Tabitha woke up in a strange bed and unfamiliar room, and for a long, bleary moment she was too disoriented to remember her circumstances. It didn’t take long to remember that she’d fled home in the middle of the night. This was a temporary reprieve with the Williams family, and she had been provided accommodations in Matthew William’s own bedroom. The bed was nice, though, a queen-sized mattress that seemed to stretch on forever and over as she stretched out her legs. It seemed cleaner, nicer, more luxuriant somehow, and in her daze she couldn’t help but grope across the surface of the bedspread with her fingers for a moment.

Mmmm. What IS this?

It felt positively decadent to lay on after spending so long on a rather stiff twin-sized bed that had likely been in the Moore family longer than Tabitha had. She wanted to lay here forever, ensconced in that sleepy morning daze somewhere between being too sleepy to start moving and too awake to properly fall asleep. Replacing her own mattress at home with higher quality bedding began to lazily waft up higher and higher on her list of priorities.

Seriously. Is this… a foam mattress topper of some kind? Memory foam padding? Did they have that back in ninety-eight? I thought the pre-two-thousands was like… hmmm, the water-bed era? This definitely isn’t one of those.

As her mind slowly came around to waking clarity she stretched out all of her limbs again, this time holding them as far out as she could for a moment until her legs trembled before relaxing back into the clean linen. It seemed more probable that this was simply an ordinary, run-of-the-mill mattress, and hers at home was well past its expected lifespan and little more than a thin prison cot. Comparisons were cruel, and she remembered that in her first few weeks re-living this life she’d been irritated and on edge by how dated and worn everything in the mobile home around her had been.

But then, I just—I just got used to it all, Tabitha rubbed her eyes with her good hand and opened them so she could stare at the unfamiliar ceiling. I adjusted to everything. I ACCLIMATED. To a lot of things. Some of which I had to—life before internet, the whole weird prehistoric paradigm THAT is—some of which I probably shouldn’t have let myself get used to at all. Too many circumstances, too many things with my parents I just should have made a stand on right away.

Matthew William’s room seemed like a different place when seen with daylight casting sunbeams in through his big window. It was bright, spacious, and fairly tidy for a 90’s teen room. He had his own little tube TV set on the desk beside the bed, with a Nintendo 64 console stacked on top of it. The far wall featured posters—a large one advertising the special edition release of The Empire Strikes Back had the most prominent position, flanked on one side by the tattoo sun-logo of a Sublime poster, and with the little girl playing hopscotch upon an exaggerated cliff edge Korn poster on the other side.

Above the posters were Cub Scout certificates and Boy Scout awards, a rather grisly photo of what must have been a much younger Matthew in winter attire crouched beside a deer carcass with his father. Several ensemble pictures that might have been little league teams from various years were tacked up with thumbpins, and to Tabitha’s surprise—she also noticed a large marker doodle on construction paper of Casey’s Cocoa Cinnabun, hugging another rabbit while framed by a large, cutesy drawn heart.

Awww. That’s so swee—

Without warning the bedroom door burst open, and dark-haired seven-year-old little Hannah Macintire was there. The girl’s adorable eyes went wide at seeing Tabitha awake, and—Hannah immediately scampered back the other direction down the hall before a startled Tabitha could even greet her.

“MOOOOM! MOM SHE’S ALREADY AWAKE!”

Having flinched up onto her elbows at the sudden intrusion, Tabitha let out a small laugh and flopped down so that she could sink back into the borrowed pillow for a moment. Which was also incredibly nice, it was even a little astounding how much difference a proper pillow made for getting her some amazing sleep. Although her fitful few hours of rest night before last and then staying up far, far past her usual bedtime last night likely contributed to how tired she’d grown. Tabitha hadn’t realized just how in need of good rest she was—it was like months of tension building up in her neck and shoulders had bled away in the unstoppable comfiness of finally having quality bedding to sleep on.

“NO! I didn’t even wake her up she was ALREADY up!” Hannah’s exasperated cry echoed down the corridor. “YES SHE WAS! She—MOM, come see! I AM using my inside voice!”

“Okay, okay, but we’re guests so let’s pretend our inside voice had an inside voice, okay Honey?” Mrs. Macintire’s voice could be heard. “Let’s just keep our volume waaay, way down.”

Mrs. Macintire then appeared in the doorway, and for the first time, Tabitha wasn’t able to find any traces of the Mrs. Crow from her previous life at all. The same familiar sharp lines of her cheekbones were there, but now the amused quirk of her lip and the look of delight at seeing Tabitha here at the William’s house simply lit up her face. Someone appearing genuinely happy just to see her was always uplifting, and Tabitha felt herself smiling back already.

“Hi,” Tabitha said with a shy voice and a little wave.

“Good morning,” Sandra Macintre said, crossing the room and sitting on the edge of the bed. “I heard you had a busy night!”

“I did,” Tabitha chuckled. “I… what time is it? Did I oversleep?”

“You were pretty tuckered out, so we let you rest,” Sandra said as Hannah flew back, this time carrying a can of Dr Pepper. “I don’t know, are you a Dallas Cowboys fan? No one here’s pulling for Minnesota, but either way I don’t think you’ve missed much so far.”

“Oh—um, football? No, I’m not really—” Tabitha looked from one Macintire to the other in a fluster, awkwardly accepting the can. “Oh, thank you Hannah!”

