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To Francis Pellicer, it seemed blasphemous to build an artificial storm. Even at this rudimentary level with hot plates and Masonite-paneled walls and aluminum pie plates, all Francis could think about was the brine-burned pall the previous hurricanes had cast over St. Augustine.

Tolly had been with her grandmother, Lib, two months and she had quit pestering for her mother’s whereabouts. They were in Lib’s tiny kitchen on Dubose Road, an assembly line of sterilized metal lids and wide mouth Ball jars spread across the red Formica countertop, June Gold and Starlite peaches in the brentwood bushel baskets on the floor.

Jackie wanted to make it the honest way, but her sister Cassie’s letter as frantic. There was a lien on the house. She was driving a stolen truck. The power bill was overdue. Jackie’s first night out of New Mexico Women’s Correctional was not what she’s expected.

Soon as Darcy kipped out on the rent, her landlord chain-sawed fifty feet of overgrown bay laurel from the lakefront cottage, exposing wide-eyed windows and long-neglected leaning porch, allowing me ample views of my guilt.

My small house at the edge of Clement Solano’s aviary was backed by a creek I’d never seen. I tried once, but it was impossible to reach; there was no trail. I stopped at the black winter mud and fought woolly gnats that spun from the raveled cedar branches.