章 7: Chapter 7

They migrate to proper tennis in Nan’s enormous garden, using the terrace wall for a net, and usually knocking over the glasses of lemonade she brings out for them. She doesn’t mind.

August breaks to the first time they meet outside of post-church boredom—when Ryan goes to the shop for crisps and bumps into Alex on a Wednesday afternoon. Alex says practically nothing, and yet they somehow end up kicking a football around the churchyard regardless, trampling the grave of Robert Longley, 1835-1866, and sheltering from the noon heat in the shadow of the crumbling, beheaded angel that guards the Ashburn family, struck down with scarlet fever in 1902.