“We’re allowed to drink as much pop as we want,” Hannah reported with the serious intensity only an adorable seven-year-old can muster. “Until six o’clock. Dr Pepper and Root Beer.”

Then Hannah ran back out of the room again.

“I’ll take that one,” Mrs. Macintire chuckled, plucking it out of Tabitha’s hand. “Probably’d spray you everywhere with Hannah running around shaking it up. We can get you whatever you like from the fridge.”

“I… actually just try to avoid sugars, as much as I can,” Tabitha admitted with a nervous smile. “Um… do you happen to know if my Aunt…?”

“They picked her up late last night,” Sandra revealed with a grin. “That old cutlass supreme didn’t even get her the whole way out of Springton—now we’ve got it at the impound lot, where the boys can play with it. ‘Parently Nick, one of the chucklehead officers, thought he was real clever bringin’ her back to the station like he was just givin’ her a lift somewhere. She not only passed out right in the passenger seat of his cruiser—she pissed herself!”

“Then, then—” Tabitha stiffened. “She’s been arrested?”

“Yup!” The older woman clapped a hand onto Tabitha’s shoulder with a giddy expression. “Woke up to her Miranda rights and some handcuffs and a bunch of dumbass cops laughing at Nick. The one squad car’s gonna be airing out back behind the station all day! She’s gonna be out of your hair for good. Tested positive for opiates, annnd they already had her on possession and misdemeanor theft and some other crap over in Shelbyville to begin with, so it’s not like she’s gonna wiggle out of whatever we’re gonna charge her with. Her goose is cooked! State trooper’ll be by to pick her up sometime today, CPS will have custody of those cousins of yours sorted out by tomorrow morning. Should have been sorted out whenever she got into trouble over in Shelbyville, but—well Honey, sometimes justice moves fast, and sometimes it moves at the speed of paperwork.”

“So—it’s over,” Tabitha sagged in place. “It’s over, she’s. She’s done.”

“That whole mess is all over,” Mrs. Macintire hurried to give Tabitha a reassuring hug. “Honestly, it should never have even been your problem for you and your family, but that’s… well, that’s how it is sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Tabitha sighed.

“And on that note,” Mrs. Macintire released her grip on Tabitha. “We need to discuss what you’d like to do.”

“What I’d like to do?” Tabitha repeated.

“Both for today for Thanksgiving, and, you know, in the… bigger broad picture,” Mrs. Macintire said. “I don’t know that there’s a delicate way to put this. If you’d like to just put this whole episode behind you and have us take you back home to your parents, we can do that. If that’s… not what you want, you just say the word and Karen and I will do whatever we have to to make other some arrangements for you.”

“Oh… oh,” Tabitha winced as she realized. “I’d never, um. I hadn’t even really considered it as an option. That, I mean. I’ll need to… can I think about it?”

“Of course,” Mrs. Macintire hurried to assure her. “Of course, of course. Karen and I, well… it’s not our place to be critical of your parents. But, if it was—we would be, you have no idea. Too many awful things are happening around you, here, and no matter which way you connect the dots, it just doesn’t seem to make a pretty picture. If there’s anything you want to say, or need to say, about anything else going on—I’d like you to come to us about it right away. We are going to have a long sit-down talk with them playing good cop bad cop, and I don’t think either of us is gonna be the good cop.”

“It’s—no, no, I don’t think everything’s really their fault, exactly,” Tabitha said in a fluster. “I, I might have gone too far with what I said last night. I was upset. I was real emotional at the time, and—I needed to get things off my chest. Some of it might have been just overreaction.”

“From the way Karen explained things, you told them you thought your Aunt Lisa woman was doing heroin, and then they just ignored that,” Sandra Macintire said slowly. “Which is a problem.”

“It’s—it’s not that they ignored it, exactly,” Tabitha grimaced. “I did tell my Dad. Just, he just didn’t believe me, or thought I was just overreacting, being, you know. Melodramatic.”

“Except your Aunt Lisa was, in fact, doing heroin,” Mrs. Macintire pointed out. “So, in my eyes, in our eyes, you were not overreacting. I don’t think we can understate here how serious the situation is—heroin should not be within arm’s reach of children. Period.”

“It wasn’t, exactly,” Tabitha tried to argue. “She was very—protective of it. Her stash, or, whatever it is you call it. I think, um, with the way I tried to explain to my Dad, it was… well, I’d just thrown a. A tantrum. I was upset, I stormed off, it was—it wasn’t completely his fault. It wasn’t, like, negligence, it was mostly misunderstanding? I like to think? He’s not a bad parent or anything, he’s just… a very simple person. One-track mind. With things.”

“Alright, I understand,” Sandra nodded, lifting her fingers to brush a strand of red hair out of Tabitha’s face. “They are your parents. Just—think about it, and if there’s ever anything you feel the need to tell us, please don’t hesitate.”

“I won’t,” Tabitha promised. “I, uh, I didn’t. As soon as I felt in over my head, I called Mrs. Williams.”

“Which is good, that was good,” Mrs. Macintire praised her. “You’re a smart girl. And—oh, speak of the devil.”

