Outside the world was parched. The back acres waved and buckled like corpses. The morning air crept into the kitchen window sluggishly. Lainey wiped her swollen and stung hands on her apron. The children played quietly in wait for their grandfather to show signs of life from the bedroom above. 

Lainey prayed silently, then cursed her unanswered prayers as they echoed in footsteps. The patriarch shook the windows with his large boots overhead. 

“Alive,” she mourned, squashing a spider in the sink. 

The children rattled, too. The oldest, Beth, padded into the kitchen and gouged a finger into the draining honeycomb, earning her a slap from her mother. Lainey winced. She wanted to smatter her daughter in apologetic kisses, but grandfather was awake and required breakfast. 

The footsteps stumbled down the stairs and assumed a damp and foreboding form. He looked like a gigantic grub, fresh from the earth, wet and soiled, smelling of putrified flowers and liquor. 

From behind the grub crept a girl, younger and prettier than Lainey. Her face was less marred than Lainey’s. He had been kind. The girl wore a sickly shade of rose perfume. It was the signature scent of all his girls. She had been the third and last of his night--a night that lingered in Lainey and her children’s minds--filled with grunts and whimpers of various shapes and sizes. 

Lainey set another plate. 

The children went to play within the miserly shade of the cherry tree. The elderly grub went to relieve himself, leaving Lainey and the girl. As they sat, a four-legged beast, mangled and dark, perched between them and writhed. 

Lainey and the girl did not address the beast. Rather, they stared into their teacups: Lainey’s, chipped and brown; the girl’s, glistening china. 

They each sat, remorse clinging to their bodies. The girl squeezed a $10 bill in her soiled dress pocket. Lainey’s belly shuddered with life. 

“Keeping you has a price, Lainey,” the fat man had told her, imposing himself within her. “Jr. ain’t here, and he ain’t coming.”

His last letter came from Paris. His father snickered and warned that once Jr. had a taste of Paris his appetite would never let him leave. It was true: Many soldiers stayed. But Lainey knew he would be back. His ship would bring him back a hero. 

Her husband would return. Lainey watered her tea leaves.