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air.
    “Girl!” He nudged the box with the toe of his shoe. “Where these boxes been? They got spider shit all over ’em.”
    Noelle hadn’t noticed, but he was right. Round egg sacs hung from the corners and cottony webs crisscrossed the untaped flaps.
    “Leave it there, James,” she said. “Nothing’s alive, I don’t think, but I don’t want to drag these filthy things into that Miss Wilson’s house. Let me get a rag and I’ll clean them up.”
    “You got some tape?” James squatted down next to the box. “I’ll check inside a couple to make sure they ain’t no infestation or nothin’.”
    Finding a rag in the cleaned-out kitchen was easier said than done, and Noelle finally resorted to pulling one of her washcloths from her suitcase. She dampened it under the tap and headed back to the front yard.
    By the time she reached James and the box, he was on his feet, a manila folder in his hands. He looked at her from behind a frown.
    “Was you adopted?” he asked.
    She froze. How would he know that? She’d only found out herself the night Bea’s first baby was born, when her mother finally told her the truth. They’d sat together on the hammock in the backyard while her mother apologized for not telling her sooner. “You had a right to know way before now,” she’d said, “but I didn’t want you to think that you being adopted had anything to do with Daddy leaving.”
    Noelle had felt stunned, like a huge void opened up inside her. “My mother?” she’d asked. “Who were my real mother and father?”
    “Your father and I are your real parents,” her mother said sharply. “But your biological mother was a fifteen-year-old girl like that one we just left. Like Bea. Your father…” She’d shrugged. “I don’t think anybody knew who your father was.”
    “I’m not yours,” Noelle said, trying on the fit of the words.
    “Oh, you’re mine, honey. Please don’t ever say that again.”
    “I’m not part Lumbee?” She felt the magic drain out of her. The Spanish moss hanging above the hammock suddenly looked like nothing more than Spanish moss, not the hair of an Indian chief’s wife.
    “I believe you’re a mishmash. A little of this and a little of that.” Her mother had taken her hand and held it on her lap. “What you are,” she said, “is the best thing that ever happened to me.”
    Now, Noelle looked at James. “Yes, I’m adopted,” she said, as though the fact meant nothing to her. “But how did you know?”
    He handed the folder to her. “Some papers fell out of this thing in the wind,” he said. “Ain’t nothin’ to me,” he said. “But maybe mean somethin’ to you.”
    His soft brown eyes told her he’d seen something he shouldn’t have seen. Something she’d never been meant to see, either. And when he gave it to her, he touched her hand. Not like a man would touch a woman. It was the touch of a friend who knew that the papers in that folder just might change her world forever.

8
    Tara
    Wilmington, North Carolina
2010
    Oh, God, this felt strange.
    I sat across the table from Ian at the Pilot House, wondering if I was on a date. It had seemed casual enough yesterday when he said he had two tickets for a film at Thalian Hall. Then he suggested we grab something to eat first, and when you put dinner on the waterfront together with a film at a place as nice as the renovated Thalian Hall, what else could it be but a date? I liked Ian. I’d known him for so long and in some ways I could honestly say I adored him, but I didn’t want to date him. I didn’t want to date anyone. The thought of kissing or even holding hands with someone other than Sam made me shudder—and not with desire. It was actually repellent. I felt a deep, deep loneliness in my bed at night, but it wasn’t for just any man. It was for my husband.
    “This isn’t a date, is it?” I asked Ian after the waiter had poured my second glass of wine.
    Ian laughed. “Not if you don’t want it