She’d stopped for a moment to gather the words. “And it hardens you in
ways you never thought possible. It makes you melt at the most
inconsequential moments, makes you realize that you could easily commit
murder under the right circumstances.”

Tina had turned her head to gaze into those clear blue eyes with their dark rims. “Oh I don’t think.”

“Thing about it, Tina,” Helena had whispered, her breath soft and warm
against her cheek, “think about what you’d do if someone threatened
your childin any way.” Tina had felt unexpected rage flare up, at the
mere suggestion, muscles gone taut as kite string against a strong
wind. Helena had raised her head, dark curls framing her face. “You’ll
never be the same, Tina. Never.”

Thinking of Helena now, it was Mariel’s face she saw. In the echoes of
Helena’s clipped British accent, it was Mariel’s voice and her boarding
school accent softened by a Carolina drawl that she heard. The dream
she woke to had lingered in the recesses of her mind all day, and now
kept her company in the dark. How could she have forgotten herher best
friend, her first tender love? How much more had she forgotten? And why?

Who could blame her for wanting to forget the grinding poverty, growing
up dirt poor in a place where some folk fancied themselves all that
remained of a true aristocracy bloodied but not broken under the
bootheels of Yankee occupation? In LaGrange, class was important. Tina
had felt its shadow on her all the years she spent growing up there;
the Kennard family was not quite poor white trash, just poor and white,
clinging to the latter as if it were the only quality that redeemed
them. A family with secrets, a family where anger simmered beneath the
surface and flared without warning, a family whose women learned to
relinquish hope to the men who defined them, never thinking to reclaim
it as something they were entitled to.

To grow beyond it was one thing. To bury it so deep that she’d lost it
entirely was another. To forget all that she was, all that she’d known,
to forget

Mariel. With her dark hair and bright blue eyes. Mariel, who teased her
only slightly over an accent that thickened whenever she was tiredeven
now, it surfaced when her guard was down.

Mariel, who cast off her good clothes and followed her down to the
hollers, to play in the cool shadows of live oak and wade in the creeks
that ran clear over worn rock.