The Way Back to Happiness

by Elizabeth Bass

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

From the acclaimed author of Miss You Most of All comes a heartfelt, wonderfully affirming novel of sisterhood, healing, and new beginnings.

No one could blame Bev Putterman for becoming estranged from her sister. No one but Bev, anyway. Growing up, Diana was difficult and selfish yet always their mother's favorite. And then came the betrayal that took away the future Bev dreamed of.

Yet if Diana caused problems while alive, her death leaves Bev in a maelstrom of remorse. She longs to provide a stable home for Diana's fourteen-year-old daughter, Alabama. But between her commitment-phobic boyfriend and her precarious teaching position, Bev's life is already in upheaval without an unruly teenager around.

All Alabama knows about Aunt Bev is what her mother told her--and none of it was good. They clash about money, clothes, boys, and especially about Diana. In desperation, Alabama sets out to find her late father's family. Instead she learns of the complicated history between her mother and aunt, how guilt can shut down a life--and most important, how love and forgiveness can open a door and make us whole again. . .

Praise for the novels of Elizabeth Bass

Wherever Grace is Needed

"Bass draws her characters, particularly the adolescents, very well." --Publishers Weekly

"Readers of all ages can enjoy this thoughtful story of two families overcoming tremendous challenges." --VOYA

Miss You Most of All
AN INDIE NEXT LIST NOTABLE SELECTION!

"An exuberant celebration of life, love, family and friendship, told with a sassy Texas flair. It's a perfect balance of humor and heartache, a sweetly satisfying novel that will stay with the reader long after the final page is turned." --Susan Wiggs

"The world Elizabeth Bass has created is full of life, humor, heartache and hope. You'll be happy to enter it and sad to leave." --Lorna Landvik

Release date: June 1, 2013

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

Silence plucked at Bev’s nerves. Mile after mile of silence.

How many times during the school year did she dream impossible dreams of perfect quiet and tranquility? Now here she sat, stuck in a rental van with a mute fourteen-year-old for an entire day, and she yearned for conversation, idle chatter, or even whining. An occasional grunt would have been enough. A wail of grief and pain. Anything.

Without a word, the six hours from St. Louis to Little Rock had stretched like an eternity. Trouble was, there was no peace and quiet inside Bev’s head. She couldn’t shut off her mind, or stop the memories. Especially the one from two days ago, looking at Diana for the last time at the funeral home, still and serene in death as she’d never been in life. The truck driver, the very last person to see her alive, had said that she’d shot right out in front of him, a human cannonball to her last breath. He hadn’t even had time to put his foot to the brake pedal.

It was so wrong. Such a waste. All such a waste.

The road ahead of her blurred, and Bev shook tears out of her eyes. Thank heaven for sunglasses. She sniffed and leaned into the steering wheel.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to listen to music?” she asked Alabama. The girl had nixed listening to the radio at the beginning of the trip. “I just want to think,” she’d said. Thinking had seemed okay hours ago, before Bev had realized that her own thoughts would bubble up from the ooze of regrets and anguish stewing inside her mind.

Hunched against the passenger window, Alabama slowly turned her head and lifted a brow. Bev guessed that meant no radio.

What was going through her head? And how could she possibly stay so dry-eyed? Bev had tried a hundred times in the past week to reach out to Alabama, to offer her a shoulder to cry on, but she evidently wasn’t a touchy-feely girl. At least, not with her. She wasn’t communicative at all. Every time Bev tried to talk to her, more often than not Alabama would wander off into some corner to listen to her Sony Walkman.

When Bev had picked her up at camp, Alabama’s aloofness hadn’t surprised her. They were practically strangers, the girl was wounded, and Bev had barely been functioning herself. She still felt shaky. They needed time to get used to each other. By “time,” she’d presumed a few days. But the more days that passed in St. Louis, the more Alabama shut her out. Bev was starting to wonder if it was personal . . . but how could it be? She was here to help, ready to open her heart and home. Anyway, disliking someone required knowing them, and Alabama didn’t know her at all.

