Growing up, she had asked questions—how I met her father, if I’d had other beaus, what was my wedding like? She wanted the romance and the love story, but there was only a one-sided story to tell. I gave her paltry details. The wedding was at the church, Gus gave us the silver, and her grandfather built the house on property he had purchased for my mother. Then I would remind her, in a harsh tone, how I grew up in Mounds over the store, working when I wasn’t in school, no mother to dote on me. She would frown, sad or appalled at the poverty of my girlhood, so different from hers. She never
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