Birdie held up her hand. “She tried to forget those days the best she could, and sometimes to forget the bad parts we have to forget the good parts.” She paused and then took a deep breath. “You see, the Freedom Rides were designed to test the desegregation laws. Whites would sit in the back and blacks in the front. Everyone knew there would be trouble … everyone. Even we did. God, we hoped there wouldn’t be, but there was.”

“How?”

Birdie shook her head. “Oh, how I hate that these stories are lost to your generation.” She laughed then. “I sound like an old fogy. Anyway … the governor promised to protect the bus.”

“From?”

“Oh, Ellie, from the KKK, from snipers and angry southerners and mobs. They say the bus drove over ninety miles an hour down the highway, being protected by the Alabama Highway Patrol … and get this … right when the Greyhound reached the Montgomery city limits, the highway patrol left the bus alone. At the bus station—where we all waited—mobs beat the riders. The police didn’t even stop them. Even the newspeople were attacked.”

“Mother was there?”

“No, see, that’s the thing. Not right away. They were late. When they got there, the beatings were done. Over. What she did, Ellie, was help get the men to the hospital. The police wouldn’t even help with that. She was an avenging angel, taking men to the hospital, screaming, hollering, helping.”

“You must have been enraged.” My wineglass was empty by this time.

“Enraged and alive. Yes, we were the most alive we’d ever been. I didn’t realize my best friend had fallen in love. That is how it was then—we all were in the throes of passion, and I didn’t notice what had happened with her. Now here is why: He was wrong for her.” Ms. Birdie stopped and stared at me. “He was wrong. And I thought she’d know better, know that it couldn’t work, that it wouldn’t go anywhere past a steamy Alabama summer. She was a smart woman—the smartest one I knew—and how could she fall for a man so wrong?

“We were in a bar after the riot, and it was when I looked over at her that I knew she loved him. Not the way you have affection for a puppy or the way you are fond of the beach or your best friend, but the way you love when there is nothing else in the entire world but the man in front of you: his touch, his voice, his presence. The way you desire when there is nothing you wouldn’t do for him. She was gone and I saw it too late to help her or stop it.”

I leaned forward. “Why was he so wrong?”