‘He died,’ I said.
She pulled in her breath and went white. She stared at me until her eyes started to water.
‘You sick?’ I asked her. ‘Go ahead, throw up. It’ll make you feel better.’
‘Dead? Lone is dead?’
‘Yeah. There was a flash flood last week and when he went out the next night in that big wind, he walked under a old oak tree that got gullied under by the flood. The tree come down on him.’
‘ Came down on him,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, no… it’s not true.’
‘It’s true, all right. We planted him this morning. We couldn’t keep him around no more. He was beginning to st—‘
‘Stop!’ She covered her face with her hands.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’ll be all right in a moment,’ she said in a low voice. She went and stood in front of the fireplace with her back to me. I took off one of my shoes while I was waiting for her to come back. But instead she talked from where she was. ‘Are you Lone’s little boy?’