Quotes from Kathy Hepinstall

HE MISSED THE WOMAN, missed her more than blue could cover.

They were sisters, the pretty one and the one who lived in her shadow, a pale, chip-toothed, uncertain girl who made too much noise while eating celery.

She loved him that much, in a way that made no space for herself, as though he were a full glass of tea and she was the piece of ice that would cause an overspill onto the tablecloth.

You boys ain't but two weeks off the farm. Your mama probably gave you your last bath. You think you went through one battle and you're soldiers now? I saw that boy fight for his cause. I saw him sicken and almost die for it. He sang around that fire when he had nothing left to sing. He sang for us. that boy gave everything and then he up and left and I say God bless him.

You are chicken for sure. Got a whole yellow trickle moving the wrong direction down these parts, and a trickle of black folks going the other way. Black and yellow, like a bumblebee.

Every father wants a daughter to meet the right God, and the right man. Perhaps her father had failed with both.

On the one side was Darcie Burrell—a reed-thin woman with a permanently conflicted expression, as though, deep inside her, someone was trying to bathe a cat. She attended our church, and was famous for praying over people who later

Hayley was being nice. And had made a successful metaphor. Death was surely near.

And the time to say it was days ago, perhaps weeks ago, but it was never said. Like the fireflies she used to keep in Mason jars, the promise of its telling had glowed intermittently. "I love you," he said. And now the fireflies shone with a constant light.

The better the child, the worse the teenager