The uniforms weren't terrible. The color could've been less severe, less candy-cane red, but perhaps the juveniles, being young, were supposed to feel a ray of hope in that bright, feisty color rather than dwell on the fact that their lives were over. Not that Kim had hope, regardless of what color she wore. She'd been convicted and sentenced—life in prison. It hadn't been her lawyer's fault; he'd done his best under the circumstances, those circumstances being her adamant confession and refusal to suggest any mitigating factors. Why she'd done it, even she couldn't say. There'd been a feeling, of course, a feeling that her hands had held that axe, had brought it down upon her brother's head, cleaving the flesh and bone above his right ear. And there was the sound, too; she was sure she'd heard a maddening howling, wild fearsome cries behind and around her, echoing through the trees and shifting the moss in its force . . . but then, that could've been the chaos of her own thoughts.

The whole thing was frustrating. Kim wasn't sure what had happened to Tyler. Stumbling across his body, she'd felt as if awakened from a dream, and the fact that her prints had been on the axe and she'd been the only living thing around . . . It'd just made sense. The police officers had made her understand that, and by the time a lawyer had shown up, she'd long given in to all the conjecture.

Impressionable—that's what her doomed lawyer had tried to imply, to indicate the police had guided her toward a confession. The girl isn't reading above a fourth grade level, she remembered him telling the judge. We've had her evaluated, and she's well below the bell curve, closer to mental retardation than average intelligence. If she'd known what "retardation" had meant, Kim thought she might've been offended. But when he'd blown all his bluster, she'd refused to recant her confession all the same, not taking the stand herself, not protesting.

Life in prison without parole. That's what they'd told her at the end of it all, what she'd heard through the rushing blood in her head, and in a strange way, the sentence felt like a relief. Now sitting in her cell at Terrebonne Detention Facility, nearly an hour from her home, Kim understood no more about Tyler's death than she had at his funeral or when she'd been arrested, but she did understand a little more why she'd been so willing to confess. Life in the detention facility was routine. It was predictable. It was safe. Here, she could be alone, away from the mockery of her teenaged counterparts in Surette, away from her mother's inefficiency and demands and, best of all, away from her father. None of them could touch her, here. Kim had never had high aspirations for herself, anyway. In fact, the more she'd become aware of her meager prospects, the more she'd begun to panic about her future. Well, now it'd all been decided for her: guaranteed meals, isolated cell, her own toilet, no expectations to help with childcare or housekeeping. Kim hadn't known it could be so good. Sure, there were things she couldn't do, now, like wander through the trees or hug her little siblings, but those were small sacrifices to make for her present life of stability.

As for whether or not she actually was guilty of killing Tyler, Kim wasn't sure it mattered. He was dead, and she'd never cared much for him, anyhow. Oh, he'd been all right when they were little, but he'd grown into an asshole, and she was pretty damn sure the world was full of enough of those already to miss one.

Three years she'd be at the Terrebonne detention center. Once she turned eighteen, she'd be transferred to an adult facility, a more restrictive prison and yet not even that notion upset her. It'd be an easy life, regardless, far easier than trying to figure everything out on her own, and just as Kim was sure the world wouldn't miss Tyler, she was fairly certain it would miss her even less. She might not be book smart (as her lawyer had so brazenly proclaimed), but she knew enough to realize her life was going to be a lot less confusing from now on.

Kim sat at a computer in a common area, attempting to work on a paper she'd been assigned. One of the only downsides of the life she'd begun was the expectation that juveniles work on their GED's. Though she'd never excelled or even performed decently in school, she was capable enough, and while she didn't particularly enjoy the schoolwork, Kim preferred it to actual school with all its puzzling social rules. The other kids in Bonneterre kept away from her, for the most part, too wrapped up in their own misery to worry about the unattractive, quiet new girl.

She was just beginning to type an introductory paragraph when a correctional officer interrupted her. "You ready?"

Kim raised her eyes, stared blankly at the uniformed woman beside her. "For what?"

"Visitation. We talked about this yesterday. You've got visitors."

"Oh, yeah." Kim vaguely remembered their conversation. "Who is it?"

