The Sisters of Glass Ferry. Kim Michele Richardson

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      CHAPTER 2

      Patsy

      June, 1952

      The day swept its last hour into the cemetery. There, alongside the forgotten churchyard in the washed light at the end of Ebenezer Road, she’d buried her secret.

      Just months before, Patsy Butler hadn’t any secrets to keep. Not adult ones anyway, and only the kind an almost sixteen-year-old would primp and parcel: an admirer’s note passed in history class, a young boy’s wanting touch, maybe a stolen kiss sneaked behind the football bleachers, all locked onto a mostly dreamy-lipped grin and safeguarded to chalk-dusted walls.

      But now there was a burdening hush-hush in Patsy’s soft green eyes and a quivering in her young hands that belonged to the old.

      Patsy crossed the room and opened the bedroom window to let the early June air sift through the curtains. Sinking back down onto her vanity stool, she dipped the eyeliner brush into a teacup of water and swished it back and forth across the black cake powder. For the second time Patsy tried to draw a line onto her eyelids to give herself a perfect cat-eye look.

      “Patsy and Danny sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then marriage, and then o’ then, there’s a baby carriage!” Her twin sister’s stupid little tease struck like a cold blade.

      “Dammit, Flannery . . . just hush,” Patsy hissed, peering closer at the mirror and inspecting the sweep on her wing-painted lids. Satisfied, Patsy reached for the lipstick.

      “Oh, did I spell it wrong? F-O-R-N-I-C-A-T-I—” Flannery sang slowly as she hung over her sister’s shoulder.

      Patsy batted her off with a light hand. Ever since their mama said Patsy could go to the junior prom with Danny Henry, Flannery had been pestering Patsy because Flannery didn’t have a beau to take her. But this particular tease cut deeper. Patsy and Danny had been arguing about it recently, it being putting out. Patsy wondered if Flannery had overhead their whispers on the porch. It had to be that, only that.

      “What’s eating you?” Flannery asked.

      “You. Knock it off, tadpole.” Patsy pressed her lips together to seal the paint, dropping the tube onto the wooden vanity. She glanced into the mirror and cast a warning eye to Flannery.

      “Don’t call me that,” Flannery said. “Hey, that’s mine.” She snatched the lipstick and tossed it into the vanity’s drawer, then plopped onto one of the twin beds in their bedroom.

      “Someone’s acting like a brat,” Patsy declared.

      “That’s because someone is working somebody’s shift down at Chubby Ray’s, scooping tons of ice cream and making a million cherry lime rickeys and serving stacks of chili dogs to her whole junior class while somebody and everybody has a big-to-do prom to go to.”

      “Flannery, you’re a doll to do this.” Patsy sighed, leaned back, patted her sister’s shoulder.

      “Well, you’ve already missed enough days. I wouldn’t want Chubby to fire you.”

      “A living doll,” Patsy said, sort of meaning it this time.

      Flannery softened a little. “I guess you’d do it for me.”

      “I would,” Patsy said. “But I wish you would’ve thought about letting Hollis take you to the prom. Then ol’ Chubby Ray wouldn’t have made you work my shift.”

      “Hollis Henry is a senior, a dumb one who failed first grade—nearly nineteen years old now! And you know Mama ain’t allowing us to date seniors, same as Honey Bee. ’Sides, I never much cared for him—I don’t want to double-date—and I don’t want your date offering up his brother as a pity date for me.”

      Their daddy, Beauregard “Honey Bee” Butler, or Honey Bee, as Patsy and all who knew him called him, had a lot of silly rules for his girls, Patsy thought. Rules that were still calling from the grave. It wasn’t fair, she felt. Honey Bee never wanted the twins to be around older boys, yet, he’d let them skip second grade and go straight into third when the teacher advised it. Honey Bee’d enjoyed boasting how doubly-sharp his little girls were.

      “But that’s only because Honey Bee told Mama not to let us,” Patsy reminded Flannery. “He’s been dead over two years.” There was a relief in Patsy’s words. Honey Bee was one less worry—one less in the mess of her latest troubles.

      “That’s ’cause Honey Bee was right,” Flannery said. “And it doesn’t matter if he’s gone, or how long; he’ll always be right.”

      Patsy studied her sister a moment. “Honey Bee wasn’t always right. If he’d listened to Mama, maybe he’d still be here—” she said quietly.