Chapters (43)
- Cover
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Epilogue
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Readers Guide
- QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
“LJ?” She touched his wrist, her brows knit low now. “Is it your mom? How’s she doing?”
He shook his head. “Wasn’t her. She missed work again yesterday. I called there looking for her, they said she took the day sick, and when I called home, she wouldn’t answer. Had to get a friend to go check on her. She was sleeping, and she still won’t admit she’s getting sick again.”
The creaking of Andra’s rocker paused, the bees in the yard louder in the silence. “Can I ask what her diagnosis is? I mean, if you don’t mind talking about it?”
“Lupus.” He shoved a knuckle across his lower lip. “It’s an autoimmune thing. Like AIDS, but backward, because your body attacks everything: germs, its own self.” He tried to smile. “Figures. My mama never did know how to stop fighting, even when it was time to rest. The lupus comes and goes, and when she gets sick with anything else, it makes it flare up. Sometimes she’s fine, and sometimes she has spells where she’s so weak, it’s all she can do to lift her hand with nothing in it.”
Sympathy drew deep lines at the corners of Andra’s eyes. “It must have been hard on her, being a single mom with that to deal with.”
“She went to work every day, even if she could barely walk across a room without resting.” LJ shook his head. “Wouldn’t let me quit school to help with the bills, so I had to do what I could with after-school jobs, getting off shift at midnight and running my ass all the way home so I wouldn’t miss curfew. She got a lot worse after Katrina, though. I don’t know if it was being wet for so long, or not getting enough to eat in the Superdome, or the damn formaldehyde leaking out of the walls of our FEMA trailer.” He scrubbed both his hands over his head, leaning his elbows forward onto his knees. “Probably all of that and more. Seems like everybody was sicker after Katrina.”
She glanced down. “Is there any treatment for lupus?”
“Pills. Doesn’t fix it.” He shrugged. “I wanted to move away after college, but she was never well enough to be alone until recently. She’s been so healthy this past year, and I thought—” He sat back in his chair. “I don’t know what I thought. That I was selfish and I wanted a life of my own, I guess.” The wind picked up, rustling through the grass, and even that sound was different from home. He liked it, even as nostalgia echoed riverboat foghorns in the back of his mind.