Rolling Pennies in the Dark

“Our intoxicated mother had marched the three of us out into what passed for a living room in the cardboard and tarpaper shack we were existing in on the edge of Nowhere, New Hampshire. She assembled us like an audience on the broken yellow sofa, and said, ‘I’m going to kill myself now, and it’s all your father’s fault.’ “After the dramatic announcement, and once sure we were all looking at the tragedy playing out before us, she took a bottle of sleeping pills out of her purse, and swallowed the