“Good morning, Tabitha Honey,” Mrs. Williams greeted from the doorway. “Well, afternoon now. If you drink coffee, we have coffee. We keep a brand new toothbrush or two in the bathroom medicine cabinet, please feel free to help yourself. Auntie Carol and Grandma June didn’t forget theirs. If you want breakfast, I’ll make you breakfast, you want lunch, I’ll make you lunch. Our thanksgiving dinner’s not for another few hours yet, but we got to talking and with everything going on, I decided to pull the Macintires over and have us a big Thanksgiving with both families.”

“It’s because I mentioned I wasn’t gonna do a turkey this year,” Mrs. Macintire confided in a low voice.

“Which is just blasphemous, it’s Thanksgiving for crying out loud!” Mrs. Williams stamped her foot. “In any case, Tabitha—if you still want to have Thanksgiving with the Macintires and Williams, we would absolutely love to have you here with us. If you’d rather I take you home, or whatever you’re more comfortable with, we can do that, too.”

“I don’t want to be a bother at all,” Tabitha said with a smile. “I really couldn’t.”

“Sweetie, you’re not a bother at all!” Mrs. Williams hurried to protest. “We’re happy to have you. I’ve always treated Hannah the same.”

“It’s true, she spoils her rotten,” Mrs. Macintire agreed, patting Tabitha’s shoulder.

“No, I mean it’s…” Tabitha gave them a wry smile. “I’m really psychologically just unable to. No one’s ever done this much for me, and—I feel like I’m taking advantage of you, and you’ve already assisted me so much… I really just can’t ask you for anything more.”

“Nonsense!” Mrs. Williams scoffed. “We’ll have Hannah come in here and walk you through how to do it! You’re a young girl, and you’ve been through dreadful ordeal after dreadful ordeal one after another, and—”

“Karen—let’s not overwhelm her all at once, okay?” Mrs. Macintire intervened. “This has been a rough time for her, and we don’t need to make it any more stressful, okay?”

“No, it’s okay, just. Um,” Tabitha chuckled. “For your Thanksgiving dinner, do you have a potato dish?”

“Of course! We have some ‘tatoes out already, come on out and try them!” Mrs. Williams lit up. “Hah, do we have potatoes. I whipped up my own actually amazing mashed potatoes, and Sandra brought over her awful mess of bland potato paste, too!”

“Hannah’s picky about her potatoes,” Mrs. Macintire laughed. “They can’t have any potato chunks still in it, and, it can’t taste too much garlic, and, it can’t have icky gravy on it, and so on and so forth.”

“Then—if it’s not too much trouble, or too out of the way,” Tabitha asked, “if someone could drop me off back at the trailer park, I can make my scalloped potatoes, from my recipe. Shower and change and everything while it’s in the oven, and then come back here with it for your Thanksgiving dinner. So that I can contribute, too.”

“Aw, Honey, of course we can do that!” Mrs. Williams looked touched. “Scalloped potatoes? I love scalloped potatoes, that’ll be just perfect!”

“I’ll swing you on by now, then,” Mrs. Macintire offered. “There was something I was wanting to talk to you about anyways.”

Since she would be returning in just a few hours, Tabitha only spoke a tiny bit to the veritable crowd that was filling the William’s living room right now—the visiting relatives Carol and June, the visiting other family Darren Macintire and Hannah, as well as Mr. and Mrs. Williams themselves along with Matthew. Sandra waved them all off from holding them up with greetings and questions, and simply bustled Tabitha into someone’s coat and out the door.

Their ride happened to be a sporty little 1996 Acura Integra, and quite a bit messier inside than the William’s much newer Ford Taurus. Compared to many other cars on the road right now, they were both sleek, modern vehicles, which seemed at odds with the perspective of her future experience where the designs became so ubiquitous throughout the 2000s that they seemed like ordinary old cars. This Acura even had a disk changer that could swap out multiple CDs, which Tabitha found herself momentarily baffled by.

Sandra Macintire herself donned a rather eighties pair of aviator sunglasses as she slipped into the driver’s seat, and all at once Tabitha was struck with the realization. Mrs. Seelbaugh was a cool Mom, and Mrs. Williams was an all-out Mom’s Mom, but Mrs. Macintire—she was a young Mom. She had sharp features but dressed fashionably for the times, and kept a trim figure that could pass for someone still in college. Actually, looking at her—she’s probably not even thirty yet! Of course she wouldn’t be. Hannah’s only seven, so…

As they pulled away from the curb and sped down the suburban streets, Tabitha was given plenty of food for thought. Thinking about the two women in terms or relative age made her reconsider the relationship between apparent close friends Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Macintire. Both were married to police officers here in town, and both were mothers, but perhaps rather than direct peers, it seemed likely that aggressively social Mrs. Williams had taken Sandra Macintire under her wing, so to speak. After all, if the house on the lake was any indication the Williams family was well connected and came from money, while by comparison Sandra was getting there but didn’t quite seem to have her life all together yet.

“So—now again, not to overwhelm you or anything, but it is something I want to bring up,” Sandra said as she guided the Acura into Springton’s intersections. “If you prefer to stay with your parents, that’s fine. Completely fine. So long as this whole mess of a thing never happens again ever, of course.”

Tabitha regarded the woman driving with wary eyes.

“But then also, if you don’t want to do that—well,” Mrs. Macintire quirked her lip as she tried to organize her thoughts into words. “I work at an office in Fairfield. When he was up and about, me and my husband, we made it all work. Now that he’s in recovery, things with Hannah… well, I can’t very well leave her with Karen all the time. I’m sure you’ve realized, but like I said Karen can and will spoil that girl rotten. Unapologetically. As if Hannah wasn’t already a little terror to begin with. I’ve looked into hiring a nanny, wasn’t really much into that idea.

