seemed to have exploded out of it onto the floor. Eden would have collected some clothes in a pillowcase, but there didn’t even appear to be a pillow. The bed was covered in a stained mattress pad but nothing else. A Star Wars sleeping bag lay in a slump on the floor. She found a trash bag in the kitchen and threw in an assortment of T-shirts, shorts, underwear, and socks, all of which she’d have to wash when she got home.
On her way back up the hill, Eden passed Roddy in his truck. They paused, idling in the road, leaning out their windows to talk.
“I’m going to see what I can do down there,” Roddy said. “Find Bud . . . see . . .”
Eden nodded. “You’re a good boy, Roddy.”
Roddy closed his eyes and shook his head. “Oh, Ma,” he said, as though it pained him. “Oh, Ma.”
Back at Eden’s, Suzy and the children were half awake on the living room couch, blindly watching a television screen they could hardly see in the glaring midday sun. Mia was now wearing a T-shirt of Roddy’s that came down past her knees. Eden loaded Squee’s clothing into the washer, then busied herself baking a lentil loaf and an apple brown Betty for Penny and Art. She prepared peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and got Squee to eat a few bites, though he did so mechanically and seemingly without hunger. Squee was operating robotically, but his lack of animation almost seemed a blessing. He seemed dampened, his reactions to the world dulled. Against everything Eden believed, she allowed the kids to sit dumbly in front of the television all afternoon. Even Eden understood the necessity of mindlessness on some occasions.
When Suzy began to ready herself and Mia to return to the Lodge that evening, Squee wanted to go back with them. “Is Roddy there?” he asked. “I need to go help Roddy.” It was more vitality than he’d exhibited all day.
Suzy knelt down beside him. “Squee, babe,” she said, “you’re going to keep helping Roddy just like you have been, but what’ll help him the most right now is if you go and stay for a little bit with your Grandpa Art and Grandma Penny. They’ve got a room all ready for you, and they’re really going to need you with them now.” Suzy’s voice was teacherly and terrible.
Squee’s face was, for the first time that Suzy had seen, set in a child’s angry stubbornness. “I have to go to Grandma and Grandpa Vaughn’s?” he whined.
“Yeah, babe, for a little bit, you do . . .”
Squee looked weary and drained. He said, “Grandma and Grandpa Vaughn suck.”
It was all Suzy could do to keep from bursting into laughter. Her struggle seemed to please Squee, who brightened some. Suzy said, “That’s exactly what I used to say when I had to go visit my Grandma Dolly.”
Squee didn’t speak, just looked to Suzy as if he wanted more.
“It’s just for a little bit, Squee. Just until your dad’s back from Grandma Merle’s . . .” she trailed off. It was a prospect that didn’t make anyone feel any better at all.
THE LODGE WAS OVERLY QUIET. You might have suspected hubbub, but there was none. It was quiet as a funeral, small groups of people huddled in corners, processing the events. Everyone had a version to tell: how they’d heard, where they’d been, what they’d thought at first, how that had changed. Sheriff Harty and Deputy Davey Mitchell spoke to the employees a few at a time. As some of the last people to hear, if not see, Lorna Squire alive the previous night, Peg and Jeremy were questioned together, their responses taken and recorded with great enthusiasm on the part of the deputy who didn’t often get to do much but look stern and holler at kids he caught climbing the yacht club fence for late-night swims.
No foul play was suspected—what was foul about it? A very sad, very, very drunk woman who’s just had a fight with her husband passes out on the couch, a lit cigarette in her fingers . . . What more was there to say? She left no note. No intimation of suicide. But whose mind didn’t it cross? It wasn’t hard at all for anyone to picture Lorna Squire doing herself in. They’d watched her take her own life, day by day, for years. They wondered what would happen to Squee, what would happen to Lance, but