She’s frightened. Devastated. It’s not about me.

But when someone sat like a lump in the passenger seat for six hours, unresponsive, it was hard not to take it personally.

“I’d like to listen to something.” Bracing her left arm against the steering wheel to keep the van steady, Bev reached over and fiddled with the radio knobs. Finding a station acceptable to both of them posed a challenge. One tidbit Alabama had divulged over the past week was that she detested country music, which ruled out half of what blared from the dashboard speakers as Bev roamed across the dial. She finally found a soft rock station doing a two-for-Tuesday afternoon, which seemed perfect until the DJ followed “Feelin’ Groovy” with “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Even at the best of times, that song reduced Bev to a puddle. And this was not the best of times.

One chorus in, she was rooting in her pocket for a tissue. A truck stop loomed ahead and she peeled off at the exit.

At the change in direction, Alabama straightened and braced herself as if for a crash. “What are you doing?”

Words, at last.

“We need to stop.”

“You filled up an hour ago.”

“My eyes are tired.” Bev sniffled. She doubted she was fooling anyone. “I need to rest, maybe drink some coffee. Driving in this sun is no picnic.”

“We have to get to Dallas today,” Alabama insisted, refusing to move even after they were parked and Bev was halfway out the driver’s-side door.

“We’ll get there, but I need a break.” When Alabama didn’t move, she added, “You can’t stay in the van—you’ll broil. Come in and have a cold drink.”

On a sigh, Alabama climbed out and assumed a posture of rigid forbearance. Once inside, however, her demeanor relaxed and she cruised an aisle, managing to scoop up gum, packets of Skittles, a large bag of chips, and a can of cream soda in the time it took Bev to pour a cup of coffee. Bev paid for it all and gestured with her head to an unoccupied Formica-topped table by the window.

Alabama dug in her heels again. “We need to get going.”

“Just a few minutes to stretch our legs.”

“How can we stretch our legs sitting at a table?”

“It’s bound to be more comfortable than sitting in the van.”

It wasn’t, actually. The slippery bench seat was as uncomfortable as the cargo van, which they could see from their vantage point by the window.

The remains of Diana’s entire life were squeezed into that small vehicle. The idea of packing up her little sister’s apartment had been daunting—but on arriving in St. Louis last week, Bev discovered that Diana had acquired very little in her life that was worth keeping. Despite the heat beaming through the plate-glass window, Bev shuddered, remembering her sister’s apartment, with its peeling plaster and kitchen walls sporting grease like a topcoat of paint. She’d found mouse droppings in a closet. Diana hadn’t even bothered to buy frames for the beds—simply left the mattresses and box springs on the floors. No doubt she thought it was bohemian. Bev called it primitive.

Poor Alabama. She was probably one step away from being one of those feral children you hear about who are rescued from basements of abusive parents. Kids chained to radiators and such like. Small wonder she didn’t want to talk.

I’ll make it up to her. I’ll spoil her.

Across the table, her niece ripped the end off her Skittles package and upended it into the maw of her upturned mouth.

I’ll teach her table manners.

Taking care of a fourteen-year-old was nothing she’d planned for. It would be a pinch. The logistics of the two of them living in her little house were going to require some working out, and there hadn’t been any time to prepare. The spare bedroom was her craft room and was crammed with supplies. Alabama would have to sleep on the couch the first few nights, which wasn’t exactly an ideal way to welcome her. It might get them off on the wrong foot.

Maybe she could sleep on the couch, and Alabama could take her room. That would be better.

Except that she was so tired. All week, she’d longed for her little house—a grease-and-mouse-dropping-free sanctuary. On Diana’s mattress, which was saggy from age and had the scent of a tart, chemical perfume clinging to it, Bev had spent nights alternately tossing and weeping. Having the mattress on the floor messed with her center of gravity, made her feel disoriented, pressed down, disturbed at being in Diana’s world again. Diana’s screwed-up world, which Bev had known nothing about and in her ignorance had sometimes actually envied Diana for.

