“Henry, Henry!” Angie’s voice was a poisoned arrow flying straight down the stairs. The thunder must have awakened her.
          “What?”
          “Do you have five dollars?”
          “No cash, Mom. Sorry.”
          “A loan – just ‘til I get to the cash machine tomorrow.”
          “I don’t have any cash.”
          “C’mon, what about your birthday money?”
          “You know – in the bank.”
          “Jesus, Henry. Don’t you have anything, a couple of bucks in quarters?”
          Sometimes, if she just stopped answering, Henry could shame Angie into stopping, too.
          The storm was picking up, the sky boiling dark grey clouds against which lightning flickered and flashed like garish special effects: cataclysm, apocalypse. The trees creaked and wet leaves rode the gusts, dozens plastered to the picture window. The house smelled like Pine Sol and ozone. Polly had been on a cleaning spree since their stepfather Peabody left in June. Polly seemed to think a spotless house would help keep Angie together, although nothing in either of theirs experience – Henry’s twelve years, Polly’s nine – gave them reason to think so. The AC unit in the living room window strained and perspired. Two electric fans dragged at the nearly-cool air.
          Usually, Henry did keep almost all of her money in the bank because it was easier to be prudent than to lie, but just last week she’d deducted $300 in cash, for emergencies.
          “Is Mom okay?” The orange rubber gloves nearly reached Polly’s elbows.
          “As fine as she ever was.”
          Polly frowned. Sarcasm was one of her least favorite things. “It’s the storm,” she said, eyebrows scrunched.
          It was so crappy, that Polly felt responsible for any of this.
          Lightning crashed very close. The lights flickered. Angie had only been back on the pills for a couple of months, but Henry had learned there was no predicting the course of things. Angie might get herself to a meeting tonight, doubtful as that appeared, or it might be a year from tonight.
          Now the thunder and lightning arrived nearly simultaneously, as big booms of white light, one after the other. Polly went back to her cleaning. Henry pressed her forehead to the cool windowpane. Geneva whimpered beneath the dining room table. Angie shuffled overhead. Henry hated that sound – her mother’s battered leather moccasins smitch-smitching across the bare wood floor – those mocs and her stained putty-colored robe and her unwashed, unbrushed hair.
          Now the biggest boom yet, a transformer blown, and the house went dark.
          “Shit-fuck,” Angie said at the top of the stairs.
          Geneva yelped once and resumed whimpering.
          “I can’t find the matches,” Polly called from the kitchen.
          Henry started rummaging in the sideboard. Behind her came the thudding, cursing, bruising sound of Angie tumbling down the stairs. A bad silence when she landed. In the dim light she was a limp heap, her robe half-opened, her neck bent at an odd angle. For a long strange moment, Henry thought or hoped she was dead.
          Angie moaned. “I think I broke something.” She turned her head and tried to pull herself up.
          Dashing into the room, Polly almost ran into Henry. “Mommy?” Polly said, leaning into her sister.
          “Baby, get me my purse, okay?”
          Already the air felt stale and the blank between the thunderclaps was eerie without the whirr and buzz of the AC. The phone rang. Henry figured it was Peabody. He had a knack. Angie got herself half-propped up on the bottom stair. Polly ran back in with Angie’s purse.
          “I’ll get it,” Henry said.
          Geneva scurried to the door and began barking.
          “Somebody’s here,” Angie said.
          “I’ll get some ice for your ankle,” Polly said.
          Angie’s ankle was swelling, but Angie had shifted her whole attention to the bottle of pills she’d plucked from her purse. Her mouth went fierce as she pushed and twisted the bottle cap. Her hands shook hard enough to rattle the pills. The phone was still ringing. In the kitchen, Polly cracked open an ice cube tray. Geneva was still barking. Was it safe to answer the phone during an electrical storm?
          “Do you guys have power?” Peabody said. On his end, a baby cried somewhere behind him. That woman’s baby.
          Henry hung up. There was no one she hoped would be at the door. Well, Parr maybe, but it wouldn’t be him. Twyla swung open the door. “What the fuck?” she said. Twyla’s head was big and wet. She shook it like a dog. “Could I get a towel?”
