The Same Sweet Girls

by Cassandra King

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

The new novel by the celebrated author of The Sunday Wife chronicles the lives of a tight-knit group of lifelong friends. None of the Same Sweet Girls are really girls anymore, and none of them have actually ever been that sweet. But this spirited group of Southern women, who have been holding biannual reunions ever since they were together in college, are nothing short of compelling. There's Julia Stovall, the First Lady of Alabama, who, despite her public veneer, is a down-to-earth gal who only wants to know who her husband is sneaking out with late at night. There's Lanier Sanders, whose husband won custody of their children after he found out about her fling with a colleague. Then there's Astor Deveaux, a former Broadway showgirl who simply can't keep her flirtations in check. And Corinne Cooper, whose incredible story comes to light as the novel unfolds.

Release date: May 29, 2012

Publisher: Hachette Books

Print pages: 428

Sample

Although we call ourselves the Same Sweet Girls, none of us are girls anymore. And I’m not sure that any of us are now, or ever have been, sweet. Nice, maybe, and polite, certainly. All southern girls are raised to be nice and polite, can’t be anything but, regardless of how mean-spirited we might be deep down. The illusion of sweetness, that’s all that counts. We don’t have to be sincerely sweet, but by God we have to be good at faking it. Southern girls will stab you in the back, same as anyone else, but we’ll give you a sugary smile while doing it.

The question is, are the Same Sweet Girls sweet? Hardly. But one thing’s for sure: We’re the same. We are the same complicated, screwy, mixed-up, love-each-other-one-minute and hate-each-other-the-next group of women we were when we met thirty years ago. I guess we were sweeter then, at age eighteen; we were certainly more naive and less sophisticated. I’d like to say virginal, but that wouldn’t quite be true. Not of everyone. Okay, I was. Unlike the others, I was fresh off the farm, as wide-eyed and gullible as a newborn calf. But a couple of us were already damaged, innocence long gone. Those of us with a trace of naïveté left at age eighteen were soon to lose it; we just didn’t know it then. I can promise you this: Not a single one of the Same Sweet Girls has a smidgen of it left today.

We’re the same, but we’re also different, if that makes sense. The group—the SSGs, we call ourselves—formed when we were in college together, roommates, suite-mates, tennis or lab partners. We got our name from a silly little incident that we still relate to each other, telling the story over and over as though we haven’t heard it a million times already. Finding ourselves away from home for the first time, in the intimate environment of an all-girls’ school, we became friends for life. We forged our clique then, our group of six girls, and we became closer than sisters. We scheduled classes together, stayed up half the night gossiping and giggling, went home with each other during weekends and holidays. As close as we were then, however, we were only truly bound together when one of us was lost, three years after graduation. When you’re in your early twenties and invincible, death is a life-changing experience, a sobering wake-up call unlike any other.

I clung to the Same Sweet Girls then, loving them as I’d not done before. Before, life was one big party, the whole basis for our friendship; afterward, we were tightly bound, as though knitted together with unseen but indestructible threads. In tears, we stood apart from the crowd of mourners at the grave of one of our own, linked hands, and promised to remain friends, to always be the Same Sweet Girls we were then. Five felt like such an odd, lopsided number that we moved quickly to fill the gap, becoming the magic six again. Too quickly, some of us thought later. But … that’s another story, for another time.

Today the six of us do not live in the same place; some of us are geographically separated by hundreds of miles. But somehow, we manage to stay as close as we were when living in the same dorm, all those years ago. Some years I’ve seen the others only at our biannual get-togethers, in early summer and late fall. There have been times when job or family obligations kept us apart. After graduation we started our careers, then we married, had babies, raised families. Things like sick children, school plays or Little League games, proms, funerals, weddings, graduations would keep us from attending our gatherings. Inevitably, when that happened, we grieved our absence from the group as though we’d never see each other again. Now that we’re older, for the most part our kids grown and gone, we see each other more often, and we’re all more aware of the passing of time, the shocking awareness that one day we’ll attend a gathering of the Same Sweet Girls, and it will be our last one.

