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up, up, past her raised arms. He tossed the shirt aside and saw her grin. She reached for his shirt, and he started in on her jeans. He rammed his crazy bone into the angel wings and groaned. He closed his mouth over her breast and sucked until the pain zinging through his elbow receded and Antigone was writhing on top of him. She fumbled with his zipper. He lifted her to slide himself inside her.
    What about the baby? “Should we be doing this?” he mumbled between kisses. Antigone locked her knees around his hips and sent ecstasy corkscrewing up his middle.
    “Yes,” she whispered, “yes, yes, yes.”
    He lurched and smashed his foot into the remains of a Chevy Citation.
    Antigone moaned. They were like two eels twisting in a tiny space, touching everywhere. They were electrifying. Finally, they went over the edge. Two bodies glistened and arched in exquisite pleasure as moonlight shimmered over the stripped axles, bald tires, and bent automobile frames.
    Across the road, the deer slept, while a wild cat prowled and stalked shadows in the night. A family of raccoons picked through the garbage behind the O. Henry Café. The barred owl hunted overhead, on the lookout for mice nesting amid the automotive ruins. Sam pulled Antigone closer, wrapping his shirt around her. They whispered in the dark, in the gallery of auto art.
    “You know, you can’t keep taking off without a word,” Sam told her.
    “Sorry. It’s just that I’m so worried about her.”
    She already thought of the baby as a girl. He didn’t care. He was just happy to have them both back in his arms. “Why?”
    “I want her to feel whole and beautiful. I don’t want her to feel defective or stupid. I don’t want her to be like me.”
    Sam gulped down his temper. His wife had dyslexia, so what? It took her a while to read things, and on some days, when she was upset or stressed, she never got the words to behave. That had become his job, reading things to her: stories from the newspaper, directions on medications, instructions for the DVD player. Out of love, he kept her secret. Still, to him, her fear was irrational. People wouldn’t think any less of her if they knew she had trouble reading.
    “Well, that’s too bad,” he said. “Because I want her to be exactly like her mother. Except for the binges. This child may not get her license until she’s thirty-five.”
    Antigone snuggled closer. “I don’t do it on purpose.”
    “That’s not the point. I can’t do this waiting anymore, Tigg. It tears me apart. I try to be strong, but . . .”
    “You
are
strong.”
    “But it’s all different now. Don’t you see? I’m not just waiting for you; I’m waiting for
both
of you. I go mad just thinking of you
and
my child lost in the world.”
    “I’m never lost, Sam. I always find my way home.”
    To the navigationally impaired Sam, the idea of such complete confidence in one’s directional sense was inconceivable. To him, the world was swarming with wrong turns. “Tigg, please.”
    Antigone took his hand. “I’ll try, Sam, I promise. I’ll concentrate harder.” This was the automatic response of the dyslexic: increasing the effort to focus. “I just don’t want to be an embarrassment to her. Mothers have to volunteer at school, read books at story hour and shit. They have to run scout troops and know all those handbooks from front to back. They have to be able to fill out forms at the hospital, school, ballet class. Childhood is one
big
form. Being a parent isn’t easy.”
    “We’ll work it out. We’re going to be one big happy family,” Sam said.
    “Bigger than you know,” Antigone said. And then she told Sam about the boy named Ryder sleeping in their spare bedroom.

Chapter 4
Taking Flight
    S TAR S IMS WAS TEN years old and the most secure kid Antigone had ever met. Maybe it was that the girl believed she was psychic and didn’t hesitate to let everyone know it. Maybe it was the uncanny number of Star’s predictions that