boy but a cousin. Lacy, the boy’s mother, had come to live with Wendell and his mom, Maureen, because Lacy’s father had left to work a fishing boat in Alaska and her mother, Maureen’s sister, had died in a car accident years before that. When her father’s letters quit coming, Lacy had simply hung a curtain across the room that she and Wendell shared and stayed with them through most of high school. Yes, Lacy had been like an older sister to him—they were a year apart—but she was really only a cousin. He wanted to make sure that was clear.
