"You tell her you didn't drink it?"
"I told her I didn't open it. She didn't believe me." He wiped his face with the back of his wrist. "Why would she?"
"She wouldn't," said Ray. "Not tonight. Tonight she's watching her daddy. That ain't about you. It's about you, but it ain't about you." The screen door creaked again. "You give it time. If she don't come around, she don't come around. You don't get to make her. But you keep your side of the street clean, son. You hear me? Keep your side of the street clean. That's the only side you get."
* * *
Lila did not speak to her mother on Friday morning.
She ate her cereal and let herself be buckled into her car seat. She would not look at Nora in the rearview mirror. At preschool drop-off she walked into Ms. Gabby's room without turning around, and Ms. Gabby gave Nora a sympathetic grimace over the top of her head, and Nora went to work and stood in the water district office looking at the radar on the big monitor, where a green and yellow and orange smear was turning off the coast of Virginia like a slow pinwheel.
"Remnants of Tropical Storm Hallie," said her supervisor, Gordon, coming up behind her with his coffee. "Two to four inches tonight, and peak tide's at 2:17 in the morning. Spring tide." He sucked air between his teeth. "You're on call. Sorry."
"I know."
When she picked Lila up at three, Lila was holding a piece of construction paper. She did not offer it. In the car she sat with it on her lap, face down, and when they got home and Nora said, "What did you make today?" Lila said, "Nothing," and took it upstairs.
Nora found it an hour later, on Lila's bed, when she went up to tell her it was time to start getting ready for the train.
It was a drawing. A platform; Nora recognized the shelter and the stairs. A train, done in long gray crayon strokes. On the platform there were three figures. One was small, in a striped hat. One was tall, with yellow hair, Nora's color. And one was tall, with brown hair, standing a little apart, and over him Lila had drawn a large black X in heavy crayon, pressed so hard that the paper had torn.
Nora sat down on the bed.
Lila was in the doorway. Nora didn't know how long she'd been there.
"You sent him away," Lila said.
"Lila—"
"You sent him away. You always send people away." Her voice was flat and furious. "You sent Papa's clothes away. You sent Papa's brother away. You're going to send everything away until there's nothing."
"Honey, I didn't—Uncle Tom has—"
"You're LYING," Lila shouted. "You're lying, Ms. Gabby says you shouldn't lie, you said you would always tell me true, you PROMISED—"