Vivy’d always gotten just what she wanted, and she’d always gotten it first. Vera was the oldest, but Vivian was the one who got herself a proper job first, got married first, and had a baby first. Vera might’ve been mistaking Vivian’s pride about all that for smugness, but it was hard to tell. “A fine line” like their Pawpy liked to say. Vera’d wanted kids but it hadn’t happened for her and Wally. They’d settled for a different kind of life. The kind her mother’d warned her about when she’d done all her complaining about the “criminal element seeping into Wooster” way back when. Back when the Brinkerhoffs next door started renting rooms to a couple of down-and-out men during the Depression. Well, her mother’d been right. Wally Irwin had what Vera would call a “colorful” past, and he had the colorful friends that went along with it.

Wally was the one person who could stand up to her, and she liked it. Or, she liked it until she wanted to have her way, and then things could get rough. There had been a few black eyes, hers and his, because Vera gave as good as she got. She’d suffered a broken rib or two, but those healed up if she was careful about how she slept, and made sure not to hold the wash basket on that side. It didn’t happen when Wally’s friends were around, though, so Vera learned to like the gambling-casino/boardinghouse atmosphere of their house in Akron, because it meant a more or less peaceful household and unbruised knuckles for both husband and wife. Vera played poker with them, she drank with them, and she fed them. And she listened to all their stories.

The screen door creaked open again and Zella stepped out holding two tall glasses of what looked like iced tea. Vera took one of the glasses.

“It’s lemonade with whiskey,” Zella explained. “But the way I make it, it looks like iced tea, so the neighbors won’t get nosy.”

Vera held out her glass and clinked the edge of Zella’s drink.

“Here’s to that.”

As they drank their “iced teas” Zella told her all about her cousins Betty and John, and how their mother was her mother’s sister, but they didn’t really talk anymore, because you know how sisters get. Vera had glanced at the jack-o’-lantern. Once Zella got past mocking all the Wooster Country Club stuff, sticking her nose high in the air and putting on a prissy tone of voice, and complaining how different her cousins were now, Vera could hear wistfulness behind the resentment.

“You know,” Vera ventured, “my sister went around with John, way back in the day.”

“John Reed? My Cousin John? No foolin’?”

Vera nodded. “Before she got married.”

“What’s your sister’s name?”

“Vivian. Vivian McGinty at the time.”

“Hunh.” Zella took a drag on a freshly lit cigarette. “She pretty?”

Vera’s our sturdy one, Vivy’s our pretty one, and Violet’s our baby. All her life. And it never got any easier to hear.