Oh, she’d envied Diana for a lot of things, all their lives. Envied, and sometimes even thought she hated her for. Thinking back on it, the ugliness of her own character made her ashamed. And now there was no one to apologize to.

All she could do was try to pick up the pieces. That included Alabama, who was all alone in a way that Bev could barely fathom. If she herself felt grief, and regret, and fear for the future, that was nothing compared to the devastation Alabama must be suffering. That had to explain her unresponsiveness. She was still in shock, numb.

The immensity of all that sorrow, that gaping loss, frightened her.

She took a deep, reassuring breath. She could do this. Alabama belonged with her.

“You’ll like New Sparta,” Bev said. “We have an excellent school system—though of course, I’m biased.” She chuckled, then stopped when Alabama didn’t react. “Also a library, a movie house, a public pool . . .” What else was there? The roller rink had recently burned down, but most New Spartans agreed that was just as well. It had always attracted a bad element on weekends. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much else to mention. Alabama didn’t strike her as the type to be over the moon about the new and improved Food-Save.

“Is there anything in particular you like to do?” Bev asked.

Alabama shrugged, busy with the enormous wad of Skittles in her mouth. Did she know anything about the food groups and proper nutrition? She’d hardly eaten a thing since Bev had arrived in St. Louis—apart from bowls of cold cereal and a little of the pizza Bev had bought one night.

“New Sparta has several restaurants,” she continued. “And a new Walmart . . .”

Alabama laboriously gulped down what was left of the wad of candy. She pushed out of the booth and stood. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“To make a phone call.”

“You’re calling someone?”

“That’s the idea,” Alabama deadpanned. She slouched toward the pay phone across the store, near the restrooms.

Who was she calling? Could she possibly have a friend on the outskirts of Little Rock, Arkansas? Diana had moved around a lot, but Bev couldn’t remember if Arkansas had been one of the places she and Alabama had lived.

She hoped Alabama wasn’t phoning a boy. She hadn’t even considered the possibility of a boyfriend. Until a week ago, she’d still been thinking of Alabama as the four-year-old she’d been the last time she’d seen her, not as a young woman. Post-puberty, anything could happen. By Alabama’s age or thereabouts, Diana had already been sneaking out her bedroom window at night. Maybe that was why Alabama was being so quiet about everything. Maybe, aside from grief, she was stunned at being pulled away from some Romeo—some pimply Jason or Randy. Sudden separations were hard for young people to endure.

Visions of being plunged into an Endless Love–type scenario gave her pause.

No. I’m ready for this. I can handle it. Everything will be fine.

On the other hand . . . Screaming fights. Adolescent anguish. House on fire.

She jumped up, grabbed her purse, and headed back to the pay phone. As she barreled down an aisle flanked by motor oil on one side and Dolly Madison Zingers on the other, she nearly crashed into Alabama coming from the opposite direction.

“What are you doing?” Alabama asked her, going on tiptoe to peer over the shelves at their table. “Did you leave all my stuff sitting there?”

“Were you calling a boy?”

“What?” Alabama snorted out a confused laugh. “No! I called Gladdie. She wants to talk to you.”

Bev’s brain scrambled to catch up. “You called Mama?”

“Uh-huh. You’d better hurry. She’s waiting on the line, and it’s a collect call.”

Bev dashed to the phone, the receiver of which was still swinging from its metal cord. “Mama?”

“For Pete’s sake, Bev,” her mother said by way of greeting, using her Gladys-Putterman-at-the-end-of-patience voice. She tended to be more clipped on the phone than in person anyway, due to her dread of long-distance charges. “Do you have to be so inflexible?”

