Lady Be Good

storms and covers the bridge, but I still love having it in my front yard.”

And that’s exactly where it was, Emma realized—in his front yard. Kenny’s ranch house sat at the top of a gently sloping bit of lawn shaded here and there with live oaks. The house itself was a graceful rambling structure built of creamy white limestone with smoky blue shutters and trim. Twin limestone chimneys rose from the expansive tin roof she’d already seen on so many buildings in the area, and a galloping horse weather vane turned lazily in the April

My mother spent her life on that thin edge between neurosis and psychosis, with psychosis winning out as she got older. She was a classic narcissist married to a man who ignored her, so, as soon as I was born, she made me the center of her life. Whatever I wanted, she gave me, even if I shouldn’t have had it. She never said no, not about anything. And because of that, I was supposed to worship her.”
“Did you?”
“Of course not. I paid her back with bad behavior, and the more she indulged me, the more I pushed her. Then, whenever something did go wrong in my life, I blamed her for it. I was just about the most unpleasant child you can imagine.”

She decided she could kiss Dexter O’Conner for hours.

And today . . . one minute they’d been arguing, and the next thing he knew, they were skin-to-skin in his car.

Maybe he felt the same way she did, that there was something dangerous about so much urgency, something distinctly threatening about two incompatible adults being so wild to get their hands all over each other that they couldn’t wait to find a bed.

I’m certain you were desperate for his attention, and misbehavior must have been the only way you could get it.

You were a healthy little boy being suffocated by a highly neurotic mother, and your father didn’t seem to have interceded when he should have. Really, Kenny, you received such appalling parenting that it’s a wonder you didn’t end up mutilating small animals. It’s not surprising that you still resent him.”

Somehow she felt bolder here, and, in a way she couldn’t explain, less limited.

There was something special about this state that she couldn’t help but respond to: its energy, its people, and its sheer, raw size. She found herself taking a long, deep breath for no reason, almost as if her lungs had developed a larger capacity

Then they spent their afternoons together. She’d never laughed so much, or argued so much either. Her body felt warm and languid from Kenny’s lovemaking, and she couldn’t imagine how she would ever live without it or without him.