          Geneva sniffed at her ankles and sneezed. Twyla’s perfume was strong and smelled like cheap incense.
          “I fell,” Angie announced.
          Twyla wheeled toward the stairs. “Well fuck Mary – what the hell were you doing stumbling around in the dark?”
          “Well look at you,” Angie said, “Did you walk over here?”
          “Car wouldn’t start. I think I’m – ” Twyla picked up Angie’s purse and hung it on her wrist. “Let’s get you over to the couch.” But first she lit a cigarette. She flashed Henry a look. “Did you think I was kidding about the towel?”
          Henry wished Geneva would pee on Twyla’s pumps, but instead she yelped at the next crash of thunder and retreated back under the dining room table. The phone started to ring again. Polly the props girl ran in with a towel. Twyla sniffed it. “I need an ashtray.”
          Angie groaned as she settled onto the couch. “Was that Peabody? What did he want?”

          Henry found Polly fumbling around beneath the kitchen sink. “What are you doing?”
          She pulled her head out of the cupboard. “I’m looking for – aren’t you going to answer the phone?”
          “Let them deal with it.”
          “Really?”
          “Would you bring us a couple of beers?” Angie hollered. “We might as well drink ‘em while they’re still cold.”
          Henry knew where this was headed. Those two could polish off a case of beer, no problem. They’d sit in the dark drinking – expecting to be waited on hand and foot – until they were both crying, or passed out, or Angie puked – always a possibility when she mixed the pills with booze. “Polly,” Henry said. “I need you to run upstairs and pack as quick as you can – as if we were going away on vacation. Can you do that?”
          Polly nodded.
          “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
          The phone stopped ringing, restarted.
          “I’ll be ready in five minutes,” Polly told her.
          “Henrietta! Your mother and I need you in here.”
          “Hang on. I’ll be there in a minute,” Henry yelled back. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”

          They made their way down the alley and crossed the arterial where the houses were older by thirty years and tree roots heaved the sidewalks. Polly’s backpack featured anatomically incorrect purple and pink butterflies flying across a baby blue background, but its smart black wheels made it altogether more practical than the big, red, metal-framed backpack Henry had swiped from the closet of the spare room – a mysterious relic of someone’s past. Theirs was not an outdoorsy family. The wind had eased and now it was just raining very hard in drenching perpendicular sheets. All the family she and Polly had lived within a mile of their house.
          The electricity was on over here. In each backyard air conditioner compressors whirred and moaned. The wheels on Polly’s backpack clacked loudly. Polly was humming to herself. Henry was having trouble knowing what she should say to Polly, especially since she’d inspected Polly’s ultra-organized packing job – neatly rolled T-shirts, an extra pair of jeans, pastel-flowered underpants and white undershirts, new toothbrush, new tube of toothpaste, her socks rolled into perfect cotton pucks – and realized that Polly had already been packed, for who knew how long. “I just figured,” Polly told her, which made Henry worry that Polly knew more than she did, while at the same time she understood – another worrisome thought – that Polly trusted her in a way that Henry trusted no one.
          Henry had been so angry – she could have set the house on fire, listening to her aunt and mother pop open their beers and her aunt kick off her high heels. Twyla’s voice was all smarmy when she talked to Peabody – her old drinking buddy – and then Angie’s voice, gone woozy, demanding the phone. “Lemme talk to him.” Just getting five feet away from the house was a relief – except for leaving Geneva behind. Those last few minutes she kept trotting up the stairs and back down, circling the house as if trying to figure out what she could do to help.
