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handsome-ish, and not as interested in her as she was in him. She’d pretty much initiated the make-out session; he’d seemed aloof . . . Maybe because she was too young for him?
    She’d been late; she should have been home, but it had been hard for her to quit, and the night had been so balmy and beautiful, even, or especially, with the rain. They’d each had a couple warm beers. She was fifteen and only a few weeks earlier on her birthday she had finally been allowed to “go in cars with boys,” and it was the most exciting, fun thing in the world.
    What she hadn’t known, there in the backseat with her boyfriend, was that her family had been out looking for Stevie for hours. And what none of them knew, and wouldn’t for another day, was that in the dark velvety woods, not a hundred yards away from Eliot’s convertible, Stevie lay dead.

Two
    Mary Byrd shuddered and drifted deeper into the yard, glad to kick clods of clay that Teever had left around after transplanting some red Midnight Flare azaleas that clashed with the Coral Bells. She picked up fallen sticks and it felt good to snap them into kindling size, and to viciously stomp some pooched-up mole tunnels. Any animal with fur, generally, she liked except for voles, or moles, or whatever they were, the ones with those creepy hands. They must have been eating her Naked Lady bulbs, because she’d noticed them dwindling; the previous July there hadn’t been the usual cheerful pink crowd.
    She thought about the only two people, really, she could or would call. Actually only one—Lucy was touring with her band somewhere. Austin? Chicago? It would be hard to reach her even if she knew; they were on totally different schedules. It was too bad she’d never made any close friendships with other housewifey women. Most women scared her. Their neat, wholesome lives. Their judgment. She didn’t really trust herself, so why would she trust other women?
    But there was Mann, as always. Mary Byrd supposed that what Mann got out of their friendship was mostly entertainment. There was enough dysfunction and drama and artiness in the Thornton orbit to keep him endlessly amused. And he cared about Charles and Eliza and William and the animals as well: his old prep-school friend, the children he’d never have, and the pets he could enjoy but never have to fool with. Mann was practically family, devoted to them all. But he was just a tiny bit more devoted to Mary Byrd, she thought, no doubt because she needed him more. Lucy was a better ear for complaints about Charles because she wasn’t close to him. Not that there was ever much to complain about. So as usual, she’d call Mann. Almost always upbeat, with a lot of free time, he tolerated her whining or rants, he sometimes had useful things to say, and when he felt she’d indulged herself enough and she was boring him, he’d stop her. Mann was the perfect surrogate husband when you left out sex and reproduction. He was also so precious and tiny—collectible—with his beautiful coppery hair, violet eyes, and perfect little clothes that he often let her wear. What would she do without him?
    Hubard Mann Valentine Jr. was from Dundee, a decrepit, crumbly river port town—“Home of the World’s Largest Bream”—where his Virginia forbears, like so many Mississip­pians, had migrated after losing the considerable fortune they had made importing liquor and wine into Richmond before the war. It wasn’t that after the war there was no longer a need for booze; in fact, there was an insatiable need—the desperate need of big-time losers. But the Valentine home had been burned with much of Richmond by General Goddamn Weitzel, and so had their James River dock and boats, and the Richmond and Danville railroad had been torn up, and the Yankees had taken their horses, wagons, and mules, and the slaves had bolted, and anyway nobody had had any money anymore to buy good liquor. Bootleggers, who never went to war, took over with