"I know. I'm just saying. She asked me like she didn't know."
The dryer buzzed in the laundry room. Upstairs, Kenzie laughed at something. Junie rinsed a glass and set it in the rack, and the water ran over her hands, too hot, and she let it.
"Okay," she said. "Thanks."
Brooke shrugged, a small, embarrassed shrug, and finished the glasses and went back to her room. Junie stood at the sink for a while after she was gone.
At nine-forty her phone buzzed in her back pocket. Dad. She dried her hands on her jeans so fast she nearly dropped it.
"Hey, bug."
His voice sounded like it had been put through a cheese grater. Behind it she could hear generators, a lot of them, and somebody yelling about a bucket truck.
"Hi, Daddy. Where are you?"
"Outside Broken Arrow, still. We got the hospital back on this afternoon, so that's something. Whole neighborhood east of here, it's—" He stopped. "It's bad. Trees through roofs. There's a lady on Elm Street been sleeping in her car with two dogs. We'll get her tomorrow. How's my girl? Big night tomorrow, huh?"
"Yeah."
"You got your dress all set? Dana said you might not—" He paused, and she heard him shift the phone. "She said you were having second thoughts about going."
Junie went very still.
"I'm not having second thoughts."
"No? Good. Good. She said you'd been kind of down, and I thought—well, I don't know what I thought. I'm three hundred miles away, I don't know anything." He laughed, tired. "I'm sorry I'm gonna miss it, Junebug. I really am. I asked Hollis if I could cut out early, but we're short two guys already, and with the hospital—"