Inflexible? Bev went rigid. Who was the one who’d hopped on the first plane and spent a week on a smelly mattress on a floor, arranging a funeral and Goodwill pickups and a rental van? Exhaustion made her defensive, until the sane part of her brain—growing ever tinier—piped up, Of course I did those things. What else could I have done?

“What are you talking about?” she asked her mother.

“Alabama doesn’t want to go to New Sparta,” Gladys said.

“Does she have anywhere else to go?”

“Here.”

Bev took a moment to try to process this. Her mother lived in a retirement home. The Villas was nice—she had her own one-bedroom apartment with a kitchenette, and her situation still gave her the option of taking her meals in a communal dining room and participating in group activities with the other residents. Plus, there was a nursing facility attached to The Villas, which was one of the features that had drawn them to the place when Gladys was looking to relocate after her knee replacement. That health center had proved a godsend weeks ago, when Gladys came down with pneumonia. After getting out of the hospital, she’d been transferred to the health center. That’s where she’d been when the call about Diana had come.

“Mama, Alabama cannot live in an”—she almost called the place an old folks’ home—“at The Villas. It’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s fourteen. I don’t remember all the papers you signed when you moved in, but I’m pretty sure they have regulations about guests. And probably age restrictions, too.”

“Fiddle-faddle. She’s not a guest, she’s my granddaughter.”

“I know, but—”

“It’s what she wants.”

“But she has to go to school.”

“It’s still summer.”

“And come the end of August, then what?”

“There are schools in Dallas.”

“But it’s crazy!” Bev blurted out.

Silence crackled over the line before her mother declared, “You’re as intractable as Alabama said.”

Bev’s hand squeezed the plastic of the receiver so hard her birthstone ring bit into her finger. “How could Alabama say I’m anything? She doesn’t talk to me. She didn’t utter a word for three hundred miles!”

“I’m beginning to see why.”

Bev flushed, opened her mouth to defend herself, and then shut it.

Fine. Let Alabama be Gladys’s problem.

Why should she care about any of this? She’d done her duty, why take on more? Fostering a fourteen-year-old was going to disrupt her life, and maybe destroy one or several of the dreams she still clung to. Even if her dream job didn’t pan out, she could imagine what Derek would say when she told him she was now the guardian of her crazy sister’s teenager. The man was already skittish about settling down.

So why was she digging in her heels at not taking care of Alabama? Why was a demented voice in the back of her mind howling that this was all wrong? That Alabama belonged with her.

The reason was there, reaching out to her, but her conscious mind bobbed and weaved away from it.

“Just leave her with me,” her mother said.

Bev made one last appeal to reason. “Mama, how can you take care of a teenager? You’re recovering from pneumonia.”

“I’m fine,” Gladys insisted.

Not fine enough to attend your favorite daughter’s funeral, Bev thought, but said nothing. Part of her wondered if Gladys would have made it to the funeral even if she’d been in tip-top shape. With one glaring exception, she’d always recoiled from moments of high emotion, which had made her particularly ill-equipped to deal with two squabbling daughters.

“What if the management won’t let her stay?” Bev asked.

“Leave that to me.”

The past week, grisly and sorrowful, pressed down on Bev. There had been so many sad, mundane details of life and death to tend to during the day. Funeral home, insurance company, van rentals, police reports with blood-alcohol levels . . . And each night thoughts of Diana, worries about Alabama, and contemplating how her life was about to be upended, had drained all of her leftover energy. Having someone snatch the reins from her hands for a little while felt . . . good. A niggling voice in the back of her mind tried to get her attention, but Bev knew she couldn’t fight her mother now. Better to give in. Chances were, she would simply be dropping Alabama off in Dallas for a week, or two at the most. Doing so would allow her some time to get her house ready. It might actually work out well, in the long run.

See? I’m not inflexible.

“Bev?” Gladys prompted.

“All right,” she agreed. “We’ll see you in about five or six hours, Mama.”

