'Cause the line between wrong and right
is the width of a thread from a spider's web

Angela stubbed her cigarette out on the heel of her shoe. "She ain't yours an' you know it," she said, crossing her arms against the cold. October was coming in with a vengeance, and the wind was blowing hard. Ahead of them Alexa was running, bangs blown back and cheeks flushed, holding Joshua's little hand.

"I'm Peter Pan!" she shouted, smiling open-mouthed, showing off her new gap. "You can be a lost boy, okay Joshua?"

"Lost boy!" Joshua squealed gleefully.

Angela smiled despite herself, but quickly wiped it off her face. Joshua was going to have to get used to losing his new friend real quick, because she wasn't about to start setting up playdates with the harlot's child. "You're not gonna ever be her daddy."

"Tim don't wanna do it," Curly said through a mouthful of smoke. "He ain't gonna say nothin'. You oughta see the way he looks at her."

Angela sneered. "You oughta be doin' the same, Curly Shepard, if you knew what's good for you. She's been nothin' but trouble from the beginning. Come on Joshua, let's go, we're goin' here." She reined her son back in to lead him into the free clinic, and Curly jogged to catch up to Alexa, who demanded to be piggy-backed the rest of the way.

"Ah, I don't think so, kid," he said, putting his hand on the top of her head. "My back ain't made for that."

x x x

Curly denied the offer to stay for dinner. From the fogged kitchen windows he could see Mark and Ruby around the table, and that wasn't the kind of time he'd been hoping to make with Sophie.

"Thank you so much for getting her," Sophie said, heartfelt, hugging him tight and giving him a quick peck on the lips. Her cheeks were a little flushed when she pulled away. "I don't know what I would have done without you."

Curly shrugged, hands in his pockets. He couldn't be too much of a pansy in front of people, not even Sophie. He had the scraps of a reputation to consider, and he was still Tim Shepard's little brother, and word around town sounded that Tim was still someone you wanted to watch for. Maybe the Brumley boys had fallen apart, but Shepard stood strong.

Inside, Alexa was excitedly announcing her big news. She plopped the wad of toilet paper from her pocket onto the table with pride. At first everyone just looked at it was confused smiles, not sure if they were supposed to congratulate her or encourage her to go further. It wasn't until Sophie came in and said, "baby, what's in the toilet paper?" that Mark and Ruby breathed little sighs of relief. Maybe Alexa had an imagination the size of Jupiter, but that was just too much for them.

"My tooth!" she said proudly, unwrapping the ball and tipping the little squared chiclet onto the wood. "It fell out after school and I thought I lost it 'cause it fell on the ground, but Curly found it for me and when we got to his house he put it in the paper and said –" and here she lowered her voice in a poor but endearing imitation of Curly's scratchy, rough tone "– don't let it out 'til you get home 'cause the Tooth Fairy won't give you no money then!"

"Congratulations baby!" Sophie hugged Alexa tight.

"I know how to make a neat little envelope for your tooth out of paper," Ruby offered, "wanna go up to your room and we'll make one?"

"I got paper!" Alexa confirmed, dashing upstairs, Ruby giving chase after her. They left Sophie to stand quietly by the stove, waiting for the chicken to finish in the oven, while Mark glowered in silence. When he was angry like that, Sophie couldn't see the student teacher with the well-trimmed beard and greaseless hair. All she could see was the heartless punk with the scars on his eyebrow, who could have killed a million of Shepard's boys and not blinked an eye seven or eight years ago. Maybe the gang war had died out, but there was still a hatefire in Mark like no one could ever know.

"Curly Shepard," he said when he finally started to speak, "left me bleedin' for dead on the sidewalk."

"He's different now." How many times had she used that line? And where was her proof? He was still working for Tim doing something illegal, he was still charming his way into her life even though he had no right or reason to be there – it was just a feeling. And a feeling meant nothing to anyone but you.

"You trusted him alone with Alexa? She's your fucking daughter."

"I know she's my daughter," Sophie said, a lot calmer than she wanted. She wanted to scream at him, and throw the flipper she was holding, and maybe punch him in the face for being Ruby's big brother and Joel's best friend and the type of guy she just couldn't fall in love with no matter how hard she tried. "Which means it's up to me what she does, where she goes, and who she's with. And I trust her with Curly."

Mark looked like he had a boiling retort, but before he could say a word, Alexa came sliding on her butt down the stairs, a neat little envelope all coloured in bright crayon clutched in her hand. "Look what Auntie Ruby made me," she said proudly. "I coloured."

"It's beautiful," Mark said, his voice calm again. But the fire wasn't extinguished from his eyes this time, not like it used to be.

x x x

In the dimly lit office on the first left of the second floor of Smith, Lerman & White, a tired man in a fresh suit coat penned a second letter in delicate, feminine script on paper stained with age and crumpled with thoughtlessness. His fingers shook as he wrote, after long hours in the office, forms and files and contracts, but this was more important than all of them, than any of them. This had to be right.

Bloodshot grey eyes searched out the envelope on his desk, titled long ago, stampless and addressless but he knew where it was going. He would deliver it himself and no one would even see him do it, not this late at night, just an old man on his way home from another tough day in the machine.

This might be the last, the only thing that kept his exhausted body moving while he shrugged on his coat, wrapped his scarf around his neck. This might be the last letter he had to write. How hard did she need convincing, really? Her mother was already insane. And grief made the mind so fragile.