“No, they don’t talk about you, Violet. Your name is never mentioned at least to me. Mostly they talk about the ‘legal case’—they call it. They are upset about Jerr and Lionel and think they were blamed because they’re ‘white’ . . . Miriam and I try to avoid the subject. I don’t know how Les and Rick feel—it’s hard to be going to school, with people still talking about Hadrian Johnson. I still have my friends, or some of them . . . It’s hard, people kind of blame you, but then other people blame them—black people. It’s like you have to be on one side or the other and people like us, with our name, have to be on the ‘white’ side. I just try to avoid it! Les isn’t doing so well, he cuts classes a lot. Hides up in his room playing those damn creepy video games. Rick is talking about joining the Marines when he gets out of school which drives Daddy crazy. Daddy is out a lot and when he’s home he’s very tired. He’s drinking more than he used to. He had bronchitis pretty bad this winter—still has it. Mom is on some medication—‘Xanax.’ It’s to help her sleep and for her nerves. I hear her crying sometimes—but I don’t go running to her. That just gets her angry at me.” Katie’s words were disjointed, aggrieved. She was speaking rapidly as if to get through our conversation, before we were discovered.

It was my turn to speak. My mouth had gone dry.

Wanting to ask Katie—Don’t you miss me? In our room? Don’t you feel sorry for me?

Suddenly Katie was saying, “Oh, God! Mom is coming home. I have to hang up, Vi’let. I’ll try to write to you. I’ll try to call—if there’s news. But don’t call here—and don’t write, please. Bye!”

“But, Katie—”

Already she’d hung up.

YOU’D THINK THAT I WOULD HAVE BEEN DEVASTATED BY KATIE’S call but this was not so. I was grateful that my sister had taken so much time with me and had not forgotten me.

Grateful for the emotion in her voice, even if it was an emotion of impatience, repugnance.

Grabbed a jacket from the closet and went outside, to walk by myself, and run. Run, run!

That sensation when you are running and your heart is filled with happiness and you think—Just a little more! And the heart will burst.

In October you see thin desiccated vines with withered leaves that still manage to bear flowers—not big bright-colored flowers any longer but small faded flowers. Blue morning glories on my aunt’s fence had faded, shrunken. But some vines had attached themselves to a tree and flowers were blooming fifteen feet above the ground, isolated, bravely blue each morning. Before the first frost.