When I’m describing the Same Sweet Girls to other people, I usually tell them it’s helpful to group us in twos. Lanier and I were former roommates, as were Julia and Astor; then there’s the odd couple, Byrd and Rosanelle. (Poor Byrd, getting stuck with Rosanelle, but there again, that’s another story.) Paired like that, we seem like polar opposites, but we aren’t, really. I’m considered the weird one of the group, and I’ll admit I’ve earned that honor. Most people think artists are weird, anyway, but me—I’m a gourd artist. As the other SSGs say, with much eye rolling, how many of those do you know? My former roommate, Lanier Sanders, doesn’t do weird, being not only a former jock but also a nurse, which is such a prosaic profession for someone like Lanier. Lanier would have been a doctor—a good one—had she not flunked out of medical school her first year. Not because she’s dumb; although she struggled in the humanities, Lanier’s plenty smart in math and science. Here’s the thing about Lanier—lovable as she is, she will always find a way to screw up her life. Almost fifty years old, and she is still doing it. But I don’t have any room to talk, since I’ve been pretty good at that myself.

Like Lanier and me, Julia and Astor were college roommates. The school we attended, the Methodist College for Women in Brierfield, Alabama (nicknamed The W), paired you up; you didn’t get to choose like you do in most schools, the Methodists preferring to mix their poor scholarship students in with the more privileged ones. If it hadn’t been for the incident our freshman year that made us the Same Sweet Girls, I’d never have gotten to know Julia Dupont or Astor Deveaux, either one. Unlike me, a shy little art major, both Julia and Astor were hot stuff on campus. Classically beautiful in a Grace Kelly sort of way, Julia Dupont was from a wealthy old family in Mobile. Her mother had gone to some fancy boarding school with the dean of women, which was how Julia ended up at The W. It was a year after we became friends before we discovered the real reason Julia was there. Thirty years later, it still surprises me.

What to say about Astor Deveaux? How about, she and I have a rather complicated relationship. I’m not sure what kind of weird chemistry there is between us, but it’s been going on since the first day we met, in an Interpretative Dance class. Lanier accuses me of not even liking Astor, but that’s not quite true. I don’t trust her, I’ll admit, and we’ve had numerous clashes. But like everyone else, I’m fascinated by her. From Lake Charles, Louisiana, Astor Deveaux came to The W on a dance scholarship and intrigued everyone on campus. None of us Alabama hicks had ever seen anyone like her; we’d certainly never seen anyone so talented. Astor went on to dance on Broadway, until she got too old to get good parts. Then she moved back to Alabama, unfortunately. See?—that’s what I mean. I’m always making cracks like that about Astor, and I’m not even sure why. But one thing I do know—I’ve got better sense than to turn my back on her.

I group Byrd and Rosanelle together because they’re the most normal ones of the Same Sweet Girls (which isn’t saying a whole lot, believe me). Byrd McCain is plain and simple and unpretentious. We’ve nicknamed her Mama Byrd, a role she fits to a tee. She certainly plays it well, and if on occasion Byrd plays it too well, giving out advice, being uptight or disapproving … we always forgive her. She’s that lovable. Rosanelle Tilley is another story, but she’s not really one of us. She’s who we inherited after Byrd’s roommate, one of the original six, was killed in a car wreck, and we felt the need to fill the gap. Rosanelle’s also the one who unintentionally gave us our name, the Same Sweet Girls. This will tell you everything you need to know about Rosanelle—she’s flattered that we named our group after something she once said, not realizing that, as usual, we were being ironic and facetious. Thirty years have gone by, and she still doesn’t get it.

It all sounds so serious, telling it like this, but it’s anything but. Over the years, we’ve developed a lot of silly rituals that I’m embarrassed to tell other people about, especially now that we’re almost fifty years old. We crown a queen and have royal edicts and all sorts of stuff like that. Each year the crown goes to the one who can prove that she’s the most deserving. And what does she have to do to land the coveted crown? Why, be the sweetest one of all, of course. She campaigns all year for the crown, then has to convince the rest of us that she’s done enough sugary deeds to earn the coveted title. The highlight of our summer weekend is when each of us summarizes our campaign for the crown during a ten-minute presentation. Like the pope, the queen is elected by secret ballot. Naturally, the first year everyone voted for herself, so we had to change the rules. It’s not considered a sweet thing to do, to vote for yourself, and if you do so, you’re disqualified.

