The husband has a face designed by an architect. Cassidy has never seen a mouth so full of teeth. She knew what the husband looked like, based on tagged photos and the blessed luck of the wayback machine, but to watch him thoughtfully chew an oyster mushroom is something else. Someone previously perceived as static now in motion.

“Are you sure you won’t have anything?” he asks.

“If I eat something, will I be trapped here forever?

It’s always rainy up here, which is no good for the house. The walls will rot, things will crawl in. If my daughter changes into a newt, I won’t know what to do. 

Once more, she hands you the wrong order; this time, the iced vanilla latte is a small and your bagel hasn’t been toasted. You flag her down and ask her to correct it. She apologizes, and two minutes later, you leave Carol’s Coffee Shop, shaking the ice around your drink, listening to the cubes bob up and down. But the latte tastes watery, and your bagel is a smidge burnt.

Jerry was a car salesman in Cleveland, Tennessee. His wife LouAnn had left him over a year ago. Though she had been fairly conservative when they got married, she didn’t like Donald Trump very much while Jerry had fully hopped aboard the Trump Train. As Jerry fell in love with the MAGA movement, and later the QAnon movement as well, LouAnn didn’t really approve.