"Your father and brother."

She would've preferred her mother, and a brief inclination to turn down the visit flitted through her thoughts, but then she recalled how far they'd come and how angry her dad would be if she reneged on a visit she'd apparently okay'd the day before.

Kim rose and held out her hands, palm-up.

"Oh, no. You don't need cuffs. Just come on with me."

The officer led the way out of the common area and down a long hall, toward a door with a bullet-proof glass pane. They went through this and into a waiting room, which Kim sat in for some time before being admitted into the visitation area. The space was crowded with plastic cafeteria tables and attached blue stools. The stools were always attached, Kim had noticed, probably to prevent people from throwing them.

As she caught sight of her visitors, the girl's stomach dropped. Her father was an embarrassment, haggard and sloppy. She saw it more, now, than she had at home. Everyone in the detention facility was clean and put together. Not fancy or anything, just austere. Lindell St. James wore a misshapen, greasy white tee and probably hadn't trimmed his facial hair in weeks, evidenced by the scraggly shape of it. His face was yellowish, sallow, as if his drinking had worsened, and Kim guessed her brother Micheal had driven.

Micheal! She'd seen him briefly during her trial but hadn't spoken to him in years. Barely knew him, now, though she hadn't known him well before he'd left home, either.

She liked to look of this brother, though. Affable and good-humored, Micheal smiled cheerfully as Kim approached and sat down across from them. The correctional officer positioned herself in a corner, no doubt to observe, just like the officer on the opposite side of the room was doing. They had to make sure no one passed along contraband, anyway.

"Li'l sis! It's been a long time, huh?"

Kim watched as her father gave Micheal some intense side-eye. "Hey," she softly replied. "Why are you guys here, anyway?"

"To see you, of course! See how things are going, what you been up to."

"It's not a godammed birthday party, Mike," Lindell hissed.

The girl noticed one of her father's front teeth was chipped. Must've happened recently, because she couldn't remember it being chipped before.

"Well, hi, I guess," Kim directed toward her brother. "Everything's fine."

"No fighting going on? No one trying to shank you yet?"

Kim almost laughed in her absent-minded way, but she held back. "No, course not. I don't hate it here. It's quiet, and I just get pretty much left alone."

"Good, that's good," Lindell muttered.

Micheal and Kim conversed about a few mundane things: what was going on with the little kids back home, how mom was handling things, whether there'd been any news about Cassidy, what Micheal had been up to while away. Throughout their chat, Lindell appeared impatient, tapping his dry fingers on the tabletop, chewing a hangnail, fidgeting. Kim noticed it, but she didn't want to acknowledge her father's odd behavior. Doing so might mean she'd have to talk to him. Unfortunately for her, though, Lindell finally had enough and told Micheal to leave under the pretense of moving the car to a closer parking spot.

"And don't come back in; I'll meet you outside." Lindell waved his son off, watched as Micheal went to the door and waited for an officer to let him out.

The last thing Kim wanted was to be left alone with her father. They'd never much gotten along, never understood one another nor even cared to try. The girl had certainly not viewed the man as anything other than just that: a man. Her thoughts flickered back toward Cassidy's disappearance, the enormity of that event in their lives before Tyler's death had rather overshadowed it. The gossip wheels of Surette were always turning, and though Kim had kept away from town when she could, even she knew what people had been saying about her father. What they'd always been saying, really, that he was a degenerate, that he'd probably done something to his own daughter, to Cassidy.

Whether he'd been involved in Cassidy's disappearance, Kim didn't know, but what she did know was what he'd done to her, or more accurately, what he'd let someone else do to her. She'd been young at the time, too young to understand much, eleven or twelve, probably, Cassie's age. He'd needed money, he'd said while he drove her outside of town one night. Lindell always needed money. It was for the family, he'd told her. All of them had to contribute in their own special ways to keep the family going, and her special way was by doing as he asked.

She'd been too bewildered to question him.

"Now you listen to me," Lindell seethed the second Micheal had disappeared. He leaned forward so much that a bit of spittle landed on Kim's cheek. "I need you to tell me about the lamb, Kim. You tell me how you got it back there."

