As they marched onward, Shea’s mind drifted back to when she was fifteen and skinny with Ralph’s chestnut hair, long and wild. She was sitting at the kitchen table with her seven-year-old sister, Wendy, both of them eating bowls of Fruity Pebbles, watching the milk turn that funky purple-brown color. Wendy’s strawberry-blond curls bounced as she hummed tunes in her head. Ralph sat between them dressed in a wifebeater, smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee.
Mama walked in, wearing a yellow dress with white polka dots. She was dragging an old blue suitcase with a broken wheel and a smaller one Shea and her sister used for sleepovers. Her long red hair was put up in a bun. With her face made up, which was a rarity, she reminded Shea of a World War II pinup girl—except for the new shiner pe
