After five days in Whitfield Julie ran out of money. With her last ten dollars she hopped a bus to the coast hoping to stay with her grandmother. When Julie was twelve the woman had told her she was always welcome. But a decade had passed since they’d spoken, and as she drew near the coast Julie felt smaller and smaller. By the time the bus let her off she’d sweated through two layers. Nervous, she rambled aimlessly, through drizzle perfumed with dead fish and diesel, and two hours later discovered her grandmother’s place: a weathered beach house perched atop a sandy hill messy with weeds and windblown debris. Rusted boats bobbed on the water. Men dragged rattling cages layered with crabs drowsily pinching the air. A shed the color of flesh puffed black smoke from a fingerish chimney.

“Helllooo,” she said, stretching the word as she nudged inside. Potpourri, wet socks, cigarette smoke. Above bay windows sudsy with grime a stiff marlin was nailed to the wall, its mouth stuck in a scream. Julie followed coughing into the kitchen.

Her grandmother held a shotgun. “Who are you?”

Julie reintroduced herself.

“You look different,” she said, as she set the gun in the sink. She was a compact woman, with floppy, liver-specked skin, and white hair foaming her scalp. A long brown cigarette tucked in her mouth nodded up and down. “Your mother told me you’d come.”

“Bet she didn’t say I’d stop off in Whitfield,” Julie said, with derisive bravado.

“Your momma’s a talker,” she said. “You staying a while?” “Just till I get more cash, Grandma. If that’s — ”

“Nuh-uh. First rule: nobody’s grandma. It’s Jean. Or Missus Grandma if you’re attached to the G-word.” She sipped from a Coke can and then spat black mush in the sink. She sipped from a second can tktktkt