Lorena stood beside her, arms crossed, projecting her own version toward the neighboring estates.

Craig hung back playing the wounded, magnanimous husband, sighing loudly that he was willing to forgive me if I would only come home.

Landscapers stopped to stare.

A car slowed to a crawl.

Noreen, seeing an audience, sat down on the hot pavement and wailed to the sky about the ungrateful daughter-in-law who had cut off her own mother-in-law’s power and left her to die in the heat.

Inside, in the cool of the living room, it was very calm.