          They passed Twyla’s house – all the lights on there – and ducked behind the bushes that lined their grandmother’s driveway. Her rust brown Oldsmobile was gone. Of course. Tuesday afternoons were for duplicate bridge and highballs. The only light came from the living room and they peeked into the window. Their step-grandfather was sitting at the desk where their grandmother paid the bills. He yanked on the sticky bottom drawer where she kept scrap paper and rubber bands and extra rolls of tape. He pulled out a Snickers bar, tore off the wrapper, and stuffed it into his mouth. Henry felt Polly wince. Nick had diabetes and over the past couple of years he’d undergone a number of surgeries in which bits of his feet were carved off as they rotted away. Henry knew that Nick was a sneak and a cheat. When he was at their house he’d prowl their kitchen for cookies. His before-meal ritual was to circle the table, kissing all the women and girls on the napes of their necks, on what he called “the ice cream spot.” Henry didn’t like him lifting her ponytail, the feel of his hot breath on her skin; she didn’t like how when he insisted on helping her on with her coat his hands ran down her sides. Henry had heard Angie complaining about her mother complaining about Nick’s eating transgressions. “The flesh is weak,” Angie said, and she would know.
          Anyway, Henry had already decided to be unsurprised by whatever they would find once they left home. People behaved badly. Where was the surprise in that?
          Nick pulled out a second bar. “Gross,” Polly said.

          Henry had an overall plan, a kind of flow chart in her head. If this, then this; if not, then that. Their leaving as they had – abruptly, in the late afternoon, and during a storm – threw things off, but not that much. They needed a place to stay tonight and they needed a place to stay until they found a place to really stay. Somewhere, maybe, like where their uncle used to live, a big group house with a constantly changing cast of characters – students, drop-outs, artists. The rooms were small and cheap and everybody came and went as they pleased. Parr always said they didn’t care who you were long as you had first and last month’s rent and kept quiet after 10 p.m.
          She patted at her stomach for her wallet. She had wrapped the wallet against her skin with an ace bandage. The wallet held the $300, the debit card her grandma had helped her get, and two 1888 silver dollars Peabody had given her on her last birthday.
          “We’re not really running away,” she told Polly.
          “Mmmm,” Polly said.
          Of course they’d have to go back eventually. But maybe they could knock something loose – make Angie in particular see things in a new way. “We’re just going to get their attention. Mom’s so wound up in her pills, and the separation – so wound up in herself, you know?” On the note she’d left on Angie’s dresser she’d written, I’m taking Polly away until things improve around here. We’ll be safe. Don’t worry. Please get better soon.
          “Sure,” Polly said.
          “I know it’s not that simple. She’s sick, I get that. But I know she wants to be a good mother.” Did she know this? Or was this one more childish notion she’d have to relinquish?
          “It doesn’t matter,” Polly said. “I don’t want to go back.”
          “I figured we’d camp out in Parr’s basement tonight. He’s in Hawaii with April until the weekend.”

          Parr’s basement had become the family repository for old appliances and aged furniture. He also possessed the family’s most complete set of tools and gadgets and he kept the basement door unlocked, sparing his sisters and mother the trouble of breaking in when they wanted to borrow a ratchet set or power drill when he wasn’t home. Henry and Polly pulled out a couple of old blankets. The blankets were freshly laundered and easy to find because Parr was an organizer and his dozens of Rubbermaid tubs were clearly labeled. These they spread out on the two comfiest couches. Cool and musty, the basement smelled like bleach and chlorine. Even though it was nowhere near bedtime, it would be good if they could just sleep and then get up really early and move on.
          But Henry couldn’t fall asleep and she was pretty sure Polly was awake, too. And then the front door slammed shut. They both heard at once that it was Parr – his flat-footed lumbering – so they weren’t afraid, but it was another bug in the ointment. Polly looked to her as if for explanation, but how was she supposed to know what he was doing home? Anyway, either he’d come downstairs or he wouldn’t. Henry thought they should just be really quiet and try to figure it out, but since Polly was still looking at her for answers, she made a show of creeping up the stairs to listen at the door to the kitchen. If he had come home early from his trip why hadn’t he called or come over?
          She heard the refrigerator door open. Parr always stood in front of the open fridge, even if it was empty. More sounds that were easy to recognize: the eventual closing of the door, the popping open of a beer can, cupboards banging, a bag of chips torn open. She heard snuffling, which could be Parr’s allergies (he was allergic to everything) but sounded more like crying. He did that sometimes, too, though usually only at their house and after a six pack.
