One afternoon, I left the game room and went into the kitchen for a Coke. Mrs. Haltom was at the club playing golf; Vanessa wasn’t home yet. Shirley was downstairs vacuuming. Jamie, I knew, was immersed in his video game. I left the Coke sweating on the glass-top table at the foot of the landing and tiptoed up the stairs and into Vanessa’s bedroom.

The room had matching bedding and wallpaper, all in the flowery prints popular among people who took their decorating cues from Southern Living. Above the desk was a corkboard festooned with photographs.

I couldn’t help myself; I slid the top drawer of the dresser open to gape at her underwear. I noticed something peeking out from beneath a sheet of floral contact paper—a wallet-sized school portrait of Vanessa, taken a few years earlier: braces and glasses, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. I should not have been surprised; I’d already learned from Jamie that Vanessa had only recently grown out of her awkward phase. Still, the picture transformed her in my imagination. Up to that point, she had hardly been real to me—more like an icon of idealized Southern womanhood in bloom. I tucked the picture into my front left pocket so I could take it home and look at it later, promising myself I’d return it the next time I visited and could slip upstairs unnoticed.

I left Vanessa’s room and walked down the hallway toward the master bedroom. The door was cracked. I pushed it open and stepped inside. Against the wall stood an enormous canopy bed. In the corner sat a chaise lounge, and a table holding a stack of magazines and a single empty wineglass. A red-and-blue Persian rug covered most of the floor. In the corner nearest one closet door, a men’s valet stand. In the opposite corner, Mrs. Haltom’s white bathrobe hanging from a hook on the back of the door.

“What are you doing in here?”

Mrs. Haltom stood in the doorway, dressed in a white golf skirt and a polo shirt the color of a fresh-cut lime. How had I not heard her coming up the stairs?

“Where’s Jamie?” she asked.

I stood frozen as Mrs. Haltom took her measure of me. I felt as if I might wet my pants.

“He could play those goddamned games for hours and not notice if the sun had gone down and risen again,” she said.

I nodded.

“Where are you from, Charlie?” she asked.

“Nashville,” I said.

“I mean what part,” she said. “I know you’re one of Jim’s projects, but I don’t know where you live.”

“East Nashville,” I said.

“I see,” she said. “And do you live with both of your parents?”

“With my mom,” I said. “And my aunt.”

“And what do they do?”

“My mom works at a restaurant,” I said. “My aunt’s a singer.”