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saw each other again. Your momma never spoke about it. You were all hers from the beginning. That’s what killed Joya. Her daughter finally had something in her that Joya couldn’t get at.”
    “Did my mother stop being sick once Joya was gone?”
    “She did okay for a while,” Jackie said over her glass. “But wasn’t that long before Marian came along, and she didn’t really have time to be sick then.”
    “Was my mother…” I could feel a sob welling up in my throat, so I swallowed it with my watered-down vodka. “Was my mother…a nice person?”
    Jackie cackled again. Popped a chocolate, the nougat sticking to her teeth. “That’s what you’re after? Whether she was nice?” she paused. “What do you think?” she added, mocking me.
    Jackie dug into her drawer again, unscrewed three pill bottles, took a tablet from each, and arranged them from largest to smallest on the back of her left hand.
    “I don’t know. I’ve never been close with her.”
    “But you’ve been close to her. Don’t play games with me, Camille. That exhausts me. If you thought your momma was a nice person, you wouldn’t be over here with her best friend asking whether she’s nice.”
    Jackie took each pill, largest to smallest, smashed it into a chocolate, and swallowed it. Wrappers littered her chest, the smear of red still covered her lip, and a thick fudgy coating clung to her teeth. Her feet had begun to sweat in my hands.
    “I’m sorry. You’re right,” I said. “Just, do you think she’s…sick?”
    Jackie stopped her chewing, put her hand on mine, and took a sigh of a breath.
    “Let me say it aloud, because I’ve been thinking it too long, and thoughts can be a little tricky for me—they zip away from you, you know. Like trying to catch fish with your hands.” She leaned up and squeezed my arm. “Adora devours you, and if you don’t let her, it’ll be even worse for you. Look it what’s happening to Amma. Look at what happened to Marian.”
    Yes. Just below my left breast, bundle began tingling.
    “So you think?” I prompted. Say it.
    “I think she’s sick, and I think what she has is contagious,” Jackie whispered, her shaky hands making the ice in her glass chime. “And I think it’s time for you to go, Sweepea.”
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to overstay my welcome.”
    “I mean leave Wind Gap. It’s not safe for you here.”
    Less than a minute later I closed the door on Jackie as she stared at the photo of herself leering back from the mantelpiece.

Chapter Fourteen

    I nearly tumbled down Jackie’s steps, my legs were so wobbly. Behind my back I could hear her boys chanting the Calhoon football rally. I drove around the corner, parked under a copse of mulberry treees, and rested my head against the wheel.
    Had my mother truly been sick? And Marian? Amma and me? Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed. Not surprising, considering the sheer amount of traffic a woman’s body experiences. Tampons and speculums. Cocks, fingers, vibrators and more, between the legs, from behind, in the mouth. Men love to put things inside women, don’t they? Cucumbers and bananas and bottles, a string of pearls, a Magic Marker, a fist. Once a guy wanted to wedge a Walkie-Talkie inside of me. I declined.
    Sick and sicker and sickest. What was real and what was fake? Was Amma really sick and needing my mother’s medicine, or was the medicine what was making Amma sick? Did her blue pill make me vomit, or did it keep me from getting more ill than I’d have been without it?
    Would Marian be dead if she hadn’t had Adora for a mother?

    I knew I should call Richard but couldn’t think of anything to tell him. I’m scared. I’m vindicated. I want to die. I drove back past my mother’s house, then east out toward the hog farm, and pulled up to Heelah’s, that comforting, windowless block of a bar where anyone who recognized the boss’s daughter would wisely leave her to her thoughts.
    The place stank of pig blood and urine; even the popcorn in bowls along the bar smelled of flesh. A couple of men in baseball caps and leather jackets, handlebar mustaches and scowls, looked up, then