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had. The closest I had come was some British guy serving as a volunteer near Lake Turkana. I had imagined it was love with Randy—after all, we had so much in common. We both loved Africa with a passion. We agreed on every tiny political agenda. We even liked the same beer and food. We really had everything in common on paper, which was why I overlooked how awful he was in bed—if you called a square of fabric in the sand a bed—and how little old ladyish he was about his spice rack.
    I know. Everything in life is a trade-off. No one is going to be that perfect soul mate, your exact mirror image the whole way. Vive la difference . Opposites attract. Why, God, why, of all the fucking things that a guy could possibly have going wrong for him, would I fixate on his god damned spice rack?
    Well, I thought it was a sign. He wouldn’t let me use the last of the garam masala because he wasn’t going to Nairobi for another three weeks, and God forbid he run out of garam masala in the meantime, and isn’t that what garam masala is for in the first place, to cook with?
    But I took it as a sign that he’d be stingy and selfish about other things, and I supposed I wasn’t that in love with him after all if I let something small like that prevent me from moving to Khartoum with him, like he wanted when he was transferred. Maybe I was scared of commitment or maybe I wasn’t ready to follow someone else around the globe, or maybe my job was that important to me. I was broken-hearted without Randy, and would cry myself to sleep with my face pressed against the warm sand, Randy’s kanga wrapped around me, singing along to the mournful songs of the tribespeople.
    Turk Blackburn stopped by to take Fidelia somewhere. I remembered Turk from the Cottonwood days when sometimes they’d have club meetings—called “church”—at our house. He had been Ford’s best friend growing up. Damn, that was one hella fine babe. He was one of those men so painfully gorgeous that people on the street would stop dead in their tracks and drop their jaws to the ground. It was said people used to rush up and ask him to be in their TV commercials, though I don’t know if he actually ever did any.
    He was a polite, sort of mild-mannered biker, if such a thing was possible. He kept his beard neatly trimmed, and he had the softest expression, his long lashes framing glittering eyes. As Maddy’s little sister, I’d always known Turk was way out of my league too. He still didn’t wear a wedding ring, and I was a lot more mature and filled-out, but I knew I didn’t dare hit that.
    “I heard something was wrong with your mother,” said Turk now, bouncing Fidelia on his lap.
    “Yes,” Madison said thinly, and I couldn’t read her tone. “She’s got pancreatic cancer.”
    Turk raised his eyebrows. “Pancreatic? That can be quite…” Tactfully, he didn’t finish.
    “Aggressive,” I filled in for him. “Yes, it is. She’s estimated to be stage three, but like I was just telling Maddy, she’s only been to one doctor.”
    This was the part where, normally, Turk would have reminisced something pleasant about Ingrid, but I could tell there was nothing there for him to say. I could see him look desperately into the corners of Ford’s office, at the bookshelf, at his collection of toy loaders and excavators, floundering for something positive to say.
    Madison didn’t help him out, either. She was just going to leave him high and dry. She sat with her lips firmly compressed, and I didn’t have big hopes for this meeting. Finally Turk said, “She was always such a character.”
    It was Madison who snorted, not me! “That’ll be on the old witch’s gravestone. ‘She was such a character.’ If anyone shells out for a gravestone.”
    Turk was trying to be more charitable. “No, no, I meant that…she’s always been a very unique and singular person.”
    Now Madison made a lip fart. “You don’t need to step so lightly, Turk. You know she was