So first of all I wanted to express my condolences, and stop me at any time if there’s too much grief for you to listen. Charitably, I mean. I’d like you to listen charitably, because in light of, uh, recent events, I’m gonna need to come clean.

Octavia, for her part, has been ruminating about the girls all day. She’s sure they are up to something. She’s had experience with raising girls and none of it has been good. Today, she sits at her kitchen table mumbling over cups of hot cafe Bustello con leche. Girls! They are the spawn of the devil. Why hadn’t God blessed her with sons instead of daughters? 

Something was happening with the crows.  That something was making Stella uneasy.

Fitzgerald puffs on the breeze slipping through his window. A scent of plowed earth tagged to the air teases him. His mouth waters from its heaviness, the mineral taste flirting with his hopes that the clouds might gather closing out the hard blue skies and moulding the shattered summer ground into one again.