Even more embarrassing, we have our own coded language that we call Girl Talk. It’s been going on for so many years that it’s hard to remember where most of it originated. The punch lines of popular jokes make the rounds, but we tire of them and they fall by the wayside, due to our overuse. Our most enduring Girl Talk comes from stories we repeat ad nauseam, year after year. Lanier provided one of the lines we use most often by telling us the story of the elderly woman who was a patient of hers. When Lanier took her vital signs and asked her how she was feeling, the lady said, “Terrible, just terrible. My rheumatism’s worse than ever; I can’t lift my arms; my back’s killing me; and I can’t walk without hurting. But it’s being so cheerful that keeps me going.” The other two most popular Girl Talk lines were provided by Astor, years ago. When she lived in New York, her best friend was a gay dancer named Ron. Astor would take Ron shopping with her because if she picked out the wrong thing, Ron would shake his head sadly and say, “Oh, honey, no.” On the occasions Ron didn’t go with her and she showed up wearing one of her mistakes, Ron would sigh, roll his eyes, and say, “Girl, what were you thinking?”

With the Girl Talk, the crowning of the queen, the royal salute, the procession, and the edicts, our get-togethers have become ritualized to the point that they’re pure theater, and anyone peeking in a window at us would swear we’re all crazy as loons. Which we are. One of these days, we’ll stop being the Same Sweet Girls and start calling ourselves the Same Crazy Fools, I suppose. Some would say that day is fast approaching. But in the meantime, we’ll be the Same Sweet Girls, who aren’t girls anymore, and who aren’t sweet and never have been. We’ll keep crowning our queen and going through our rituals and loving each other and sometimes hating each other, because we’ve done it so long it’s become a part of us. It’s a big part of who we are and how we got to be that way. It’s where we are today and how we got from there to here. It’s our story.

When I put the crown on Astor’s dark head the next night, I catch Corrine’s eye and wink. She and I had sat on the deck after breakfast and talked for a few minutes this morning, and Corrine had said she was sure Astor would get the crown this year. She’d said something else that really touched me. Corrine had told me that she couldn’t believe she’d almost missed out on this weekend. Outlandish and moronic as it is, year after year it always turned out to be more fun than anything else in her pathetic life—she’d sworn—which made me feel sad for her. Both of us agreed that it’s become more than a silly ritual that has taken on a life of its own. Corrine and I agreed that we always laughed more, teased more, and enjoyed ourselves more at the SSG weekends than on any other occasion. If we ever decide it is too ridiculous, that we’ve outgrown it or become too weary to continue, we’ll miss out on something that has become an important part of us.

The SSGs spent the better part of the afternoon decorating the pier, draping purple and gold streamers from it, positioning gold candles along both sides, putting the royal throne in its place at the pier’s end. Another tradition: The queen has to contribute a new decoration each year, and I’ve had to do it two years in a row. Last year I’d brought hundreds of purple irises from the greenhouse of the Governor’s Mansion. We’d strewn them along the pier for the promenade, afterward throwing them out into Mobile Bay, where they floated on the dark waters like some kind of exotic water lilies. But this year I surprise everyone with sparklers, something I’ve not seen since childhood. Astor helps me with them—evidently she’s decided to overlook what I did to her yesterday with the salute—and she not only sticks sparklers in the tops of the pier posts, but also gives everyone one to hold in her hand. That night after supper, with the pier all lit up with the candles and the string of lights along the posts, we position ourselves with our cameras and sparklers. Soon as I leave the deck and start down the steps toward the pier, Astor scurries around lighting the sparklers on the posts, as well as the ones in our hands. Byrd turns on the tape player to a nauseating version of Wayne Newton singing “Ain’t She Sweet,” and the SSGs wave their sparklers wildly, leaving bright streamers of fire in the dark night.

I absolutely adore dressing up in the queen’s getup—the crown, scepter, and cape with the long train. The crown by itself is bad enough, huge and gaudy with rhinestones and fake jewels dangling from its little points, but the cape is beyond tacky. Byrd made it several years ago when she was queen, of iridescent purple satin with a gold lining, its train trailing several feet behind, making it hazardous to walk in. Byrd bordered the edges with a boa of bright-purple ostrich feathers, making her royal majesty look like a tart from a grade-B movie. Flashbulbs flash and everyone cheers and waves their sparklers as I promenade down the pier. I admit that I’m proud of the way I perform the queenly wave, which I think is one reason I’ve been chosen queen more than anyone. No one can do the little stiff-wristed movement of the hand better, except for Queen Elizabeth herself, whom I copied it from.

