17
They washed in the river. Giggling like children. Carly hadn’t laughed that high, girly laugh since…ever. Her girly laugh had probably died with her mother when she was still in kindergarten.
Carly Thomas had been the only child in her class in Hood River Elementary who didn’t have a mother, no matter who the other kid’s moms might actually be shacked up with. Her friends had a lot of odd family arrangements, a few had enough divorces and marriages to be three families deep on both sides, but at least they all had mothers.
But she also hadn’t had a man ever help her out of soaking wet jeans on a grassy bank by a soft-flowing river. Coax her until she knelt over him, his hands cupping her behind, the both of them naked in the silver light of the crescent moon.
Having no protection, h
