Effie sat down. “Of all the people—I mean, really. It never occurred to me. She wasn’t here the past couple of times, not since Holly married.” Clara was her cousin Holly’s friend, she explained again. Holly was Uncle George’s eldest daughter from a previous marriage. She was more than a dozen years older than Effie and never took to Aunt Lizzie or to the rest of her new family from Georgia, who were nothing but rubes, as far as she was concerned. The two of them, Holly and Clara, teased and tormented Effie, made fun of her accent, asked where her mammy was, made references to things she couldn’t possibly have understood—she was, what, eight years old?—and laughed at her ignorance.…

“What kinds of things?” Henry asked.

She seemed to struggle to find the words. “Like—I don’t know. Like they’d always be drinking and smoking around me, or they’d take boys under the promenade and leave me there on the beach to play with myself.”

“It sounds fun.”

“I was a child, for heaven’s sake.”

Henry smiled. “Well, you’re grown-up and married now. And so is Clara. She seems like she worships you.”

Effie cocked her head and felt the tiny mole behind her ear, a reflex when she was piqued in a certain way. “People don’t change so much.”

He knew that wasn’t true. There was a time when he could have called Effie a bully—like when she’d fed Betty Moody’s hair into the gears of the pencil sharpener in Mrs. Jackson’s class—and look at her now: his lovely wife. But he only shrugged and let it go.

A violent chopping sound came from the archway; they listened to it. A minute later Clara swept back into the room with a bucket of ice, her movements so smooth she might have been roller-skating. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting so long. Look at you two! I love the old dear, but if I’m not there to look over her shoulder every second … Well, you know how it is.” She was at the bar now, dropping ice into the glasses.

“What are you doing here?” Effie asked.

“We’re just here for the weekend. It’s my brother’s birthday. You remember Scott, of course,” she said, smiling meaningfully, but Effie didn’t. “Effie, you’re joking! You had such a crush on him!”

“I did?”

“God, yes! You were smitten with him. You used to hug him around the waist and he’d have to pry you off. You were a determined little girl. Is she still that way, Henry?”

Henry didn’t know what to say. He laughed.

“You’re thinking of someone else,” Effie said.

“Don’t worry, Henry,” Clara said, “Scott’s married now. To a little cunt, if you want to know the truth, but married nonetheless. You’re far more handsome, anyway.”