Rather nonplussed, the girl frowned. "What lamb?"

"The—the one I found out in the bayou, in my traps."

Kim's mouth opened into an oval as she recalled hearing her parents discuss it some time ago. "Well, I didn't have nothin' to do with that."

"How'd you get it back there?" Lindell repeated, and now Kim was sure she smelled alcohol on his breath. "Dammit, Kim, don't you hide no secrets from me. You've done some nasty things, and if what I see isn't somehow all wrapped up in your sinnin', then I . . . well, I can't entertain that possibility. Do you understand me?"

"N-not really . . . I—"

"There's been more, you understand? One dead in my boat, and one dead in the trees back there, white as snow except where their eyes been. Just empty holes, there, and blood coming from the mouths and rear ends, and goddammit the flies on them things—the flies on everything!—how come no one else sees them, Kim? You tell me that! You seeing them? Because I know whatever demonic horseshit you pulled on your brother and sister is having these repercussions, you understand me, now? And I can't keep my mind straight if you don't explain it to me!"

Kim noticed one of the correctional officers staring at them; Lindell had grown a bit too animated. "I don't know anything about all of that," she tried to soothe her father. "I've been here the whole time. I couldn't have done anything with no lambs."

"No . . . no." Lindell closed his eyes and rubbed his fingers down his face. "That's not the answer I need from you. This is real evil you brought into the world with your actions, and now it's like I'm seeing—I'm—I don't know what I'm seeing."

No clue what Lindell wanted from her, Kim made eye contact with one of the officers. A sudden change overcame her, then. This man might be her father, but he couldn't hurt her, here. They wouldn't let him. "Maybe you need to get back to church, daddy. Maybe it's you that's causing all of that evil stuff."

Lindell glared at his daughter, frozen in place except for the slow widening of his nostrils, and Kim wondered if maybe he was seriously considering her comment. Then he shot out of his chair and reached across the table, took hold of his daughter's upper arms and squeezed, shook, yelled down at her as if he were some god in the clouds come to seek vengeance. The other visitors and juveniles paused their conversations to look at the man and the girl, and though panic surged through Kim, Lindell's scolding lasted all of a few seconds before two correctional officers were prying him off and escorting him out of the room.

Her knees suddenly weakening, Kim sank back onto her stool. The vacuum of sound left in her father's wake disoriented her slightly, and, feeling dizzy, she laid her head down on the table.

After a moment, an officer returned and led her back to her cell, closing the door behind her. Kim didn't even recall the paper she'd had to write. Her father's attack had been so swift and acute, and the obscenities he'd thrown in her face! She'd heard him yell at her mother before, but this had been something different, something fueled by an emotion she'd never known her father might have.

Lying on her bed, Kim curled into a fetal position. She'd shed no tears, not over her father. Because while there were recent events she did not remember, there was one past event she most certainly did, a night when that man had driven her to some stranger's house out in the fields, when he'd told her to be calm and just do everything the grown people told her to do. He'd parked on the crunching gravel road (the sound of the car's tires rolling up the drive played in her head over and over, often as she fell asleep) and walked Kim up to the door, which had been opened by a man and a woman. There'd been another little girl inside the house, too, though Kim had never found out whether that girl was the couple's daughter or someone else. All she knew was the shame and fear she'd experienced when they'd done all their photographing and filming, when they'd made her do things she was far too young to comprehend but old enough to know her mother would think were naughty. And Lindell had made sure she'd known what kind of punishment she'd get if she ever told Glory.

That terrible, baffling night remained clear as crystal in Kim's memory, the one thing she wished she could scrape out. She'd rather have remembered murdering Tyler, as brutal as it must have been.

Kim suddenly pictured herself wielding an axe not over Tyler's head but over her father's, wondered what sort of sound that heavy metal would make crunching into his skull, slicing through his brains. The very thought of that man being afraid, now, the thought of evil touching on him, was enough to make her giddy.

All alone in her cell, with no one to watch, Kim began to smile, the corners of her mouth quirking upward into the biggest grin she'd ever worn in her life.