Renie waited a moment, clenching and unclenching her fists, then stalked over and pulled the bedroom door closed, trying to make herself some room, some free space. She looked over at Stephen, still rocking and jiggling in the net. He might as well be catatonic. She slumped into a chair and lit another cigarette. It was important to remember her father as he had been, she reminded herself—as he still occasionally was—a proud man, a kind man. There were some people in whom weakness, once it had appeared, grew like a cancer. Mama’s death in the department store fire had found and revealed that
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