The neighborhood east of Broken Arrow looked like somebody had picked it up and shaken it. Oaks that had stood for eighty years lay across the streets with their root balls in the air, big as cars, dirt still clinging. A pole on Elm had snapped clean at the base and was hanging by its own wires like a puppet. From the bucket he could see blue tarps on half the roofs and a man in a Sooners cap sitting on his front step with his head in his hands, not moving, the way people sit after the adrenaline wears off and they understand what is actually gone.
He finished the splice. He checked it twice. He lowered the bucket.
"Coffee," said Hollis, who ran the crew and had for nineteen years, and who looked like a fire hydrant that had learned to talk. He held out a thermos cup. "Lady on Elm's got power. She cried. Dogs barked at me. Fair trade."
"Good." Mark pulled off his gloves. He took out his phone to check the time and saw the texts.
The number was saved as Brooke (Dana's), which he had typed in himself three years ago at the wedding reception, and had used, he realized now, maybe twice. Both times to say happy birthday.
The first text was a photo. He didn't understand it at first. A utility sink. Cloudy water. Something green under a bucket.
The second text said: This is Brooke. I'm sorry to bother you at work. Mom did this to Junie's dress for the dance. On purpose. She held it under with the bucket. Then she told Junie she has to stay home in rags. Junie is on the floor right now and she won't stop crying and I don't know what to do.
The third text came while he was reading the second. It said: Please don't tell Mom I sent this.
And then, a few seconds later, a fourth, just a few words, as if Brooke had been holding them a long time and they had finally come loose:
Junie isn't allowed to have her old room. She has to sleep in the laundry room. I don't think you know that she HAS to. I think you think she wants to.
Mark stood in the street in Oklahoma with a thermos cup in one hand and his phone in the other and read the four messages again from the top.
"Hale?" Hollis said. "You all right? You look like you got hit."
He did not answer, because he was looking at the photo. He spread it with two fingers. The green under the water. He knew that green. He had stood at the Hutchinson fair thirteen years ago in a white tent that smelled like kettle corn while his wife held a bolt of fabric up against her face and said, "Mark. Mark. Look at it. It's the exact color of the river at the state park, remember, that morning?" And he had remembered, and said nineteen dollars a yard was highway robbery, and bought it anyway, three yards, and she had kissed him in the tent in front of a woman selling quilted toaster covers.
On the edge of the photo, on top of the dryer, was a coffee mug. White. With a pink smear of lipstick. Live, Laugh, Love on the side in gold script. He had bought that mug. It had been in her Christmas stocking.