Chapter 39

Lola stared at her computer thinking of Jason's most recent letters. She had remembered something that her mother once told her about love, and she tried to remember when the conversation had taken place, deciding that it must have been late in the summer. They had been sitting in the garden, she with a book on her lap and Mother could have been telling any story, the mere cadence of her voice was enough to soothe, but it wasn't just any old story. In retrospect, Lola wished she had asked more questions, but at that time she could only think of how things related to her and Jason. Now she wondered what the story might have meant to Mother, and who might have told her the story.

Her mother had told her that there was a saying that a person never married their first love. A person always married someone else, but later in life that person would be reunited with their first love. They apparently has a phrase for it: they call it the Pick-up-your-stick-and-standals marriage, which