It’s obvious to everyone that Astor’s going to get the crown this year. Once I’m seated on the royal throne, each of the SSGs gives her presentation, trying to convince the others that she’s been the sweetest of all, the one most deserving of the crown. Each of us is only allowed ten minutes, and she has to allow time for two things: one, to make her case for what she’d do if she were queen, and two, to answer a “serious” question from the reigning queen.

Byrd begins. She describes all her babysitting details, telling us how sweet she was even when the grandchildren refused to go to sleep or eat their suppers or take baths. She says she’ll promote world peace if she’s fortunate enough to be queen. Then, she answers my question of which historical figure she’d most like to have dinner with by answering, Jesus Christ. The SSGs applaud her halfheartedly, and I’m sure each one believes that her presentation is surely much better.

I think Lanier might have a chance when she forgoes her presentation, throwing herself prostrate at my feet and begging for mercy. I notice that even Rosanelle laughs and laughs. Everyone is more relaxed tonight; for some reason, there’s always some tension when we first arrive, which gradually dissipates over the weekend. It’s the same the last weekend in October, when we meet at Corrine’s house on Blue Mountain.

Rosanelle’s presentation is typical of her—serious rather than tongue-in-cheek—and I have to keep myself from yawning as she lists her achievements during the past year: being asked to be on the vestry of her church, getting an award from her garden club, taking stuffed animals to the children’s hospital, teddy bears at Christmas and bunnies on Easter. I marvel every year that Rosanelle has never gotten our irony, that she actually writes up our get-togethers in her little newsletters as though we were a real alumni group. Matter of fact, it’s become part of the ritual—when we get her newsletters through the mail, we call each other to hoot over her efforts to make us sound legitimate. Lanier summed it up after ten years, when it finally dawned on us that Rosanelle just didn’t get it.“She has us by the balls, so to speak,” Lanier had said, one of the times when Rosanelle didn’t attend and we sat around trying to decide what to do about her. “We’re sweet, right? Booting Rosanelle out wouldn’t be a sweet thing to do. None of us would ever get the crown again if we did.”

We all sat looking at each other in bewilderment until Lanier added, “Maybe God sent us Rosanelle as a true test of our sweetness.”

Corrine asks me if she can follow Rosanelle, which she does. I give her permission to change the order when she tells me that her presentation is lame because she hasn’t worked on it any since being sick so much lately. Corrine outlines all her good deeds this past year: not murdering Culley when he had yet another orifice pierced, not murdering him when he got a crown of thorns tattooed on his butt (“At least it’s a crown,” Lanier contributes); not murdering Miles when he threatened to cut off payment of her health insurance, although ordered to by the divorce court; and especially not murdering Miles when he told Corrine the argument he’s taking to the judge: that he shouldn’t have to pay her health insurance because of her pre-existing condition, severe depression. The sympathetic gasps of the SSGs seem to energize Corrine, and she says that when she’s queen, she’ll campaign to make Prozac free to everyone, and the SSGs—myself included—applaud enthusiastically. Drawing a question from the box kept under the commode seat, in the toilet bowl, I ask her if she could do one thing to make the world a better place, what would it be? “Why, make everybody as sweet as I am,” Corrine responds, and Lanier whistles and applauds loudly. But I suspect Corrine has lost at least one vote when Rosanelle frowns as she scribbles notes to herself in the little organizer that she’s never without.

Astor’s presentation comes complete with costume changes, various hats and accessories that she’s brought down in a tote, pulling out different ones to illustrate the many “sweet” roles in which she’s been cast in the past year. As a fairy godmother to her step-grandchildren, she dons sequin-studded wings and a wand; as a shining star to her dance pupils, she sticks her face through a cut-out cardboard star; as an inspiration to her yoga classes, she contorts into a Salute to the Sun; but she clinches it by presenting herself as an angel of mercy tending to Mose, putting on a halo and wings. I see both Byrd and Rosanelle wiping their eyes and know Astor’s won, even before answering my question. If she could have one wish granted by a genie, she’d wish that poor Mose could give his beloved state of Alabama just one more of his paintings. You can hear Rosanelle sniffling all the way to Mobile, and she jumps up and hugs Astor when the votes are counted and I remove the crown and put it on my successor.

