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Years later in Calder, Scarlett’s friend Leela somber and cool sent the boys and her daughter off to school, her own children to the Catholic school across from her pretty white house, and Troy with his bag of books to the Protestant elementary school behind that.
Leela thought of the tragic past and the uncertainty of the future, shimmering in the sunshine like exhaust fumes on an early morning dewy road to terminus.
Her late husband Joachim always said that a man who had an affair with his secretary was not a real man, as his desire was beneath his station in life. He himself would have s*x with his female supervisor if he had one, he jokingly said, and Leela believed him, the brains of his mentally vanquished colleagues giving him strength and cunning. Leela knew that Scarlett sus
