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“I can’t . . . ,” I say, a line of warm blood slips out of my mouth, my front tooth swinging loosely against my upper lip. I think of Mom, crying and lost on the couch, more tears falling when I told her I never want to be like her—a Henley housewife. I still could be. There’s a future where the Chass name equals murder and we no longer live on South Lincoln Street. There’s a future where I visit Dad on the weekends in prison because I’m still here, in Henley.

“I can’t . . . ,” I say again, my own tears falling, warm alongside the cold rain. But the thing is, I can—and I know it. I’ve cheated and lied, hurt people and climbed over others in order to get what I wanted.

“You can,” Dad says, his voice gaining strength. “You can and you have to, or else everything I’ve built and all your hard work collapses. Denise watched Boggs get the shit beat out of him and never said a word. She wasn’t some lost angel, and this Jamison girl is a delinquent. You’re Lydia Chass, and you’re going to be something. But you’ve got to make a decision, right now. You’ve got to take control of your own future, or else you won’t have one.”

It’s true and I know it. An entire life of following the rules, nodding and smiling, doing the right thing and going along to get along, biting my tongue and choking back the bile have culminated in this—my ticket out of Henley. I’ve burned the midnight oil, stayed up late, felt my tendons tight in my wrists, the ache of filling out every form, checking every box, and always, always being the best—and winning. There’s only one small movement left: the curl of my finger on the trigger. The only thing standing in my way is Bristal Jamison.

Bristal Jamison and the truth.

“Bristal?” I ask, my voice shaking, the muzzle of the gun dancing between the two of them.

“You do what you’re gonna do, Chass,” she says, her eyes never leaving the mud-slicked handle of the shovel, and Dad’s knuckles white against it. “I’m not begging for a damn thing.”

I take a deep breath, and steady the gun.

“Sometimes good people do bad things, right, Dad?” I ask.

Then I close my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

And I pull the trigger.

Forty-Two

Excerpt from podcast episode “Clearing the Air” of On the Ground in Flyover Country

Welcome to Henley, Ohio, a place you can always come back to. . . . I’m Lydia Chass, inviting you to join me as we explore the past and traverse the present of our hometown.

Bristal: Which, honestly, has been kind of a shit show lately.

Lydia: As you have probably guessed, my cohost, Bristal Jamison, is joining me today as we untangle the Gordian knot of gossip from the past couple of weeks.

Bristal: I just want to say right off—Lydia shot her dad, and it was badass. Badass Chass.

Lydia: Could you maybe treat it with a little more gravity, though?

Bristal: Why? He’s not dead. You shot him in the shoulder. He’s fine. By the way, listeners, if you’re interested in commemorating the historic moment—and I know Henley is big on commemorating shit—I’m selling “Lydia Shot Her Dad” patches on my Etsy site.

Lydia: That is definitely not okay. We did not talk about this.

Bristal: No, but I’ve been telling you we should monetize since my ODOT episode. Have you seen our numbers lately?

Lydia: Speaking of that, I’m going to assume that quite a few of our listeners aren’t local—

Bristal: Considering that the population of the entire county is about thirty thousand and our last download count was ten times—

Lydia: I think we can contribute that to you dropping the f-bomb live on CNN.

Bristal: It was a hot-mic situation.

Lydia: You spoke directly into it and made eye contact with the camera.

Bristal: CNN was awesome.

Lydia: I’m not sure they felt the same way about you. You may have garnered them a few FCC fines, and you were only on air for thirty seconds.

Bristal: Speaking of censorship, we have to use the word allegedly quite a bit in this episode, because we can’t necessarily prove some of the things we’ll be talking about.