Chapter 10

Nineteen deaths. I read the file at Ruth's kitchen counter at two in the morning with my hands flat on the wood so they wouldn't shake. Names. Ages. Denial reasons. "Not an emergency." "Resubmit with photos." "Escalated for review." The same eleven sentences, over and over, like a machine taught one song. A sixty-eight-year-old man in Bayou Vista whose roof came down in the second storm. A family of five in a trailer that flooded twice. A woman named Odette who was somebody's grandmother,...