Silver Sparrow

by Tayari Jones

Maybe I was still under the influence of my new hair, but something about the moment didn’t feel quite real.

Ninety miles isn’t so far on the odometer, but you know the old joke: “Be careful when you leave Atlanta, because you’ll end up in Georgia.”

Egged on by a real-estate agent who insisted that Lake Lanier was going to be the Martha’s Vineyard of the south,

That’s what happened when you want something too much. Life, it seemed, was a long con, rotten with dirty tricks.

“What do you want to happen?” She tied off the trash liner with a twist tie and sat down in my father’s chair. “I want our life back like it was.” “Mama,” I said. “You can’t put the rain back in the sky.”

If there was anything the last few weeks had taught me, it was that people only told you what they wanted you to know. Asking a straight question didn’t necessarily get you a straight answer.