“But, I think if it’s you—hell, I don’t even need to get into how grateful my family is to you. Nuh-uh-uh, don’t even start denying it. Stow it, missy. Hannah just adores you, she really loves you. I love you. My husband has it in his mind he’s going to magically fix up that car for you, and realistically, what’ll probably happen is we get it running right again and then shop around for a trade-in, for some car you actually like. Anyways, what I’m saying is…

“We have a spare bedroom. You’ve withdrawn from school for the immediate future. I would really appreciate a live-in nanny, to help me out with Hannah. And, for the next month or two certainly, it would really ease my mind if someone was just there at the house. In case some complication popped up, or Darren fell down trying to stand up and walk around, or lift something like an idiot or—or, anything, really. You know how stupid my husband is, he got himself shot pulling someone over for a routine stop. I wouldn’t expect you to be responsible for changing his, his piss bottle or whatever you call it, or giving him baths, or waiting on him, or taking care of him, or any of that. That would be weird and completely inappropriate and I wouldn’t put any of that on you. Just, you know—in case of emergencies, if someone was always there who could call. That would just be a huge load off my mind. I’ve already taken a lot of time off work, and I don’t want finances to start getting tight right at Christmas-time.

“We’ll still pay you, of course! It won’t be much, but it will be something. And you would be living with us. I understand things at home are… difficult for you, right now. We’re all going to sit down and have a talk with your parents about that. I know you’re just turning fourteen in another week or so, but—Tabitha, you sure as hell don’t act like I did when I was your age. Everything I’ve seen you go through, how you’ve handled it all? I trust you, more than anyone else in the world right now. You have a good head on your shoulders, and seeing you getting dealt these raw hands again and again, it just… it really bothers me. If you want or need or even just think about you rather being somewhere else than where you are now—our door is open to you. I want you to just know that, and keep it in your mind.”

A long moment passed after Mrs. Macintire finished, where they could only hear the sound of the car in motion.

“I—I don’t know what to say,” Tabitha stammered out, completely stunned. “I’m honored, and, and very tempted, but I. I’ll need to think about it. A part of me wants to leap at the opportunity, but then also there’s a part of me that is afraid it would just become an excuse to avoid my family. Avoid tense situations and difficult conversations ahead. Avoid working through and resolving issues that do need resolved, instead of left alone and ignored.”

“You see? That right there,” Sandra Macintire took one hand off the wheel so she could lower her sunglasses just enough to stare at Tabitha. “I know you’re almost fourteen, but Tabitha… you’re not like you’re almost fourteen.”

“H-hah,” Tabitha mumbled out. “I actually get that a lot.”

Returning home was a tense affair, and Mrs. Macintire and her little Acura swept her there down the hill and through the clustered little street of mobile homes far more quickly than Tabitha liked. As immature as it sounded, Tabitha just dreaded this. All of this. These constant awkward situations, all of the confrontation, it took a massive toll on her, and she just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. Not for a long while, if she could help it.

The Moores were waiting for them, and her parent’s faces appeared and then reappeared in the window overlooking the street as Tabitha uneasily climbed out of the car. For a moment she was even tempted to just ask Mrs. Macintire to drive her away—anywhere, anywhere else but here. The wheel of fraught teenage emotion was turning about with clumsy motion within her, and she hated it. The guilt she felt towards cutting her parents out of the loop made her angry, the anger revolved back around into fear and self-doubt, which in turn fed right back into those sapping pangs of guilt and continued it all in perpetuity.

Unable at this point to even mind her body language, Tabitha hugged both arms against herself, and followed Mrs. Macintire up the porch step to the door with reluctance. The woman knocked, rather than simply ushering Tabitha forward to open it, and then Sandra stepped back and rested a hand on Tabitha’s shoulder. The moment felt weird, and she was just turning her mind towards untangling why when the door to the trailer was wrenched open and Mrs. Moore appeared.

“You’re back,” Mrs. Moore managed to say. “Good, good—come in, please.”

Her heavyset mother’s eyes were wet and she looked out of sorts, stricken. Like she had wanted to rush forward and grab Tabitha up in a hug, but froze up at the sight of Mrs. Macintire. Guilt twinged within her again with such force that Tabitha felt a little sick to her stomach, and she remained in place for a moment, shoulders hunched and arms crossed so that she was holding her cast in front of her. It hurt recognizing that another wheel of suffering seemed to be turning within her mother, and she was afraid to think too much on what familiar ruts that wheel might be falling back into. Or even carving ruts anew—Shannon Moore’s old traumas giving way to newer, fresher pain.

I wish things hadn’t gotten to this point, Tabitha stepped inside at the invitation, completely unable to shake how fucking awkward it was to have everyone she cared about on edge and wary of each other like this. But, they did get to this point. Here we are. Now we need to deal with it.

Mr. Moore was waiting for them just inside the living room, and it upset her to realize he didn’t appear distraught like her mother did. He simply seemed confused and angry, like he was about to launch into a tirade or demand explanations or dash one of their family plates against the wall.

