Luci’s aunts’ aversion to technology extended to air conditioning. The house was cool—thanks to Gracie—but that couldn’t come close to six thousand feet above sea level cool. That, humidity-dampened sheets, and thoughts that tended to circle around the question of Mickey’s captain and her paternity drove Luci outside where she found the frat boys having another party. She was tired of thinking, tired of wondering if Henry Pryce were her mother’s Pooh Bear.
How could she not have realized that finding her father would bring her face-to-face with her mother’s lover? There’d been no Immaculate Conception in her case. No comforting fictions to tell herself. She was a “love” child, an outcome of passion.
Her thoughts kept getting caught up in images of Lila and Pryce tangled in sheets. She ha
