“Not surprising, I guess. I don’t remember anyone named Aldridge either, but the Hunnicuts? Of Honey Leaf Tobacco? Everyone knows that name. I think I smoked some of their cigarettes when we were kids. He’s the grandson or something but he didn’t want anything to do with the company so he owns a dentist practice. It’s a little dull if you ask me though.”

“How’d you meet a guy like that?”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Just that I wouldn’t have imagined he’d want to live in Kipsen, and if he did, he’d be keeping to himself,” Mira stumbled out, having picked up on the tension in Celine’s response. Celine’s emphasis on trying—what are you trying to say? The implication being Mira had meant more and had somehow failed to say it. A subtle yet targeted insult to distract from her own defensiveness.

“Well, you’re right. I’d been trying to meet him since he moved here but couldn’t figure out a good way to do it. The practice has been booked for months and months. Then Janice, one of my clients, said that she’d known his mother. That’s why he came back—his mother was sick, ovarian cancer, and she didn’t want to leave Kipsen, so he returned to be with her. Janice was throwing a small gathering at her house and invited me along. He took one look at me and that was that.”

“That was that,” Mira repeated. Of course. That’s how it’d always been with Celine. Men looked at her and wanted her for her beauty but despite being beautiful, she was never able to hide her insecurities and after all these years she hadn’t gotten any better. Underneath her pretense was the simmer of resentment for a poor childhood. While they’d all been poor—Mira, Celine, and especially Jesse, Celine dealt with her circumstances differently, harboring a bitterness for what she felt life owed her. Jesse used to tell Mira it was because Celine was white. “She thinks she shouldn’t be struggling like the rest of us.”

“That’s not true,” Mira would say, much to Jesse’s irritation.

“You’re always defending her.”

“She’s my friend. I thought she was yours too.”

“I can be her friend and still criticize her sometimes.”

Mira often felt like the glue between Jesse and Celine, sensing if not for her they would have ended their friendship a long time ago. As they’d gotten older, he’d become more suspicious of Celine, judging her because she was a white girl who chose to be friends with two black kids in segregated Kipsen. He’d often judged Mira too for siding with Celine instead of him when he made comments like these.