After she hung up, she took a deep breath and tried to focus herself as she did during the hectic school year. One day at a time. One foot in front of the other. Think about the next thing, not the last thing. Maybe a breather for a week or two would enable her to get Diana and all that messy stuff out of her head. She hadn’t really spoken to her sister in fifteen years, but these past few days, with her sister and the past clinging so ferociously to her thoughts, it was hard to remember that Diana hadn’t been her whole life.

It was still impossible to accept Diana’s life really was over. Gone in a flash. And suddenly, out of the blue, Bev remembered not the Diana of high school and beyond, but little Diana decked out in a yellow dress that matched Bev’s, with a crinoline that itched like mad, squealing with glee because she’d found more Easter eggs than her big sister.

Another crying jag threatened, and she wobbled back to the table where Alabama was gulping down her cold drink. Bev gasped in a breath. Sitting there with the sun on her, she looked so much like—

No.

The next thing, not the last thing.

She mustered a cheery voice. “Are you ready to hit the road? It’ll be late when we get to Dallas, but at least we’ll miss the worst of the traffic. Once I drop you off, I’ll take the van back to New Sparta and unload everything so I can return it in the morning.”

Alabama lifted her head. “I’m staying with Gladdie, then?”

“That’s what Mama wants.”

“Then I’ll need all my stuff. My mom’s stuff, too. You can’t just take it. It doesn’t belong to you.”

“But—” Bev stopped herself and tried to tamp down the instinct to point out again the wrongheadedness of Gladys and Alabama’s scheme. They were both grieving, not thinking straight. Gladys would see things differently when the reality of a teenager and a van’s worth of moving boxes hit her apartment, and then she’d talk sense into Alabama.

“Okay.” Bev’s brain felt limp. “We’ll unload it at Mama’s.”

Back at the van, the inside of which now gave off heat like a furnace on wheels, Bev gritted her teeth as she slid onto the scorching vinyl seat. She tried to pick up as if they were resuming a normal road trip.

“You feel like listening to music now?” she asked.

Alabama tilted her head, considering the question, and then nodded. “Yeah. I do.”

Finally. She actually seemed willing to entertain the idea of being sociable. Maybe the second leg of the trip wouldn’t be as excruciating as the first.

“Find something you like,” Bev told her.

As she backed out of the parking lot and maneuvered toward the interstate, she heard Alabama rooting around her backpack, stashing away her chips, candy, and gum. Maybe they were making progress. Sharing music was often a tentative first step in making a connection with someone.

But when Bev next looked over at Alabama, the girl was pulling out her Sony Walkman and clamping the orange foam headphones over her ears. Then she slumped against the passenger window and closed her eyes. A faint, tinny, rhythmic thumping—all the music Alabama was going to share that trip—filtered through the headphones into the cab of the van.

According to her grandmother, Alabama wasn’t the youngest soul at the retirement home. That honor belonged to a balding old guy in bright golf pants named Wink Williams, who lived upstairs from her grandmother and loved jokes. Hokey, harmless practical jokes, usually—but as the director of The Villas was reported to have said after one ill-considered prank, a whoopee cushion on a wheelchair was no laughing matter.

Alabama liked Wink. In those first awful weeks, having someone joking with her was better than the long faces she was growing used to—better than the inexpressibly sad expression she glimpsed when Gladdie thought she wasn’t looking, and a million times better than Aunt Bev’s sorrowful lip nibbling, constant nervous chatter, and eyes red-rimmed from crying.

Wink was also the first person who’d ever asked Alabama to marry him. Repeatedly.

“What do you say we elope today?” he’d ask in the mornings over scrambled Egg Beaters and reduced-sodium toast.

Too bad he was seventy-nine, or she might have taken him up on it. Then again, she felt as if she were fourteen going on eighty. The old ladies around her, stooped and slow-moving, a few shrouded in permanent gloom and lonely dejection, didn’t seem alien to her. In her heart, she was one of them.

