Taylor closes her eyes and sees stars. She wished on those stars that Andy Rainbelt could keep his promise.

Late that same afternoon, Taylor and Alice walk the dirt shoulder of the road out of Heaven. Turtle came back to Sugar’s and fell into a hard sleep, but Taylor wanted to get out of the house for a while.

“I’m sorry you broke up with your new boyfriend,” she tells Alice.

“Lord, what a soap opry,” Alice declares. “All the fish out there, and I have to go for the one that’s related to Turtle.”

“Mama, that’s not just bad luck. You were set up.”

“Well, still, he didn’t have to be so handy, did he? And related some way to Sugar?”

“To hear Sugar tell it, she’s related some way to everybody from here to the Arkansas border. If they were determined to get you two together, it was bound to happen.”

“Well, that’s so. But I still have to say I got the worst darn luck in men.”

“I’m not about to argue with that.” Taylor has begun picking long-stemmed black-eyed Susans from the roadside as they walk along.

“The thing is, it’s my own fault. I just can’t put up with a person that won’t go out of his way of me. And that’s what a man is. Somebody that won’t go out of his way for you. I bet it says that in the dictionary.”

Taylor hands Alice a bouquet of orangey-yellow Susans and begins picking another one.

“It’s the family misfortune,” Alice says. “I handed it right on down to you.”

“I called Jax,” Taylor says, feeling faintly guilty.

“Well, honey, that’s good. I mean it, I think he’s tops.

What’s he up to?”

“His band is sort of breaking up. Their lead guitar quit, but they’re getting an electric fiddle. Kind of going in a new direction, he says. He’s trying to think of a new name with a country element. Renaissance Cowboys, something like that.”

“Well, it beats the Irritated Babies all to pieces.”

“Irascible Babies.”

“What’s that mean, irascible?”

“Irritated, I think.”

“So I had the right idea, anyway.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you did.”

“And you forgave him for going to bed with that what’s her name? That landlady gal?”

“Mama, I’d given him permission to do whatever he pleased. I told him when I left in June that we weren’t, you know, anything long-term. So how could I hold it against him?”

A passing pickup truck, whose paint job looks very much like whitewash, slows down, then speeds on by when the driver doesn’t recognize the two women carrying flowers.

“Mama, I’ve decided something about Jax. I’ve been missing him all summer long. Whether or not we get to keep Turtle, I’ve decided I want to start thinking of me and Jax as kind of more permanent.”

“Well, that don’t sound too definite.”

“No, it is. I mean, I want us to be long-term. He’s real happy. He wants to get married. I don’t know if married is really the point, but you know what I mean.”

“Well, Taylor, that’s wonderful!” Alice cries, sounding ready enough to be wrong about men this once. She sings

“Dum, dum da dum,” to the tune of “Here Comes the Bride,” and ties knots in the stems of her flowers, pulling each one through the next to make a crown. When it’s finished she holds it out in her two hands like the cat’s cradle, then places it on Taylor’s dark hair. “There you go, all set.”

“Mama, you’re embarrassing me,” Taylor says, but she leaves the flowers where they are.

“What changed your mind about Jax?”

Taylor uses her long bouquet like a horse’s tail, to swish away gnats. “When the social worker asked Turtle about her family today, you know what she said? She said she didn’t have one.”

“That’s not right! She was confused.”

“Yeah. She’s confused, because I’m confused. I think of Jax and Lou Ann and Dwayne Ray, and of course you, and Mattie, my boss at the tire store, all those people as my family. But when you never put a name on things, you’re just accepting that it’s okay for people to leave when they feel like it.”

“They leave anyway,” Alice says. “My husbands went like houses on fire.”

“But you don’t have to accept it,” Taylor insists. “That’s what your family is, the people you won’t let go of for anything.”