Please just don’t, Tabitha prayed. Don’t start. If you get into it, then I’M going to get into it, and Mrs. Macintire’s here and—please PLEASE Dad just don’t embarrass me…

“Tabitha, we need to talk about what all went on last night,” Mr. Moore began with a frown. “I’m glad you’re safe. We’re glad you’re safe. But, you takin’ off like that—at that hour, without sayin’ a word to anybody? That’s not okay.”

“Not okay,” Tabitha repeated with a stony face. “Not okay?”

“No, and you know it’s not,” Mr. Moore shook his head in consternation. “Do you have any idea how worried me and your mother were? We were up all night and worried sick. What if something had happened to you?”

“You were worried,” Tabitha put a hand to her forehead and took a deep breath. Arguing with him right now was going to be bad, but maybe conceding any ground would be even worse. “Okay. Tell me—what should I have done? Instruct me. What was the best course of action I could have taken, in those circumstances?”

“Well, you wouldn’t—” Mr. Moore appeared angry and flustered already. “You shouldn’t’ve run off like that, that’s not okay. That’s not okay, Tabitha.”

“So—I should have called the police, but from here?” Tabitha asked. “Without evidence in hand?”

“No, you shouldn’ta—Tabitha this is something we all should’ve sat down and discussed through together as family. Not something you just, you just run out and go right to police for!”

“Family…?” Tabitha hissed in a low, quiet voice.

“It’s alright, Tabitha,” Mrs. Macintire spoke up, stepping closer so that she could take the girl by the shoulders in a show of support. “Everything’s going to be okay—I’ll take it from here. Mr. Moore, are you suggesting you or your family would have intentionally withheld this Lisa woman’s possession of heroin from the authorities?”

“No, I’m not sayin’ anything like that,” Mr. Moore blustered. “We don’t know what all it might’ve been, or, or if it could be some misunderstanding, or—”

“Did Tabitha tell you that she suspected this woman’s drug abuse?” Mrs. Macintire pressed. “Was anything said that would have raised some red flags for you?”

“No, no, I haven’t had any reason to think Lisa would get into any of that stuff,” Mr. Moore denied. “She’s smarter than that, and she’s got four boys for cryin’ out loud, she wouldn’t—”

“Yes or no, did Tabitha say something to you?” Mrs. Macintire cut him off with a wave of her hand—it was clear she was running out of patience for the man. “Anything at all?”

“Tabby was—she was upset,” Mr. Moore said. “She didn’t mean it. They’d just gotten riled up at each other, and they were cross at each other for a bit, but that doesn’t suddenly mean Lisa’s a druggie or anything like that all the sudden.”

“And, if she was a ‘druggie?’” Mrs. Macintire asked. “You were willing to take that chance?”

“There’s no way Lisa was into any of that kind of thing,” Mr. Moore refused. “I think once we all have this sorted out, there’s—”

“Tabitha Honey, can you excuse us for a moment?” Mrs. Macintire’s voice was cold. “To your room, or the bathroom, or—just give us a few minutes, here.”

“Oh, um,” Tabitha looked between the adults uneasily. “Okay.”

Sandra Macintire watched Tabitha carefully tread her way past her parents and on down the hallway that spanned the rear of the mobile home. Maintaining a mask of civility was harder than she thought. She wanted to tear into this idiot and his wife, and she was sure that if Karen were there, these ‘parents’ would’ve been laid into in a vicious way already.

“It’s my understanding that you paid cash to transfer the title of that Cutlass Supreme,” Mrs. Macintire began. “If I may ask—how much money did you give her? This Lisa woman.”

“We—” Mr. Moore exchanged glances with his wife for a moment. “We didn’t transfer the actual title, no. My brother would still have it in there with wherever he kept all his papers. It was just an informal sort of… trade. She needed some money to help get her back on her feet, and she left the car here for us.”

“Until she just up and took it again,” Mrs. Macintre pointed out. “Can you give me a number? How much money?”

“Sixteen hundred, it’s what we had saved,” Mr. Moore admitted. “It’s what we had at the time.”

“That’s very interesting,” Mrs. Macintire remarked in a cool voice. “Can you guess how much the Springton police department valued the heroin they found in this Lisa woman’s purse at?”

Mr. Moore stared across the room in confusion and disbelief at the woman for a long moment, and eventually Mrs. Macintire decided to simply continue.

“There’s about eight grams of heroin that we’re trying to prove was in her possession,” Mrs. Macintire revealed. “There was eight grams in her purse that Tabitha took. An entire gram runs about five hundred dollars ‘on the streets,’ so this Lisa had on her person about four grand worth of heroin.”

“Trying to prove,” Mr. Moore latched on to her phrasing in search of any possible way out. “That don’t mean anything but—”

“She tested positive for opiates, had visible puncture marks on her arm from needle use, and she passed out and fucking pissed herself on the ride back to the station when one of the officers took her in,” Mrs. Macintire went on. “They found out she’d already been charged with possession over in Shelbyville, as well as some other misdemeanors.”

Mrs. Moore had the good decency to look absolutely horrified, but Mr. Moore remained frozen in place with an incredulous expression. He simply wouldn’t—or maybe couldn’t—believe what he was hearing. Sandra recognized that stubborn goddamned willfull ignorance from having seen it on her own parents faces all those years ago, and if anything running into it again just made her more and more furious.