Some days she woke up and couldn’t believe she had to function for another fifteen hours, talking to people and eating and brushing her teeth. Mommy, she would think as her eyes blinked open. Mommy, a name she hadn’t used since the days of nap time and Romper Room. Her mother had been Mom since Alabama started first grade. But if she could have her mom back, squeeze her thin body one last time, she knew what word she would cry out. Mommy.

How sad could a person feel before the heart just stopped? She faced every day feeling weak, wrung out, wondering why she was here. Why she was anywhere. Some days Wink’s stupid joshing seemed the only good thing in the whole wide world.

His one-sided banter with her was met with laughter by all the other residents, except her grandmother. From time to time Gladdie would give him a brusque smackdown, especially if she worried he was embarrassing Alabama. “Once she found out those pearly whites of yours were removable,” Gladdie would say to him after his usual proposal, “the honeymoon would be over.”

Gladdie always seemed lukewarm toward Wink. “There’s an operator if I ever saw one,” she would say, eyeing his loud clothes and louder smile with suspicion. Everybody else, even the whoopee-cushion victim, adored him as if he were the resident mascot or pet. They could usually work up a chuckle or two for even his worst joke, and the time he’d brought his ukulele to the lounge and belted out “Paddlin’ Madelin’ Home,” you’d have thought he was Mick Jagger. He’d had every lady there in thrall. And everybody—including, she bet, Gladdie—knew his attention to Alabama was his way of trying to cheer her up.

Alabama thought she fit right in at The Villas. Unfortunately, the place had a one-week guest policy. After Alabama had overstayed that limit by a week, Brenda Boyer, the director of the complex, made the trip up to Gladdie’s apartment to serve them notice that Alabama would have to leave. Soon.

Her words panicked Alabama, but Gladdie stayed cool, responding in an icy, polite tone that clipped the soft edges off her Texas drawl. “We’ll see about that.”

Brenda always wore a shell-shocked expression, as if she were stunned to find herself stuck in midlife in a constant tug-of-war between “the management” and a building full of dentured malcontents. Her trouble was, she had a heart. During this particular conversation, she took in Alabama, the boxed piles of Alabama’s belongings stacked nearly ceiling high in a corner of the living room, and then Gladdie’s implacable expression. “I’m so sorry,” she said, already backing out the door in retreat. “Naturally, we understand that sorting out these situations takes time. . . .”

During their next conversation, a few days later, Brenda suggested that perhaps she should speak to Miss Putterman about the issue. Meaning Aunt Bev. Evidently, even people who had never suffered through one of her home economics or freshman health classes addressed her as Ms. Putterman. Aunt Bev’s unflattering homemade clothes and never-fashionable hair screamed old maid as plainly as if the sexual revolution, the seventies, and Cosmopolitan magazine had never happened.

Alabama loathed Aunt Bev. Always had, always would. She’d grown up hearing stories about her from her mom—about how Bev narked on Diana for sneaking out past midnight. About Bev being the A student to Diana’s C’s and D’s, even though anyone could tell Bev wasn’t all that smart. (“She studied all the time, was all,” was how Alabama’s mom dismissed the disparity in their academic performances.) Bev was the diligent, worthy ant to Diana’s grasshopper. Even at the age of seven, Aunt Bev had saved all her Halloween loot, portioning it out so it lasted till Christmas, while Diana had immediately scarfed down every popcorn ball, Baby Ruth, and Tootsie Roll until she was ready to burst.

When her mom and Aunt Bev were older, something really bad had happened, a final bust-up that Diana never wanted to talk about. The few times Alabama tried to find out about it, her mom had ended up stopping before she could explain, as if the incident still upset her so much it shorted out her brain. Even though it had taken place before Alabama was born, The Really Bad Thing was always there in the way her mom’s voice tightened and quavered when she spoke of her sister. Whatever it was, it framed her and her mother’s life, separating them from Gladdie, who lived in Dallas.

