"That's me," Kristen said. "Tell billing they can talk to me."
When she hung up, Shelby was staring at her.
"You don't have to do that. I'll figure it out. I'll get a payment plan, I'll—"
"I know I don't have to," Kristen said. "That's the point. Nobody's going to spend money on you behind my back again. If my money goes to you, it's because I gave it to you, with my eyes open, and you know exactly where it came from. That's the deal now. That's my deal."
Shelby looked at her for a long moment. Then she nodded, once, and leaned her head on Kristen's shoulder, and they stood at the fence and listened to the water applaud the dark.
It was after one in the morning when they pulled into the dead-end street in Millbrook. Jolene's lights were still on. Brock was sitting on the front steps in the cold without a jacket, the way Shelby had been, and when he saw two heads in the car instead of one, he put his face in his hands.
Shelby got out first. She stood at the bottom of the steps in Kristen's grey jacket and her shower slides, and Brock stood up, and for a second neither of them knew what to do. Then Shelby said, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. She knows about the money," and Brock said, "I know she does. That's on me, Shel, that one's all on me," and he hugged her, carefully, the way you hug someone who's just had surgery.
Kristen watched from the driver's side and did not go to them.
Inside, Tanner was asleep on the couch with the cartoon still murmuring, one arm flung over his head, the thread bracelet dark against the cushion. Shelby knelt on the rug beside him. She didn't wake him. She put her hand flat on his back and kept it there, feeling him breathe, and Jolene came and stood in the kitchen doorway with her arms crossed tight over her cardigan and her lips pressed together, and nobody said anything for a long time.
"I'll make up the spare bed," Jolene said finally, in a voice like gravel. "You two can fight over it."
They didn't fight over it. Shelby slept in it, or lay in it, with the door open so she could see the couch. Kristen took the armchair by the window. Brock said he'd sleep in the car, and Jolene said, "Don't be ridiculous," and gave him an afghan and the floor of her sewing room, and he went without arguing.
Kristen did not sleep. At a little after five, when the window had gone from black to a deep bruised blue, she heard the back door and went out onto the porch and found Brock there, standing at the rail with the afghan around his shoulders, looking at the woods.
She stood beside him. Not close.
"I'm going to say what I need to say," she said, "and then I'm going to drive my sister to Cedar Hollow, and you're going to drive yourself home."