Here was her mother, clutching her plastic cup of beer and looming dangerously, so close that Rachel could smell the Oil of Olay and the cigarettes on her fingers. Too close, especially after all these years.
“What?” Her mother’s voice was still the same, imperious and scratchy. “You’d better get out of here before Red Mabel sees you. There’s guns here.”
“I know,” said Rachel. “I bought raffle tickets.”
“You’d better start saving your cash, Miss Big City. That trailer house is a goddamn money pit.”
Rachel had received a slim letter. This was how she found out her father had passed away, this official notice from a lawyer naming her the sole beneficiary. She had barely known her father but still felt something inside her tear when she ripped open the thicker envelope that had arrived two days later—papers to notarize, two keys, a typewritten list of the things of value: a 1970 Fleetwood trailer house, a small lot in a trailer court measuring ninety-eight by two hundred feet, a Stihl chain saw, a 1980 Toyota Corona, and a checking account containing exactly $2,034.08. She immediately called her AA sponsor and proclaimed it a sign.
“No,” her sponsor had said. “Not a sign. It’s estate law. That’s how it works.”
“I can’t help but think of it as fate,” Rachel had insisted. “It means something.”
“You don’t have to accept every gift you’ve been given,” her sponsor had said, somewhat coolly. “I suspect this one might have some strings attached.”
And it did. The strings were in her face at this very moment, and they had hot beer breath. Her mother extended a finger and poked Rachel in the chest. Rachel took a deep breath. This encounter would be unpredictable, a teeter-totter.
“The last time I saw you at a Fireman’s Ball, they had to scrape you off the floor. Could’ve used a giant fucking spatula.”
“I don’t drink anymore,” said Rachel.
“That’s what you keep telling me,” muttered Laverna, her shadow fifteen feet long, wobbling in the heat.
“I never told you that. You returned all my letters. I haven’t talked to you in over nine years.”
“Word gets around,” said Laverna, somewhat ominously.
“Well,” said Rachel. “I’m excited about the house.”
“I take it you haven’t met your neighbors yet.” Laverna cackled, and then she was gone.
Rachel wondered if her sponsor had been right, that this insistence on proving herself was a mistake. She glanced nervously toward Red Mabel, who fairly resembled a black bear, burly, all haunches. Her face got dark brown in the summer, but year-round her hair was massive and black. The people of Quinn called her Red Mabel because she had Kootenai blood. The people of Quinn had chosen black to distinguish the other Mabel, because of her rotted smile, teeth long dead from too many amphetamines and too little floss. Black Mabel was a drug dealer and a thief and a pool shark and a terrible drunk driver. Not terrible because she did it often, but because she did it so poorly.
Rachel had always loved Black Mabel. Both of the Mabels were barflies, but they were never seen together. There was a begrudging respect between them, a draw. Their personalities had arm wrestled and neither budged.
The Chief of the QVFD emerged from the restroom and nodded curtly at Rachel as he passed, drying his hands on the legs of his wool pants. He had several chins and was fleshy, but not fat. He was completely bald, and his eyebrows were each as thick as a thumb.
When Rachel had been a junior in high school, this man had been the grand marshal of the Fourth of July parade. He had ridden in the back of the oldest known truck in town, and Rachel had been behind him, clomping down the streets in the marching band, attached to a bass drum, the harness pinching into her shoulders with every step. He was chosen to be the grand marshal that year because he had put out the most chimney fires in one winter, more than any volunteer who had come before him.
A creature with no eyebrows approached Rachel, chomping gum, fearless. Della Dempsey. Rachel could never forget such a face, smooth brow like a burn victim.
“Rachel? Rachel Flood?”
Rachel sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know who that is,” she said. And it was true, in a way. She would not have to call her sponsor; she did not tell a lie. After she sobered up, Rachel had no idea who she was anymore. She didn’t know