Tara pushed Ivy in a bucket swing. Dexter swung from the hanging rings. Brooke in her French hat and Matthew in sopping wet jeans rose from the hillside. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] Earlier, while the children were preoccupied, Tara had learned that “the age of consent” in New York was seventeen. Any man older than twenty-one who had sex with a girl younger than seventeen committed a felony. Brooke wouldn’t be seventeen until Halloween. Tara watch... Read Full Story

Matthew King had won three Emmys playing a psychiatric pediatric intern who figured out kids’ secret, disabling torments and what to do about them. The show “Children’s Minds” was still number one in reruns. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] If his agent, in fact if anyone saw him stretched beneath Brooke’s gaze, or suspected a fraction of how infatuated he was by this well-adjusted wild child, he’d be in trouble. Presumably, nobody saw him touch Brooke... Read Full Story

While Tara grinned at Matthew, recalling his movie dialogue, he observed that she was slightly bigger than Brooke with brown hair that was probably very blonde until recently. Her blue eyes were startling and her features more refined. In giddy innocence, she told Matthew King she knew all his lines by heart. And he believed her. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] He held her gaze until his assessment felt certain. Tara was thrilled by romance on the scr... Read Full Story

Brooke had phoned Tara before noon and said, “Come right now. I’ll meet you at the turn-off.” The path between Matthew King’s property and the highway was half a mile long and wide enough for two bicycles. Tara could scarcely believe Matthew King had hired her to babysit too. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] She wanted the job. She wanted to meet Matthew King, whose movies she knew by heart. But as they bicycled toward the farmhouse, she had to ask Bro... Read Full Story

After Brooke’s unspoken, stifling, six-month love affair with the senior from Boiceville (whose name shall never be mentioned), she regarded sex as the ultimate danger. Other risks only went so far and then you died. (She was still blithe about death because it hadn’t affected her yet.) [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] But sex? If it rose inside you, demanding abandon, and if you were a sixteen-year-old girl, you needed to act the opposite of how you f... Read Full Story

In the gallery’s workroom Tara was stringing metallic beads for a complicated necklace her mother had designed and wondering if Brooke ever realized how connected they were. Not just as sisters. But in how Brooke’s reckless persona made Tara appear sensible and calm. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] Brooke took wild risks, got smacked around, and criticized. Book-smarts saved her from being entirely written off. But thanks to Brooke, Tara watched from ... Read Full Story

Brooke hated that Tara had called out her ex-boyfriend in front of his friends. Because Brooke was the senior boy’s secret. And especially because, Brooke tried to explain, he had used her. Gotten bored and forgotten her. Or pretended to. So when Tara rose to his bait, the pathetic−but over−situation only got sorrier. “Figure it out, Tara; now everybody knows.” [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] Tara apologized and begged for details, which Brooke was an... Read Full Story

Brooke and their mother Connie overheard Tara on the phone. “I’m not going anywhere with you, Pop. Come over if you want. But you won’t change my mind.” “About what?” Connie asked when Tara hung up. “About God. He can’t force me into church.” Brooke said, “See ya.” She wasn’t hanging around for this. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] Connie thought she better hang around, though, and called a friend to work at the Trinity Gallery, which sold arts and cr... Read Full Story

Tara considered wearing a few little braids by her face. Jazz up her colorless hair that refused to grow long. But if she got into that—how she looked—she’d miss the bus. Halfway down the stairs, she heard Brooke singing in the kitchen, “Never no more will I cry for him…” Their father liked Patsy Cline. Brooke, however, couldn’t sing. Really. She could not sing at all. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] After practically dying last night from drinking ha... Read Full Story

Unaware of it, Tara gloated when Brooke staggered home only forty minutes after she left. The back door slammed off the kitchen wall. Tara was upstairs watching a documentary about a boy who videotaped his truly embarrassing parents. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] Their house was rickety but Brooke was causing a ruckus. So that while little Chester on TV told his bickering parents, “You guys are golden,” Tara visualized Brooke opening and closing the... Read Full Story