Dana sat down on the step with Harper and took the whiskey bottle from her hand. She tipped it up and held a mouthful for a few seconds before she let it slide down her throat, warming her insides. “To Granny Annie, who never thought she’d see the three of us agree on anything, but we all do want you to know that we’ll do our best to keep your place alive and well.”

“Huh!” Harper snorted. “Never thought I’d see the day that you’d put your lips where mine have been.”

“Whiskey kills germs,” Dana said. “We’ve made our vows. Reckon we can keep them?”

“Do my damnedest.” Harper nodded. “Long as it don’t mean I have to get all sweet and lovey-dovey with y’all.”

“Me too,” Tawny said. “We need to put on a front for Uncle Zed. He’s so sad and he doesn’t need us bickering in front of him. If we’ve got a problem, we should hold our tongues until he’s not around.”

“I agree. He looks so frail these days. I’m worried about him, but I can’t get him to let me do more in the café,” Harper said.

“I’ll try not to be bitchy if y’all will,” Tawny said.

Dana set her mouth in a firm line and nodded in agreement.

They both stared at Harper.

“Okay, okay! I’ll give it my best shot, but don’t expect miracles,” she said.

“Then we’re in agreement,” Dana said. “I think it might have been easier on him, maybe brought about closure, if we’d had a funeral for her.”

“I wonder why she didn’t want a funeral.” Tawny frowned.

“Guess we’ll find out when she’s ready to tell us,” Dana answered. “Y’all want to come inside? That north wind is chilly.” Now where in the devil did that come from? She didn’t want them in the house, and she dang sure wasn’t ready to be all “lovey-dovey,” as Harper had said.

“Not me. This is enough for tonight. I’m goin’ back to my place,” Harper said.

“Before you leave—” Tawny set the empty can on the porch. “Mother called me. I pissed her off, so I don’t reckon we’ll see our inheritance until she’s dead.”

“She mention me?” Harper stood up and handed the whiskey bottle to Dana. “There’s one swallow left. You can have it.”

“Thanks.” Dana finished off the last drop in the bottle and then set the empty on the porch.

“Yes, but it was to fuss about us both being a big disappointment. Only time she ever mentions your name. Been that way since we were teenagers and you went out to California to that boarding school. You never did come back home after that. Why?”

“She pissed me off. I don’t give a rat’s fanny if I never get my inheritance. I’ve made it this long without it, so I reckon I can go on forever without Daddy’s money.” Harper left without saying another word.

Dana leaned her back against a porch post. “What happened that summer that she went to the boarding school? Nothing was ever the same around here after that.”

Tawny shrugged. “I’m not real sure. Daddy did not cross Mother when she was in a good mood and really didn’t when she was angry, and I’ve never seen her as mad as she was at Harper back then. You ever see that sign that says, ‘If Mama Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy’?”

Dana laughed. “I had a T-shirt with that on it a few years back.”

“Well, it was the gospel truth in our house. Whatever happened when we got home sent Mother into a rage. She threw dishes and said she wouldn’t be able to hold her head up in her social circles, and the next day, Harper was packed off to the West Coast. I always wondered if they found drugs in her bedroom. It was hell to pay after she left,” Tawny said.

“She was so young, and so were you, Tawny.”

“They sent her away on her sixteenth birthday. It must’ve been something really bad, because Mother didn’t send me off, not even when she had to come bail me out of jail. I wondered if she’d gotten herself pregnant, but if she had there would have been a baby.”

“I can’t believe you were in trouble!”

“I was protesting the government’s policies. I didn’t really care, but my boyfriend of the day was a radical, and I got picked up and thrown in jail because I decked a policewoman who tried to cuff him.”

Dana slapped a hand over her mouth. She was doomed from birth to get into all kinds of trouble—that was expected of a bastard. But the two golden-haired glory children were supposed to have wings and halos.

“It happened when I was sixteen. Mother said that if I ever got in jail again that she’d send me off to a place worse than where Harper went. Harper is tough as nails—if she couldn’t handle it, there was no way I could. I’d already been in trouble twice at school, and she told me it was my third and final offense. I managed to stay out of trouble until last Christmas. Been on her bad side ever since.”

Dana couldn’t make herself go inside the house, no matter how cold it was. “That’s horrible. I can imagine being disappointed in Brook if she made bad choices, but I’d never disown her.”

“That’s because you are a good mother. I should be getting back. I feel better having told Granny Annie goodbye. I think she’d even like the way all three of us did it.”