CONTENTS

FOREWORD

PART ONE


PROLOGUE

The South killed Lucy Bondurant Chastain Venable on the day…

ONE

Lucy came to live with us in the house on…

TWO

They had not been in the house a week before…

THREE

Is that thing real?” Lucy whispered loudly to me, over…

FOUR

Over that first year of fighting there hung and still…

FIVE

They quarantined us immediately. Even before Jamie’s funeral, they separated…

SIX

Some people say that the great change began then, in…

SEVEN

This time our separation was complete. Martha and Shem Cater…

EIGHT

When I crossed Peachtree Road on a breathless, flaccid morning…

NINE

When I turned sixteen and got the red and white…

TEN

That afternoon I had a tentative date with Charlie Gentry…


PART TWO


ELEVEN

On a misted Sunday morning in late October, in the…

TWELVE

When I came into the Peachtree road house on that…

THIRTEEN

“I never get over the feeling that I’m going to…

FOURTEEN

Sarah graduated magna cum laude from Agnes Scott College in…

FIFTEEN

When I would not go to them, they came to…

SIXTEEN

The next Friday night I slept, for the first time…

SEVENTEEN

My father did not die, though. All through the cold…

EIGHTEEN

In Buckhead, when a titan falls, the rest of his…

NINETEEN

The police never found the Pumphouse Hill arsonist. In truth…


PART THREE


TWENTY

From the very beginning, Lucy’s bond with her daughter was…

TWENTY ONE

Looking back, I have come to think of the five…

TWENTY TWO

“Did you know about him?”

TWENTY THREE

Malory ran away so many times during the next decade…

TWENTY FOUR

“From now on we’ll be meeting mainly at funerals,” somebody—Freddie…

TWENTY FIVE

In October of Malory’s freshman year at Wellesley my father…

TWENTY SIX

Lucy never knew, after that New Year’s Eve, that she…

TWENTY SEVEN

Well, and so there we were again this afternoon, at…


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PRAISE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER