

Jena lay motionless, staring into the darkness.

She wondered whether the dream had been caused by exhaustion or by the growing realization that her life was disintegrating in ways she could no longer control.

When morning finally arrived, Thallea had gone to bed.

Jena heard nothing from the guest room as she prepared for work.

The silence felt like a reprieve granted by a particularly capricious jailer.

The childcare center was one of the few places where Jena still felt useful.

The early families were already waiting when she arrived.

Most of the children belonged to hospital employees, restaurant workers, and other parents whose schedules required them to begin their days before ordinary business hours.

Jena greeted them warmly.

The children came inside with their backpacks, lunch bags, and sleepy expressions.

She prepared breakfast snacks and put on educational cartoons while they ate.

Later, they would go outside to play.

The day's craft activity involved making portraits of their favorite animals using macaroni.

It was a simple project.

The children would glue pieces of pasta onto paper, creating cats, dogs, horses, birds, and whatever other creatures their imaginations suggested.

Jena looked forward to it.

There was something comforting about working with children whose desires were uncomplicated.

They wanted breakfast.

They wanted to play.

They wanted someone to admire their artwork.

Their happiness did not require humiliating another person or extracting something of value.

Jena knew children could be selfish and difficult.

But their selfishness generally lacked the elaborate justifications adults constructed around their own behavior.

A child who wanted a toy usually admitted wanting it.

An adult might insist that God, justice, love, or family loyalty entitled them to take it.

Jena found herself increasingly grateful for the honesty of the young.

After breakfast and snack time, she took the children outside.

The morning was cold but clear.

Jena stood beside the swings, gently pushing one of the younger children while the others played nearby.

For a few minutes, she felt almost peaceful.

Then a man approached the playground gate.

He wore clothing resembling a utility worker's uniform.

Jena assumed he was there to inspect something on the property.

Instead, he called her name.

"Jena?"

She turned.

"Yes?"

He handed her a packet of documents.

"You've been served."

Before she could ask anything, he turned and walked away.

Jena stood beside the swing set, staring at the papers.

The child behind her called for another push.

She gave the swing a gentle shove, then stepped aside to examine the packet.

The documents concerned Nate's estate and the legal authority to manage his property and affairs while he remained incapacitated.

Ivy-Mae had initiated proceedings seeking control.

Jena read the first page.

Then the next.

Her stomach tightened.

She understood immediately why her mother-in-law had wanted the expensive ring.

It was possible Ivy-Mae intended to use it to help finance the legal proceedings.

Perhaps she had already done so.

Jena could not know.

But the timing was difficult to ignore.

The woman who had begged for a sentimental reminder of her son was now attempting to obtain legal authority over his assets.

Jena felt a wave of disgust.

She read the hearing date again.

It was only days away.

For months, Jena had been trying to obtain emergency authority to handle Nate's financial affairs.

Her requests had been delayed, rescheduled, and buried beneath procedural explanations.

Yet Ivy-Mae had somehow secured a hearing almost immediately.

Jena stared at the paperwork.

It felt as though she were standing upon a tilted stage.

Every time she attempted to move forward, the floor shifted beneath her feet.

Other people seemed to advance effortlessly through doors that remained locked to her.

She thought of the expensive ring.

The hospital.

The insurance arrangements.

The court delays.

The hidden safe.

The endless procession of people who had found some way to profit from Nate's condition while she struggled to maintain the household he had left behind.

She had once believed that the law existed to impose order upon a world full of selfish and dishonest people.

Now she wondered whether its procedures merely offered another arena in which the powerful could exhaust everyone else.

The children continued playing.

Their laughter drifted across the playground.

Jena looked down at the papers.

Somewhere in Colorado, Nate lay motionless beneath a hospital blanket.

He had not spoken in weeks.

He had made no decisions.

He had expressed no wishes.

Yet his name continued to move money, summon lawyers, provoke accusations, and rearrange the lives of everyone around him.

Jena felt a sudden, dreadful thought.

Perhaps Nate had never needed to be conscious to exercise power over her.

Perhaps his influence had become so thoroughly embedded in the people and institutions surrounding him that his body was almost incidental.

She folded the documents.

When Nikkola arrived, Jena explained that she needed to leave early.

Her coworker immediately began asking questions, but Jena had neither the patience nor the strength to answer them.

She collected her belongings and went to her car.

Once inside, she connected her phone to the Bluetooth system and called Roman's office.

His paralegal answered.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Roman is unavailable at the moment. Would you like to leave a message?"

Jena looked at the legal papers on the passenger seat.

For a moment, she considered everything that had brought her to this point.

Nate's reckless birthday party.

Amber Cortes's death.

The mysterious cleaning of the bedroom.

The doctors who could offer no meaningful hope.

The money she could not access.

The family members who seemed determined to claim whatever remained.

And Thallea, waiting in her home like another creditor demanding payment upon a debt Jena had never agreed to incur.

It seemed that every person in her life had discovered a different method of taking something from her.

Some demanded money.

Some demanded obedience.

Some demanded loyalty.

Others merely demanded that she remain silent while they did as they pleased.

Jena tightened her grip on the steering wheel.

"Yes," she said.

The paralegal waited.

"Tell Roman I'm being taken to court."

She glanced again at the documents.

"And it looks like it's going to be an ambush."

She ended the call.

For a moment, she sat motionless.

The morning sunlight shone through the windshield.

The children were still playing behind the building.

Somewhere nearby, a church bell began to ring.

Jena listened to it.

She wondered how many people had entered churches throughout history seeking deliverance from evil, never considering that evil might be waiting for them afterward in a courtroom, a family home, or a hospital room.

She had spent much of her life believing that Hell was a place reserved for the wicked after death.

Now she was beginning to suspect that the wicked preferred to establish themselves among the living.

And in Meadow Partings, they seemed to be doing extraordinarily well.