Afterward, freed of the crown and cloak that are both so heavy they were beginning to give me a headache, I seek out Corrine. Leaning against a post, she is by herself in a dark spot on the pier where she can’t be seen by the others as they gather around Astor, taking dozens of pictures for our scrapbook. I put my arm around her and lean my head against hers.

“You turned out to be prophetic, Lady Corrine,” I say, smiling.

“I just hung my head over the pier and puked,” Corrine says. “Which I did on the trip over here, also.” She turns her head and looks over at the SSGs, where Astor is posing for pictures, her arms raised high in triumph as flashbulbs flash. “Difference is,” she adds, “this time, it wasn’t caused by car sickness.”

It could be that we’re all hungover the next morning; I’m not sure. Saturday night, after the promenade, the presentations, and the crowning of the new queen, we bring out champagne, this on top of the rum punch we’d already had during our cocktail hour. Whatever it is, the tensions of the first day are with us again, zinging here and there like electric currents. Always just minor things, nothing you can really put your finger on.

I didn’t drink Saturday night since I wasn’t feeling well and had lost my supper right after the crowning. But even so, I feel sluggish and hungover the next morning. It doesn’t help that I have an unsettling encounter with Astor before breakfast. I’ve gotten up early, as is my habit, and everyone else is asleep. Lanier, sleeping beside me, is actually snoring. I get into my clothes, sweatpants and a T-shirt, a denim shirt tied over my shoulders against the early-morning chill, and leave the house without a sound, pulling the glass doors behind me.

Early morning on the bay is so beautiful that it takes my breath away. A white mist floats cloudlike over the water and obscures the point where the sea meets the sky. Even though I know it will be sticky-hot by noon, it’s cool now, and I put my arms through my denim shirt, pulling it close. When I sit at the end of the pier, leaning against a post with my legs dangling over the water, I offer a prayer to the God that I’ve abandoned the last few years. I want to come home, to find again that awesome love that I’ve never found anywhere else. I want it so bad that it’s an ache, a real ache, and I put both hands over my heart. Tears slide down my cheeks as I raise my head to the heavens. The mist obscures the sky, but I don’t doubt for a moment that it’s there, just as I know that God is, too. Not necessarily in the heavens, because I believe that God is everywhere, but I like the image. I’ve always loved the image of a hand reaching through the clouds, Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Man is barely moving to lift a hand, but God is actually straining in an effort to meet him. Today, I feel like the hand of God is reaching out to me, and I feel relieved. It’s still there. The love that I turned my back on after being shamed into thinking myself crazy for even considering it, is still there. All I’ve got to do is claim it.

I realize I’m no longer alone on the pier—literally rather than metaphorically this time—and look over my shoulder. It’s Astor, moving toward me through the mist like the angel of death. It’s not having lived in New York all those years that inspires Astor to wear so much black; I think she wears it to match her heart. She has on her yoga suit, black tank and sleek tights that hug her long legs like a second skin, and an oversized silk kimono in ivory and black, with Oriental letters block-printed on it. The kimono is not tied at the waist, and it flaps behind her like the graceful wings of some sort of giant bird. The breeze coming off the bay lifts her hair, which is loose on her shoulders, and she looks like she’s moving on the wind, floating like a leaf caught in a gust.

Neither of us says anything when Astor reaches the place where I’m seated, then stops, right beside me. She has a black nylon tote in her hand, a smaller version of the one she carried her stage props in last night. Still without saying a word to me, she unzips the tote, reaches in, and pulls out a slim red mat, which she unfurls and sits on cross-legged, next to me but facing away, toward the east. She places her hands on her knees, palms up, then arches her neck, her face turned upward and her eyes closed. I look at her flawless profile, the chiseled cheekbones and high, arched eyebrows, the wide, full-lipped mouth, then smile in spite of myself. Evidently she’s going to launch into her meditative stances as though I’m not here, though she could have sat anywhere on the hundred-foot-long pier.

“Good morning, Corrine,” I say. “Am I disturbing you? Do you mind if I sit here and contort? Why, no, Astor. You go right ahead. Don’t mind me at all.”

Her eyes still closed and her long neck arched in what has to be a painful position, Astor doesn’t say anything for a full five minutes, then her low, throaty voice sounds amused. “It didn’t occur to me that I needed your permission to sit on the pier, Corrine,” she drawls.

