Part 32 (2/2)

I wanted everything. I wanted my cousin. I wanted Mr. Holmes. I was a girl, I learned, who got what she wanted, but not without sadness, not without cutting a swath of destruction so wide it consumed my family. And almost me. I almost fell into it, with them. I almost lost myself.

But I was too selfish. I wanted, as Mr. Holmes put it, too much. And none of it was a decision, a list written out, a plan articulated. We have no say in who we love. And woe be to all of us, for that.

Woe be to Sam, who never left Florida, who never lived in the world beyond its sh.o.r.es. He had a wife, he had a family. He did not have his twin. Woe be to Mr. Holmes, who I never saw again, who surely felt me as a loss, as I felt him. Woe be to Mother and Father, who allowed what I had done to unravel their lives. Woe be to Georgie most of all, whose first love was his last, who has turned to dust now, a stone in a Missouri cemetery the only evidence that he existed, proof that he lived and left some mark. Evidence that he existed, but not that he loved. I am proof that he loved. And perhaps that was my most important task, in this life: living a life for both me and him. Seeing things that he never did. Doing what he could not.

But woe be to Thea-no. Take it back, Henry. And surely he would have, if he had continued to know me. Surely he would have seen that my life was full, and rich, and my own.

A photograph would hang on the wall outside Mr. Holmes's office, though I would never see it. I would never return to Yonahlossee, or my home in Florida. The photograph would serve as a reminder to him. A reminder to everyone that Theodora Atwell and Naari had won the Spring Show in 1931. I had left in disgrace, but still my picture would go up. It was tradition.

- I heard a train in the distance, the familiar whining. The woman next to me stood, my presence forgotten. Woe be to us. The memory sprang up, unbidden. One of the countless afternoons we spent with each other, all flooding out now, flooding out of my head and turning into so much vapor. I faltered. I put my head in my hands.

But no. I looked up again. The train made its slow ascent into the station, and the woman marched into the rain, though it would be minutes and minutes until she was allowed to board. But she didn't care. She simply wanted to leave.

I thought of my picture in the Castle, which neither my parents nor Sam would ever see.

But what would future girls see when they looked at the photograph during their daily comings and goings, peered closely? Not the shade of my hair, rendered colorless by the photograph. Not Mr. Holmes, who stood beyond the frame. Not anything, really. Just a girl on a horse, like so many other girls.

Acknowledgments.

A deep debt of grat.i.tude to my agent, Dorian Karchmar, who took on Yonahlossee when it was barely a ma.n.u.script, and guided me through many revisions. It would not be a book without her.

Thank you next to my editor, Sarah McGrath, whose care and insight made the book so much better. At Riverhead Books, thank you to the entire amazing team and especially Geoff Kloske, Sarah Stein, and Jynne Dilling Martin. At Headline, my UK publisher, thank you to Claire Baldwin.

At William Morris Endeavor, thank you to Simone Blaser, Tracy Fisher, Catherine Summerhayes, and Eugenie Furniss.

I owe many thanks to the creative writing departments of Emory University and Was.h.i.+ngton University, respectively-the former, where I took my first creative writing cla.s.s; the latter, where I received my MFA and then taught while I wrote Yonahlossee. At both schools, I studied under many fine professors. A special thank-you to Kathryn Davis, who has always been my most enthusiastic cheerleader, and Marshall Klimasewiski and Saher Alam.

Thank you to Tim Mullaney, David Schuman, and Curtis Sittenfeld, for support while I wrote.

Thank you to my mother, for teaching me to love a home. Thank you to my father, for driving me thousands of miles to and from the barn. And for not letting me go to law school. Thank you to my sister, Xandra, who has always been my biggest champion. As I grow older, I feel increasingly lucky for the love and support my parents and sister have always offered.

Finally, thank you to Mat, my husband. This book is for him; it couldn't be for anyone else.

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