The Guest

Josie Prine hauls water out of the one live spring in a county cooked to dust, and the price of that water has always been paid in names. Her father kept a ledger of them. Her mother is in it. Now the drought has emptied every tank in four counties, her uncle has chosen her crippled sister as the next payment, and something blind and patient in the flooded rooms beneath the ranch has begun calling Josie by her childhood name — in her mother's voice.