Mama loved to hear the goings-on at the school, especially about the teachers and the lunch-room ladies, even though Mama had taken to her bed with the vapors. She’d been up in her room ever since they’d got that telegram from the War Office telling them how Daddy had been killed on D-Day. Home was a two-and-a-half story, gingerbread Victorian that had belonged to Mama’s mama and her mama before her, built by Carrie Marie’s great-great-great grandfather, who had come to Texas from Tennessee when he was only eighteen and Texas was still its own country. Carrie Marie loved the high ceilings that echoed and the wood floors that made her shoes sound like tap shoes. She loved that Mama didn’t mind if she rode the bannister down from the second floor, as long as she didn’t do it in front of company. But they hadn’t had company for a while now, not since the telegram from the War Office. People had come by at first with food and stuff; one man had mowed the lawn, and another used his own coupons to fill Daddy’s car up with gasoline.