“I can’t live in the same state with her,” Diana would answer, meaning Bev, when Alabama questioned why they’d never lived in Texas. God knows they’d moved everywhere else. Alabama always liked staying with Gladdie, who doted on her the few times Alabama had visited her. Well, as much as Gladdie doted on anybody.

Even Gladdie wouldn’t enlighten Alabama about The Really Bad Thing. Whenever the subject of the rift between her daughters came up, she would start talking about how maybe she’d been too old to start a family when she did. Her husband had died when Diana and Bev were in elementary school, and while Gladdie had been scrambling at a bank to make a living, she’d “lost control of the girls.” Alabama assumed she meant that she’d lost control of Diana. It was impossible to imagine Aunt Bev out of control, and it was no secret that Diana had been a wild teenager—she’d been temperamental all her life. And reckless. Nobody knew that better than Alabama.

But no matter what had happened, it was easy to see how Bev had jumped on Diana’s nerves.

Alabama had experienced her fill of Aunt Bev back in St. Louis, during those days following the worst day of her life—the day she’d been called away from a last swim in the pool and arrived dripping in a towel at Camp Quapaw’s main office, where Gladdie was on the other end of the phone line, waiting to break the awful news about the accident. The police had traced Gladdie through their apartment’s superintendent—she was the reference Diana had given on the rental application. Gladdie also informed Alabama that Bev was on her way to fetch her from camp and would be there in a matter of hours.

For about two seconds Alabama was almost glad to see her aunt, until she realized what her being there meant. After Gladdie’s call, she’d retreated in a funk to her upper bunk in the rustic cabin, where all her cabin mates were filtering out to catch buses or be picked up by parents. Packing up her things, Alabama convinced herself there had been some mistake, or that she’d dreamed the conversation with Gladdie. Her mother couldn’t have died while she was here, horseback riding, canoeing, and swimming. She couldn’t have died, period.

But Bev’s arriving to pick her up confirmed that the worst had happened, and the following days were a nightmare. Aunt Bev was so bossy, so judgmental of how she and her mom had lived. Back in the apartment in St. Louis—which, granted, seemed a lot messier than when Alabama had left it—her aunt’s face puckered in distaste every time she looked around. Worse, she kept bursting into tears, and when she wasn’t weeping outright, she was nattering on about how brave Alabama was, and how she must have been very strong to endure Diana’s moods, Diana’s troubles.

Alabama finally exploded at her. “We were happy!”

Which, obviously, wasn’t the whole truth. But they had been a little happy a lot of the time.

And a lot happy some of the time.

And then Bev had started going on as if it was a given that Alabama was going to move to New Sparta with her. As if.

The woman was delusional. There was no way that arrangement would work, and what’s more, Alabama couldn’t figure out why Aunt Bev would want to live with her. Alabama never made the tiniest effort to pretend she liked her. Bev’s own mother knew that the two of them together would be a domestic train wreck, and Gladdie couldn’t have been happy about having moving boxes stacked ceiling high in her living room and Brenda Boyer breathing down her neck.

The next time Brenda broached the subject of “talking to Miss Putterman,” Gladdie declared, “Alabama is not moving in with my daughter Bev,” with a finality that Alabama found comforting, even if Brenda didn’t.

What changed everything was the tapioca incident. One night in the dining room of The Villas, Alabama made the fatal error of taking the last tapioca cup. She grabbed it from the dessert buffet, sat down, and then, three spoonfuls in, she caught sight of an old woman named Penny making her torturous route toward the buffet. Penny had suffered a stroke a few years back, and now she moved in slow, tiny steps that always made Alabama think of Tim Conway in a Carol Burnett skit. Having painstakingly loco-moted her way to the dessert table, Penny stopped, collapsing against her walker wh. . .