          None of this was what she wanted to hear, of course. Once upon a time, on maybe his best day, Parr could have convinced Angie to let them stay here for awhile. But then he started running around in lovesick circles for April and look where that had gotten him. Besides, though Parr loved them fiercely, he was scared of Angie. A woeful, soggy Parr would never stand up to her. And that was just a fact, not a judgment.
          Angie hated being judged and she was sure that everyone was constantly judging her. Henry had learned to keep a poker face if she walked in on Angie weeping in the kitchen over a mess of might-have-been daiquiris or chocolate chip cookie batter, trying to work the blender or Mixmaster when she was already half-crocked. But Angie would detect a twitch or roll of the eyes and she’d holler at Henry and cry some more. “You don’t understand,” she said and said.
          But Henry did understand. Her mother, father, Peabody, Twyla, Parr, her grandmother, Nick – they’d all been wounded, disappointed, let down. From what she could tell none of them had had the parents they really needed; not one of them had been loved as his or her heart required. They carried their sadness around like big feed sacks full of rocks and they fooled themselves into thinking that this or that – drinking mostly – would make them feel better. Sad, sad, sad, blah, blah, blah. On top of that and worst of all, it seemed, they had lost Margo. Angie had been a grown-up when her sister disappeared, and from what Henry had heard Margo had been a ne’er-do-well, a heartbreaker, and a con artist, but she’d been beautiful, and theirs, the family’s, to love. Henry had a pretty good idea how this family history business worked, how it was all right there, ready to crash down on her and Polly. Henry would not lose Polly, though. She had left Geneva behind, her most beloved, but she would not lose Polly.
          Now she was thinking that Parr’s hadn’t been a very good idea anyway. Everything, every thing these people touched was smeared with that sadness, and that was exactly what she and Polly needed distance from.
          “Can you walk to the Metrolink?” she asked Polly.

          They traveled just two stops up the line, closer to the airport, where she figured the motels would be busy and people came and went at all hours. It was 10:20. There was a whole line of places to choose from – these were the budget motels, she knew. The nicer places were right at the airport or in Clayton or downtown.
          “How old are you, anyway?” the desk clerk, Monique, asked.
          “Fifteen.”
          “Is that so?”
          “As I said, our parents dropped us off to check in because my sister was tired and they had some important business to attend to. My mom said there wouldn’t be a problem. I expect them back later tonight.”
          Monique’s face said no dice. Beside her, Polly stood light and rigid, like a papier-mâché girl. At last Polly was afraid and apparently Henry was about to fail her. How in the world had she imagined that this would work? Her friend Abby’s brother, Merrill, had taken several road trips to the Ozarks on his own, staying in cheap motels for a week or more at a time. But Merrill was 16 and had the beard of a grown man; he pulled up to the motel office in his own car, and paid with a real credit card. When people looked at her they just saw a kid. And Parr’s old roomies might have rented to the average misfit but that didn’t mean they’d rent to kids.
          Henry felt the way she had a few years ago when she’d slipped on some ice right off the end of a dock and into the lake wearing her blue wool coat – heavy and cold, sinking. Peabody, who was supposed to be keeping an eye on them, had fallen asleep in the car. Polly’s screaming had summoned a strong-swimming good samaritan who had stripped off his clothes and gone in after her.
          “Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on?” Monique asked.
          At home, Henry knew who to trust: no one. And she’d learned to assume the worst when Angie or Peabody introduced someone new into their lives. But at that moment she recognized her real miscalculation: she would have to trust people out here. They needed help now – and they would need help later.
          “Maybe I can do something,” Monique said.
          How in the hell was Henry supposed to know who could be trusted? Polly tugged at her sleeve. “I think you should tell her.”
         

          Fifteen years later, Henrietta stood at the reception desk of a Sleep Inn twenty or so miles south of Memphis. The night clerk glanced up from her thick textbook with tired eyes and pulled herself to her feet. Her badge read “Mindy.”
