“Yes, it was. He was the love of my life. He was a bad boy, but so adorable. I was crazy about him. He was seventeen-three years older than me. He’d been in trouble-truancy and poor grades-things like that. His parents sent him to Serena Station so he could start fresh. I thought he was doing fine.”

“There was no relationship between him and Violet?”

“You mean like he’s the one she ran off with?”

“Bad boys can be appealing if you have a reckless streak.”

“Ah, I see what you mean, but there’s no chance. We spent every waking minute together, and if I wasn’t with him I was with her.”

“Just a thought.”

“It wasn’t him. I can guarantee you that.”

“You really suffered a double whammy, losing Ty and Violet virtually the same day.”

Her smile was fleeting. “Luck of the draw. You play the hand you’re dealt. There’s no point in dwelling on it afterwards.”

15

Tom

Wednesday, July 1, 1953

Tom Padgett sat in the Blue Moon, working on his second beer while he brooded about life. Thinking about it later, he could visualize that sequence of events-narrow slivers of reality lined up like the pickets in a fence. Or maybe not the pickets so much as the spaces between. Over the course of three months, his perception had shifted, and suddenly he realized the world was not as he’d imagined it-fair, equitable, or just. People were grasping and self-centered. People were busy looking out for themselves. That had actually shocked him, discovering that truth, though it was apparently obvious to everyone else. In a remarkably short period of time, he’d gone from hope and optimism to a much bleaker view of human nature until, finally, reluctantly, he’d realized he was among the disenfranchised, which was perhaps where he’d been all along.