Her meditations evidently concluded, Astor opens her eyes and rises. She stands tall and inhales until her chest expands, then raises her arms straight up, her elbows close to her head, her stomach concave. Her bones like liquid, she bends until her nose is between her knees, her palms flat on the mat. She arches her back like a cat, her stomach so flat it’s against her backbone, her body in a perfect U shape. Easing her legs behind her, she sinks slowly down, flat on the red mat, then raises her head like a snake peering out of a hole. I watch in amazement as she sticks her tongue out, flat against her chin, goes back into the U shape, then rises majestically, her arms high above her head. She bends her head back against her spine so that her long hair brushes against her butt. Having saluted the mist-shrouded sun, she sits back on the mat, cross-legged.

“Bet you can’t bend over far enough to kiss your own behind, can you?” Astor surprises me by asking, with complete seriousness.

“If I could, I’d never fool with a man again,” I reply, with a grin.

“Just think what you’d be missing.” Coyly, she smiles at me and tucks a glossy strand of hair behind her ear.

“Besides a lot of heartache?” I glance over at her. “Are you through with your contortions, Astor?”

“For the time being,” she murmurs, then turns her head to look at me. I can’t help it; I avert my gaze to the horizon, where the mist is lifting, burned off by a hazy white sun. Since I first met Astor, I’ve been uncomfortable under her direct gaze. She has a way of studying you that’s unnerving, as though she’s able to pick up on your hidden, shameful thoughts, thoughts that she carefully files away to be used against you at a later date. She reminds me of Miles in that way. Both have the ability to hone in on what you’d prefer no one knew about, let alone them. As a therapist, Miles is trained to ferret out that part of you; with Astor, it seems to come naturally.

Astor stares at me so long that I finally turn my head and meet her gaze. “What?” I say, more sharply than I intended. I’ve learned in the past that it’s a mistake to let Astor know she gets under my skin, so I usually ignore her as much as possible.

Astor shrugs. “I’m just trying to figure out why you’ve turned against me, Corrine. It hurts me that we’re not close anymore. But even so, I love you as much as ever.”

I look at her in astonishment. “I haven’t turned against you, Astor. I’ve never liked you.”

She laughs lightly, as though I’m teasing her. Which I am, of course, and she knows it. I’m not going to let her off that easily, however, and I say, “You know good and well why I steer clear of you, Astor. If I were you, I’d let sleeping dogs lie.”

Astor widens her eyes innocently. “Surely you don’t blame me because of that time with Miles!”

“Silly me, thinking close friends don’t go after each other’s husbands. Though in hindsight, I should have left you and Miles alone. I’ve never known two people who deserve each other more.”

“Oh, thanks a lot! Guess that tells me what you think of me, since you make no secret of your dislike of him. That really hurts my feelings, Corrine.” Astor lowers her head, then blinks her eyes rapidly. To make sure I get it, she dabs at the corner of her eyes with her index finger. Her fingernails are lovely, long and unpainted, naturally white-tipped. Bet she spends more on manicures than I do on food.

I sigh, rolling my eyes. Next thing you know, she’ll be performing her poor wounded Astor number, and Lanier, Byrd and the rest of them will jump me for being mean to her. “Seriously, Astor,” I say, “next time you’re between husbands, I think you should consider Miles. He has a new wife, but infidelity’s not a big deal with him. Something else the two of you have in common.”

Astor abandons her halfhearted attempt at crocodile tears and studies me again. “So that’s the real reason you’ve turned against Miles. I’ve always wondered if he cheated on you.” Dry-eyed now, she doesn’t even try to hide a sly smile. “It has little to do with him being a shit to you, does it? You’re just plain jealous, aren’t you?”

“And I thought I was hiding it so well. Yep, I really envy his new wife. She doesn’t know what she’s in for, but I’m beside myself with jealousy thinking about him having her committed, then taking her child away from her, should she be unlucky enough to have one with him.”

Of course Astor’s instantly on that remark, like a fly on cow plop. “Unlucky?” she gasps, placing her hand to her throat, as though mortally wounded. “I had no idea that you consider yourself unlucky to have had Culley.”

“Culley’s the unlucky one, with the parents he has.” Weary, I rub my face, then raise my head to watch a blue heron rise from the marshes at the edge of the water and float over the bay, the same smoky-blue color as the heron. I don’t want to thi