          Mindy, Mandy, Sandy, Nikki, Patrick, Mick, Monique. If you checked into enough motels you had your fair share of déjà vu moments. The familiar jingle of the bell over the door, the crash of the icemaker in the background, the smell of Lysol and burnt coffee, the guy waiting in the car or the guy flirting with the clerk. And behind all those over-remembered, half-remembered sensations lurked the night she’d left home with Polly, as if her younger self had been hanging out in the lobby all along, sipping a warm Coke, reading People, and waiting for Etta – the name most people knew her by now – to show up.
          “I need a room for the night, please,” Etta said. “One at the end if you’ve got it.”
          “No end rooms. Best I can do is one at the back with an empty room on each side.”
          “That’s fine.”
          The girl slid the registration form and a pen across the counter.
          “Studying hard?” Etta asked the girl. This one actually looked a bit like Monique – white-blonde hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, her skin clear and freckled.
          The girl scowled. “Organic chemistry sucks,” she said. “You ever take it?”
          Etta looked out at the car. Max had woken up, obviously, and was leaning against the driver’s side door lighting a cigarette. He dropped the match to the ground. The world was Max’s ashtray. He was standing off balance, tipped to the side. She’d laugh if he fell over.
          “Miss?”
          Past Mindy’s desk there was an exit sign, a dark doorway. But what did that have to do with her? What was she going to do – run off somewhere without her car?
          She looked back outside. Max was rummaging through her glove box. It was far more likely that if she didn’t get back out there soon he’d drive off with the extra set of keys. He flipped through the owner’s manual, shook a container of Tic-tacs. She was disappointed when he slammed the glove box shut. He caught her eye, raised his palms, miming, “What’s up?” She gave him an exaggerated shrug.
          “Are you going to take the room?” The girl said it nicely enough, but a grey SUV was pulling up right behind Etta’s Civic. Her turn was about up.
          She would just take the path of least resistance. When in doubt, right?
          “I’m sorry. Yes.” She signed the form and handed it back to Mindy along with her credit card. Maybe they’d get some real sleep. The last time they’d gone on a bender Max couldn’t get it up and he’d passed out for over eight hours. If she got some sleep she knew she’d feel better.
          Henry had been such a brave little trooper. Henry had had it all figured out. How she’d protect Polly, never lose Polly. She had thought that all she needed to figure out was who to trust.
          Monique, it turned out, had been a good choice. She told them she had left home at 16 and was putting herself through school. “A woman has to take care of herself. We have the right to find a safe place.” Even though she was still sort of treating them like children, it felt good and kind of weird to be included in that group: women. She gave them her lunch – a turkey sandwich and a baggie full of grapes – and she bought them bottles of water from the vending machine.
          Monique wouldn’t rent them an actual guest room, but she led them to one that didn’t get rented out, a room crowded with cots and metal shelves stacked with linens and cleaning supplies. “You can lock the door from the inside. I’m the only one here with a key right now. I’ll wake you up a little before seven and get you out of here before my shift is over. My boss is a real law and order kind of guy. You can bet he’d call the cops or CPS if he knew you were here.”
          That night at the motel, and for weeks after, she had chosen well – had not been punished for her foolishness. And she had protected Polly – no one could say differently. She had kept Polly safe until she’d gone off to the Northwest to live her own life and take care of her own self.
          “One key or two?” Mindy asked.
          Was it crazy to think that this Mindy would help her out? Would give her a room where she could hide from Max and sleep it off and tell Max she’d just disappeared into thin air? He wouldn’t need much encouragement to take off, as long as he could manage to turn the key in the ignition. She’d had better luck, hadn’t she, when she was still able to trust a Mindy or Monique?
          A couple emerged from the SUV and staggered toward the entrance. They wore matching green polo shirts. They were hilarious. The woman pushed too hard on the door and it banged on the wall.
          “Concierge, give us your finest room,” the man declared.
          Henry would certainly have something to say about this. What a fine mess you’ve gotten us into – that sort of thing. Miss Henry with her Plan As and Plan Bs. Her red backpack and silver dollars and little green plastic wallet and savings account and clean socks and good intentions.
         Fuck Henry.