THE OUTLETS AT ZION

At last it was my turn to go: a 200-mile trip, each way, to the Outlets at Zion in St. George. The three kids from church who’d gone the previous years—a reward for their performances in the annual Book of Mormon trivia quiz—would handle the driving. All I had to do was ride along and think about how to spend the money I’d saved. There would be a Nike store, I had learned, an Eddie Bauer, and a Pro Image Sports. If I had anything left over, there was also a shop called Gymboree where I could buy some cute booties or a jumper for little Kylie Kay, my aunt’s new daughter.

The morning of the trip I woke up early, no sounds in the house but the creaking of the heater placed to blow directly across my bed. It was late August, but there had been a frost. Summer in Blanding had been short that year, a terrible flare-up of infernal heat that withered gardens and sickened people’s pets but was otherwise perfect for my purposes. To earn the money for the splurge, I’d rigged up a snow-cone machine from dirty parts scavenged from a broken air conditioner bought for $10 from my cousin, Orrin, who’d taken the Zion trip 15 years before. I had begged him to describe the outing, but Orrin was not willing “to spoil the suspense.”

The snow-cone stand was a wild success. I flavored the fluffy, white shaved ice with homemade syrups strained from jams and jellies canned that winter by my aunt during the busy, excited early weeks of what became an exhausting pregnancy. Some booties would be a nice way to pay her back. I was fairly sure I’d have enough, especially after finding out from Orrin, who had a computer connected to the internet by a satellite unit on his roof, that Pro Image Sports was running a big sale. Three hundred dollars was a lot of cash, and because I’d made the teller at the bank put it all into fives and tens, no 20s, it looked, all spread out on my dresser, like more.

I cooked myself breakfast, working quietly, whipping up what my mother called a “skillet” from three jumbo eggs and the neatly sliced-off edges of various peppers and other vegetables that had been sitting for too long in the fridge. My plan was to skip lunch