“I’ve known an addict or two,” Mrs. Macintire said in a low voice. “I’m a city girl, and I grew up in Ohio, for Christ’s sake. Tabitha has settlement money coming her way, more money than most any family expects to see. In this sort of situation, do you realize how easy it would have been for this Lisa woman to get Tabitha hooked on heroin? She’s thirteen fucking years old, socially isolated, and medically vulnerable. She’d be hooked and have the money—Lisa would control the supply. Doesn’t that just sound fucking perfect?”

“That’s… ridiculous,” Mr. Moore shook his head in denial. “There’s no way. Lisa isn’t that kind of person to begin with, and there’s no way my little girl would go in for anything like drugs.”

“You think she’d have a choice?” Mrs. Macintire was growing incredulous at his continued naivete. “You think what, Lisa would explain it all out first? Ask for permission? Tabitha’s just out of the hospital and hurting, Lisa could spin any story she liked. Say ‘they gave you this for the pain,’ or even ‘it’s an antibiotic, you have to take it.’ Why let her know before it’s too late?”

“Why that’s bull-malarkey, and you don’t know a thing about either of them or any of us or how we are,” Mr. Moore argued with a raised voice. “You can’t just come in here and, and accuse anyone in this family of this or that nonsense just based on whatever Tabby said when she was in a mood!”

The slight figure of their teenage daughter chose this moment to come on back down the hallway and rejoin them, and Sandra was thrilled to see that the girl was carrying an overstuffed jean schoolbag.

“Dad,” Tabitha swallowed. “I’m going to… stay somewhere else for a little while.”

“No, you’re not,” Mr. Moore refused immediately. “Go on back to your room, we’re gonna sit down and talk about all this later. You’re not runnin’ out to who knows where again, absolutely not.”

“I’m going,” Tabitha repeated in a defeated voice. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re not,” Mr. Moore insisted. “I don’t even know how all this got worked up into this, this—this big crazy debacle. We’re putting a stop to all this. Please go on back to your room, now. Mrs. Macintire—thank you for bringing Tabby on back, but now I think it’s time for you to leave so we can—”

“Honey… why don’t we stop and let her speak,” Mrs. Moore warned her husband.

“She’s been speakin’ enough, and that’s how this big whole mess got to how it has,” Mr. Moore shook his head. “Tabitha—I know Lisa disciplining her son like that really rubbed you the wrong way and had you all worked up into a tiffy. But, she’s their mother and that’s— it’s just part of havin’ kids and raisin’ them up sometimes. You’ve always been a good girl, so maybe I think you haven’t really seen that kind of thing for yourself. Lisa loves her kids, and she isn’t some fairytale wicked stepmother or drug hippie or whatever it is story you’ve cooked up in your head about her with your imagination. When you’re grown up you’re gonna be able to understand.”

That last sentence seemed to be exactly the wrong thing to say, because even through her own outrage and bewildered fascination with Mr. Moore, Mrs Macintire was able to see the dramatic effect those words had on Tabitha. The teenage girl had been worked up with a dozen different emotions and visibly struggling with all of them, and then—nothing. Nothing. At the words when you’re all grown up you’re gonna be able to understand, all of the feeling in Tabitha’s eyes seemed to simply snuff out all at once and there was just nothing.

A shiver went went down Mrs. Macintire’s back at witnessing it, and she clenched her car keys with suddenly sweaty hands. Because Jesus H. Christ she was getting this girl the fuck out of here and away from this fucking family.

“I’m leaving,” Tabitha decided with a small nod to herself. “I’m going to need your permission to stay with the Macintires for… however long that winds up needing to be.”

“We’re your parents, and you’re not allowed to go any—” Mr. Moore began.

“You have our permission!” Mrs. Moore interrupted her husband with both of her fists, swinging them one after another in unrestrained bashes and almost knocking the man to the floor. The Moore mother was already breaking down into tears. “You have our permission, and—you stay safe, and—Tabitha I’m so sorry, I—I—”

“I’m sorry, too,” Tabitha said in a distant voice. “I—I’m taking the scalloped potatoes. I’ll call and check in when I’m—when I become able to. I’m sorry. I love you.”

With jerky, almost rigid motions Tabitha walked over to their refrigerator and withdrew a glass dish covered with plastic wrap. Whatever this Tabitha girl had made for the prior Thanksgiving with her own family, there looked to still be two-thirds of the cheesy potatoes still there as leftovers, and Mrs. Macintire actually found herself pissed off that these ingrate parents might have enjoyed any at all. Tabitha clutched the dish against her hip with her good hand, pinning the strap of the backpack she had slung on one shoulder with the other, and took one last look around the tiny mobile home.

“Dad—when you call me and apologize, I’m going to be where I need to be to forgive you,” Tabitha stated in a flat voice.

“Maybe don’t call too soon.”

Sandra held the door for her, and they left in silence. The sudden turnabout of the situation honestly gave her chills. She wanted to hug the girl, because Tabitha was absolutely not okay, but instead she simply accepted the glass dish of potatoes from Tabitha so that she didn’t have to struggle with everything. This petite girl with the tangle of red hair wasn’t near tears, she wasn’t choking up with sobs or angry or needing to vent—Tabitha Moore was somewhere very, very far away right now, and Sandra Macintire was just going to give her all the time and space she needed.

