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Mamie.” His voice became firmer. “Show me what you saw … how he did it.”
    She cowered from it. “No, Daddy, don’t make me. I don’t want to. Please, please don’t make me.” But regardless of how much she begged, he insisted. Reluctantly she cupped her palm around the handle and placed her forefinger through the slot until it rested on the tension of the plastic trigger. She looked at him to see if he would tell her not to, but he said, “Go ahead.” Drawing her arm up crooked, she held the water gun to her head.
    He wiped his face and ran his hands through his hair. “All right,” he said. “Give it here.” She handed it back to him. “Mamie, if you know anything else about this—anything at all—you have to tell me now. And tell the truth, because I don’t want to find out you’re in on this. I’ll be watching you, every move you make.” Like God does, she thought.
    â€œBut I dunno,” she said, crossing her feet off the edge of the bed, one on top of the other, then reversing them. “I already told you.” His hand came down close to hers, but she got up and went to the dresser. When she glanced back, the door was ajar; smoke hung in the doorway.
    All that day the double doors to the living room didn’t open except to allow their neighbor Mrs. Jackson to enter and leave at suppertime with a tray covered by an embroidered cloth. Toddy stayed in bed, taking his medicine, and their father roamed the house, smoking his cigarettes. Some of the bouquets of flowers that had come were left on the table in the dark vestibule. Again the next day, except for brief necessities, the doors remained shut. Twice the nurse left and came back; the doctor arrived shortly after two o’clock and stayed in the room for most of an hour; otherwise the room was closed. Her father went in and out a few times, taking a glass of water or a wet washcloth, but Mamie did not once glimpse her mother. The room must be full of flowers by now, Mamie thought.
    As she changed into her pajamas, she tried to question her father. Where would Mama sleep? She had to go to sleep sometime, because she had never stayed in the living room so long. But her father shrugged off her questions. “Your mama sleeps on the couch when she’s tired,” he said.
    Mamie had made a place to play on the landing where the stairs turned, bringing down shoe boxes from the closets to build an imaginary room and dragging out all her paper dolls, but she played with them distractedly, watching the tall doors below through the bannister spindles. Late in the afternoon of the third day, their father helped Toddy pack his tin suitcase to go stay with the Connerlys down the block, where Jeff Connerly, a friend in his grade at school, lived. Watching from the bedroom doorway, Mamie saw her father do the things usually left to her mother. His large hands looked so strange folding and packing the small clothes while Toddy tracked behind him from the bureau to the side of the bed and back, asking how bad was Sherman, how long would he be sick? “I don’t know,” her father said. “We don’t know for sure.” That evening, for Mamie, he made peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for the fifth time in a row. She couldn’t eat more than a few bites. “When’s Toddy comin’ home?” she asked him, but he didn’t seem to hear.
    She waited as long as she could, hoping for a time when she could be with her mother by herself. Night came into the house and the staircase grew steadily dimmer. The nurse left at six o’clock, telling Mamie’s father she would return at eight. He followed her outside as far as the end of the walk, talking. Mamie dumped the clutter of paper dolls off her skirt and crept down the stairs. Standing at the window beside the front door, she saw that they were still talking. She hurried toward the sliding