le driving, she remembered him as a kind, gentle man. He had been twenty years older than her mother and, in some people&#8217;s minds, the wrong race, but the three of them had been happy.</p>
<p class="excerpttext">Carly swallowed in a throat suddenly clogged with emotion. The last words he&#8217;d spoken to her had been &#8220;take care of your mother.&#8221; Then he&#8217;d slipped off into nothing or whatever awaited after the grave. After he was gone, her mother closed in on herself in a way that Carl