Chapters (59)
- Cover
- About the Author
- Praise
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- January
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- February
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- March
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- April
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- May
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- June
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- July
- Forty-One
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Author’s Note
- Ladies of the House - Reader’s Guide
- Questions For Discussion
- Excerpt
I pushed open a set of doors at the end of one hallway and walked out the school’s main entrance and into the humid weight of early summer, which had blazed in this last week of May and clapped over us like a lid. I thought I might sit in one of the benches nearby—one, a gift from the class of 2009 seemed clean enough—but down the stairs leading into the parking lot, I spotted the back of Bo’s head.
I descended a dozen stairs to where he was perched in a patch of shade and sat beside him. “Hi,” I said, feeling the heat of concrete through the thin fabric of my work pants regardless.
“I had to make for the exit,” Bo said, passing his phone from one hand to the other, his gaze focused into the distance beyond the school buses in the parking lot.
“Me, too,” I admitted. “Too many precocious children trying to teach me lessons.”
“Yeah?” Bo asked. “What are they teaching us jaded old cynics today?”
Not feeling equipped quite yet to answer his question, I posed one instead. “Why are you out here? You disappeared. I thought you were going to take up that teacher’s offer to see the coding studio. I thought you’d heed the call of the nerds.”
He laughed softly, then took a ragged breath as he stored his phone in his jacket pocket. “No, I—needed air. It’s something about this school. I swear I had a teacher exactly like Miss Brown. Just got me thinking about the past.”
My phone rang; Wallis’s name lit up the screen. “Blake Darley won his primary last night,” I said. It had been close, but winning is winning, whether it’s by one vote or one million. He’d be facing his opponent the third Tuesday of July. “I’m sure that’s why she’s calling.” But one look at Bo’s face had me silencing it. “I’ll get back to her later.”
“That fucking guy.” Bo dragged his hands down his cheeks. “He wasn’t nice to my sister and he wasn’t nice to Wallis. And once he wins, we are going to start seeing him at work. Perfect.” Off to our right, a smaller side door opened, and a class of squealing children streamed onto a big mulched playground fenced in by chain-link. “I’m sorry. It’s been an odd day.”
“Tell me,” I said. A person prone to worry and melancholy such as I can usually spy another. “Because this isn’t about bunny’s book club or Blake Darley.”