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back to Harwick. And it may have been a coincidence, the timing of his trip. It may be simply hindsight that lends it significance; a pivotal event requiring time to be seen as such. Or perhaps Warren knew exactly the right moment to bring me back home. Because when Mom called the next day to tell me that they’d recovered his car, I asked, “So, what was wrong with it?”
    â€œYou know, it was the darndest thing,” she said. “As soon as Warren put his key in, it started right up.”

CHAPTER TWO
    All Alone
    1952
    P riscilla Harris’s three-year-old fingers worked the peel of a hard-boiled egg, tapping it against the kitchen table to crack the shell, then pulling the fragments off until there was only immaculate white. She shook some salt from the shaker over the top, then took a bite. That’s how she ate the egg, salting it as she went. When her mother was there, she sliced it for her, fanning it out.
Like a peacock’s tail,
her mother would say
.
But Priscilla had felt her stomach groan with hunger, and she hadn’t known when someone would be there to fix her egg the way she liked it, so she’d pulled as hard as she could on the refrigerator door until it opened. Then she had taken the egg from a bowl and sat at the kitchen table alone. As she ate, she had thedull, gnawing feeling that she sometimes felt when she was by herself—a child’s silent disquiet.
    She heard Mrs. Lloyd’s footsteps coming up the back steps, then the creak of the screen door as it was quietly opened, before it shut with a dull thud. Mrs. Lloyd was as thin a woman as Silla had ever seen and always moved like she was trying not to be noticed. She’d started working for the Harrises when Silla was a baby, after her husband lost his job and this time hadn’t bothered looking for another.
At least she’s white,
Silla’s father had said with his good ol’ boy smile, when his friend had teased him about hiring the wife of the town drunk. Mrs. Lloyd stood there now, the strap of her purse resting on her shoulder, her fingertips on its faded needlepoint flowers. She looked at Priscilla, who was still in her nightgown.
    â€œGood morning, Priscilla,” she said, her eyes cautious, her nod small.
    Priscilla glanced up. “Mornin’, Mrs. Lloyd,” she answered, before returning her focus to the egg. Mrs. Lloyd looked concerned. And when Mrs. Lloyd was concerned, Priscilla was concerned.
    Mrs. Lloyd took off her hat and set it on the rack by the door. “Where’s your mother?” she asked.
    Priscilla didn’t respond, didn’t acknowledge the question. One might think that she hadn’t heard it. But, of course, she had. As she pulled in her lips and concentrated on salting her egg, of course she had.
Goddammit, Martha!
she had heard her father yell one night.
What am I supposed to tell people? That you lost track of time? When I don’t know where the hell you are for an entire goddamn day?
    Mrs. Lloyd waited and watched for a few more breaths,then sighed. “Lord have mercy,” she said, shaking her head, as she walked over to the cabinet and pulled out a glass. She filled it with milk, then set it down in front of Priscilla, who waited a polite interval before taking three enormous gulps. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was. She hadn’t been able to reach the glasses.

CHAPTER THREE
    Block Party
    T here was a time when my father had thought it was wonderfully, delightfully apropos that he lived with his wife, the beauty queen, on a street called Royal Court.
I built a castle for you, Silla,
he used to say. And she’d turn to him with a smile so bright that the memory burns to white. But as I stood on my mother’s porch before the annual King’s Knoll block party, I stared at a lawn sign featuring the face of the woman who was now married to my father. With an excess of both time and confidence, my stepmother, Lydia, had