Good Lord up in heaven, what a total mess, Mrs. Macintire sighed. We cannot get the fuck out of here fast enough. Definitely drinking with Karen later tonight, Rob or Matthew can keep an eye on Hannah, or something. If Tabitha wasn’t thirteen, I’d make sure she was right there drinking with us. What does a girl even DO about all of that?

The Thanksgiving dinner was nice.

Mrs. Williams was an accomplished host, and her talents extended from preparing the best dinner Tabitha might have ever had to remaining in subtle control of conversation as everyone around the table talked. The woman sensed that Tabitha was withdrawing back into herself even before Tabitha did, and gently pulled attention back away from her whenever someone tried to engage Tabitha in more than a sentence or two.

“You’re in ninth grade, Dear?” Auntie Carol guessed. “Tenth?”

“Let her eat, goodness,” Mrs. Williams laughed. “She’s just skin and bones. Carol—I take it you’re all caught up on NYPD Blue? Detective Simone…”

Tabitha wanted to blush at the excuse prepared for her, because after just a short five minutes or so into the meal she’d been unable to eat another single bite. She was absolutely stuffed and had kept her head down, fiddling with her fork in the errant bit of gravy that remained on her plate and doing her best to avoid notice.

“Oh my God, I couldn’t even believe it,” Auntie Carol took the hint and shifted tracks into the new topic with ease. “How’s the show going to even be the same without Jimmy Smits? I mean, when she took the ring, and looks up at him, and Bobby just has tears running down his face? I just lost it!”

“If watching that scene doesn’t make you choke up every time, why you aren’t even human,” Mrs. Williams agreed with a bitter smile, shaking her head. “If they don’t win an Emmy for that, then well, I can’t imagine who will.”

“Listen to her, NYPD Blue,” Mrs. Macintire snorted. “As if she just can’t get her fill of lousy cop drama just from around here in town.”

“Well, I can’t,” Mrs. Williams sniffed. “I’ll take as much as I can get. You should really try watching sometime, it’s just fantastic.”

“Ahh, it’s all hokey mumbo jumbo,” Officer Williams joked. “All of it. Especially all the stuff around Springton PD. It’s like—who writes this garbage?”

“Oh, please,” Grandma June rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated laugh.

“I’ve been sayin’ it, I’ve been sayin’ it for years,” Officer Macintire joined in. “Routine stop, my ass.”

“Darren, language,” Mrs. Macintire laughed, smacking him across the shoulder. “There’s little ones here.”

“Cover your ears whenever it looks like your Daddy might say a bad word, Miss Hannah,” Mrs. Williams teased.

It was apparently an inside-joke Hannah already knew her part in, because still chewing a mouthful of her mashed potatoes, the little girl quickly dropped her spoon and clamped both hands over her ears. The sight evoked a small smile even from Tabitha, but try as she might to muster her spirits—her heart just wasn’t in it.

The food here was divine, and she’d perhaps never eaten so much in a single sitting since re-living her life again here. Tabitha felt uncomfortably full, and also completely empty. It wasn’t that hollow ache of depression, it wasn’t numbness, exactly, it was just nothing. As though she’d spent all of her tears and overdrafted her anger, and now all of it was gone and there was nothing left to do but wait until her next emotional paycheck.

I don’t even know what that means, Tabitha thought to herself as her smile began to fall. I guess I—I don’t know. I’ve dealt with everything I can, and processed everything I can process, and now I’m waiting on some other awful revelation to drop, or, still waiting on some kind of resolution, or—I really don’t know. It’s all just been a lot of things happening at me, really fast, and then when it’s like this and everything’s done… what happens now? I have no idea. Where I wound up is way outside the framework of what I knew before or anything I planned for. Just. Here I am. I guess. But, I also just can’t… immediately adapt to it.

The topics of discussion shifted around and Tabitha listened with detached interest, too hesitant to contribute and feel the awful weight of everyone’s attention turn towards her. The talk was all light and easy to follow—although the Williams family seemed to be central to many of the local communities and their goings-on, Mrs. Williams adjusted direction of the chatting away from that gossip after each shallow foray into it for the benefit of Carol and June, who were visiting from Indiana. Karen Williams was in her element and had an excellent grasp of everyone’s differences and commonalities, ensuring that talk swung around naturally so that each of them could participate on their subjects of interest.

Mrs. Williams and her sister-in-law Carol somehow found time to watch a ton of television and kept pace with what must have been ten or twelve different programs. Both of the visiting relatives were eager to hear how Matthew was doing in school, which usually managed to pull Officer William’s attention away from talking football with Officer Macintire. Hannah was adorable and asking for the seven year old’s opinion on grown-up topics was a constant source of amusement to everyone at the table. Mrs. Macintire in turn did actually still work at the safety plant in this timeline, which surprised Tabitha more than it should have. The woman didn’t seem to have as high a position in the plant’s office as she had when Tabitha knew her as Mrs. Crow, but her working there at all was already outside of expectations.

“They even have me on the production line here and there helping out this winter,” Mrs. Macintire let out a sigh of aggravation. “It’s such a mess. This is the slow season, there just aren’t really any orders coming in. So, we cut off all the temp workers, and just have the plant running on this, this skeleton crew. In theory just to, you know, get ahead on producing certain parts for harnesses for this summer when we get really slammed. Just, the thing is—you can’t just pull apart a full production line like that down to seven people. That’s not how it works, and I swear most of the office just does not understand that.”

“Good lord,” Officer Williams shook his head in dismay.

