But Norah kept talking. “All we have to do is run the administrative side. Coordinate things. I’ll handle most everything. I just need someone who knows what to do so that if something happens to me, that person can step in and shut the operation down quickly and efficiently. And no one’s more efficient than you.” She gave Bess the side-eye.
“So you need a Pepper to your Iron Man, is what you’re saying,” Bess teased, still trying to keep things light, to pretend this wasn’t happening.
Norah nodded and smiled. “A Lois to my Superman.”
“I wouldn’t want to deal with actual money,” Bess said, going along with it. Later she intended to tell her an emphatic no. But later never came.
“You won’t have to.” Norah had thought of this. “I’ve got someone in mind for that.”
“Who?”
Norah waved away her question a second time. “Someone from my past. You don’t know her. But she’s like you. She could use a little help making her own way so she doesn’t have to depend on a man anymore. She’s got some previous experience I could put to use for what I’ve got in mind.”
Of course, now Bess knew that the someone from Norah’s past had been her own mother. A few months ago, Bess had worked up the courage to ask Polly how she’d known how to launder money. She’d said that a long time ago she had worked for an attorney with some shady clients, then she’d winked at her and refused to say more, and Bess didn’t push. The details didn’t matter. Not anymore. They’d each made good money off that crazy-sounding scheme from that long-ago night. And thanks to Polly never being discovered, they’d managed to hang on to most of it, enough to find the freedom Norah had wanted for all of them.
Now the three of them, along with Casey, Nicole, and Violet, had become their own kind of family. They’d made it work. They’d been there for each other, through Norah’s incarceration, through Bess’s recuperation, through Polly’s guilt over what had happened with Calvin, through Bess’s divorce, through Casey’s fight to get Russell Aldridge expelled and prosecuted. And they’d done it without help from any men, which was what Norah was still babbling on about. The mention of the podcast guy had gotten her all riled up, which predictably launched her into a diatribe about the detective, the men who’d tried to keep her quiet, and any other man who might’ve wronged her.
“When are they going to learn?” she was saying. “They don’t save us. We save them.”
Bess didn’t give her an answer, because Norah didn’t expect one. They’d had this particular conversation countless times. Instead Bess rested her head on the window and thought about Jason risking his life to stop Calvin, and Steve surprisingly being an involved dad even though they were divorced now, and Eli faithfully driving Casey to counseling when she came back from school, and Micah keeping silent about Olivia instead of clearing his own name. She thought about Barney the dog, named after a caveman who did have a good heart and tried to do the right thing. She thought about love blooming and growing, taking root in unlikely places. Just last week she had seen a lone flower growing up through the asphalt in a parking lot. Unlikely things are possible, sometimes.
She decided to interrupt Norah mid-rant. “Maybe,” she said. “It’s not about them saving us or us saving them. Maybe,” she ventured, “we’re all just supposed to save each other.”
Norah pondered that for a moment. She glanced over at Bess, then looked back at the road. “I like that,” she said.
“I do, too,” Bess replied.
A Motown song came on the radio, and Norah cranked it up, the conversation over, for now. At the crossroads, they turned in a different direction than they once would have—to Norah’s new house. The radio played and the two of them sang together as they took the new way home.
POPPY-SEED CHICKEN CASSEROLE
(For when you or those you love need some comfort food)
4 chicken breasts
1 (14.5-ounce) can cream of chicken soup
1 1/2 cups sour cream
1/3 cup chicken broth (reserved from cooking the chicken)
2 tablespoons poppy seeds
2 sleeves Ritz crackers, crushed
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Boil the chicken in water seasoned with salt and pepper till tender (15 to 20 minutes). Save 1/3 cup of the broth from cooking the chicken. Remove the chicken from the water and shred with two forks.
In a large bowl, mix together the soup, sour cream, broth, and poppy seeds. Fold the chicken into the mixture. In a separate bowl, mix together the crackers and butter. Press half the cracker mixture into a lightly greased Pyrex baking dish (8 by 8 inches). Add the chicken mixture on top of the cracker crust. Top with the remaining cracker mixture. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the crackers are lightly browned.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
The Beaucatcher legacy was a connection point for Violet and Polly but a breaking point for Norah and Polly. Why do you think that was? How would you feel about having a legacy like that in your family? How much do you think it would or wouldn’t inform your self-image?
Bess says that Jason was a secret that was just hers and “wasn’t hurting anything.” How was that true for each character? Did their secrets really not hurt anyone?
Was Norah’s reduced sentence fair? Why or why not?
Discuss Casey’s reaction to her assault. While this isn’t “normal” by some people’s estimations, did you find it understandable? Does it make you more or less sympathetic to her?
Was there a character you felt connected to more than the rest? Why do you think that character stood out to you?
How is each character struggling at the opening of the novel? By the end of the novel, have they overcome—or at least come to terms with—what they were struggling
