Flesh and Blood

. . . he felt himself entering a moment so real he could only run toward it, shouting.

Constantine, eight years old, was working in his father's garden and thinking about his own garden, a square of powdered granite he had staked out and combed into rows at the top of his family's land.

Zoe loved Trancas's mother. She respected her exhausted and ironic hope for rebirth.

My little girl, oh, the daughter I never had. Now tell me, angel, are you fucking anybody new?

...a much younger woman, one of those round-faced, tiny-featured women who were touted as beauties though they were not in fact particularly beautiful. They were simply the daughters of wealthy families powerful enough to demand that the concept of beauty be expanded to include them.