“So, there’s parts of production getting done, but none of it’s connected,” Mrs. Macintire threw her hands up. “It’s not connecting. It’s like a connect-the-dots that’s supposed to turn into this big picture—but they took most of the ‘dots’ out to ramp back hours for the slow season—and then they’re just baffled that what’s left over doesn’t quite wind up painting the same complete picture. It’s unbelievable.”

“And then from what you’ve said, you just can’t keep up in the summertime,” Mrs. Williams remarked. “Seems like no way to run a business.”

“It’s always a new batch of temp workers, and they’ve all gotta be trained up from scratch,” Mrs. Macintire complained. “It saves us a ton in not having to pay out proper salaries, but the cost in time and efficiency is just—it’s ridiculous. It isn’t any way to run a business. The industry didn’t used to be like this.”

Hearing her talk about it had Tabitha rising back up and on the edge of her seat, almost burning to give them her own input about the safety plant. But, she couldn’t. She’d never worked there in this lifetime.

Keeping the plant staffed and operating at all was a total revolving door clusterfuck, Tabitha wanted to say. Most of the old hands treated the new hires like absolute shit. The girls running stitches on the sewing line actually WORKED maybe two hours of their eight hour shifts, and just milked the clock gossiping and bullshitting and wandering around for coffee or bathroom breaks all day. Plant manager can’t get them in line because he’s sleeping with so-and-so. Foreman can’t say anything because he’s fooling around with whoever.

Tabitha had been hired on full-time on merit, because there was miles and miles of slack that needed picked up. It had made the dismissive way everyone there had treated her rankle, it made the nepotism hires that did as little work as possible infuriating, and worst of all— there was no way she could vent about it here. Frustrations and agreement to mirror what Mrs. Macintire was saying filled her mouth, but each and every bit she would have to just swallow back down.

“Well, we’ve been saying—Matthew wants a car, he’s gonna have to work for it,” Officer Williams commented. “We’ll get him there through that temp agency so he can work through it this summer, give you guys a hand maybe.”

“I was thinking more like a pizza place, or Food Lion or something,” Matthew appeared to blanch at having his summer decided for him. “Working to stock shelves or something. Like, I do want to work, but I’d rather it be with people my own age. No offense or anything, hah.”

“Ehh, work a job for teenagers, and you’ll get paid like a teenager,” Officer Macintire threw in his two cents. “I’d say go for a Midas or Mighty Auto, or Autoshack or Autozone or whatever they are now. Learn your parts, and then go from there into servicing and all that real money.”

“That’s right,” Auntie Carol remarked. “How’s Little Caesar’s or Pizza Hut going to want to hire you before you get your own car?”

“The place he really wants to work—but doesn’t wanna bring up—is Family Video,” Mrs. Williams revealed, rolling her eyes.

“No I don’t,” Matthew denied with a blush. “They don’t need anyone else anyways.”

“Family Video?” Auntie Carol pursed her lips. “Springton doesn’t have a proper Blockbuster?”

“His girlfriend works there,” Mrs. Williams confided in a loud whisper. “She—”

“I don’t like Matthew’s girlfriend!” Hannah insisted with a pout. “I don’t like her.”

“Yes, you do,” Matthew reminded her. “It’s Casey. You like Casey, remember?”

“Oh, her,” Hannah paused in realization. “She’s… okay. I thought you were talking about somebody else.”

“Some other girlfriend?” Mrs. Macintire teased.

“You remember Casey bought a Happy Meal with you?” Matthew asked. “You each got Happy Meals, but then she gave you both of the toys?”

“She’s okay,” Hannah admitted with obvious reluctance.

“But only okay,” Mrs. Williams chuckled. “He can do way better, right?”

“Mom—” Matthew warned.

“I turn thirteen in just a few years,” Hannah argued her case. “I’m almost old enough.”

“Hannah, Honey,” Mrs. Macintire sighed. “You’re seven years old! Thirteen is quite a few years away.”

“Not really,” Hannah pouted. “I’m almost eight. And eight’s almost thirteen.”

“Speaking of which—our Tabitha here has a birthday coming up real soon,” Mrs. Williams announced, in a rare moment drawing everyone’s attention to their most quiet guest. “December tenth, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Tabitha winced. “I’ll be fourteen.”

“Huh, that’s pretty soon,” Officer Macintire remarked.

Tabitha had been so caught up in simply observing the conversation that she hadn’t been prepared to suddenly be on the spot participating in it again. It appeared there were limits on how far into the background Mrs. Williams was willing to let Tabitha fade. Still, Tabitha was fine with that—it wasn’t as though she was feeling distraught or emotional or anything right now, just out of place and a little lost.

“Hmm, and what does Miss Tabitha want for her birthday?” Mrs. Macintire asked, giving Tabitha an interested look.

“I—” Tabitha’s mind went blank. “Um. I don’t know. I didn’t think that, uh, that I should have any expectations.”

The sudden silence around the Thanksgiving dinner table was absolutely deafening, and the strange looks several of the parents exchanged threw Tabitha into an immediate fluster.

“Not, no, not in a bad way or like that,” Tabitha quickly amended. “I’m well taken care of, and, uh, provided for. I was, I mean. There—it’s that there isn’t anything I need, or anything.”

“It’s alright, Honey,” Mrs. Williams assured her with a strained smile. “We’ll just have to surprise you!”