She spends Christmas at home; endlessly aware that by the next time she gets back here, the house will probably be sold. There's snow on the ground, and more Christmas decorations than she's ever seen up. She supposes it's for her, and that they'll all be boxed up and make the trek to Maine with everything else ( Read more... )

She wakes up first, makes herself a quick lunch, and slips out the backdoor and into Silver Lake Woods; the shortcut to Emmy's. She doesn't want to run into any press ( Read more... )

Because White Plains is the County Seat of Westchester County, the Westchester County Police share their facilities with the city police. Therefore--given the bombs--New York State Police from the barracks in Hawthorne are the first on the scene at White Plains Prep. According to Dispatch, the FBI agents sent up from the city are currently locked ( Read more... )

It's the first Saturday in a long time she has a chance to sleep in; naturally, she's up at dawn. After a shower and shaving there's not anything to actually do for the next sixteen hours, though, except periodically open the fridge and check on the corsages (white roses, a red ribbon for her and a purple one for Laura), and check that her shoes ( Read more... )

She's got a new best friend, or 'best friend'; someone trying to fill the Emmy-shaped hole in her life. Lucy Avon. She makes the mistake of telling her ( Read more... )

Hey, hey, you, you, I don't like your girlfriend

She picks up Emmy and Ansley and they ride in together; there's a lot to catch up on.

Ansley can't help being herself. "Why are we listening to this? It's so old."

Rose shrugs. "Nostalgia kick."

She lets Emmy do most of the talking. Key West adventures.

Don't pretend, I think you know I'm ( Read more... )

Second grade - her primary memory of second grade, before now, is that this was the year of the bike, the year of speed, and even now in memory it's blurred, she and Emmy riding the borders of their tiny child's world, pushing their luck. Her first bike, not pink but red, streamers on the handles and a long seat big enough to ride double; popping ( Read more... )

California is bad. Rose had long ago forgotten how bad. Missing her mother and her father and her uncle her dog, sleeping in a strange bed in a strange city, loud and bright. Different rules and different bedtimes and different everything. Emmy regressing, tantrums almost daily anytime her stepmother tries to touch or talk to her. Even at seven she ( Read more... )

First grade is scary. They're less segregated from the bigger kids now, and they don't know anything. And sometimes Emmy starts crying for no reason, which is tough. It makes you a target ( Read more... )

About marriage, perhaps, she was wrong. But they're fast friends. Susannah Toren maybe be a regular attendant to a healthy multiplicity support group, with a decidedly vague job; Eddie Toren may write the pulpier kind of novel. For Luisa Hogan, raising an active child alone for the last two or three years, a best friend who lives two blocks away is ( Read more... )