“If I had a hammer,” I sang, as I used the measuring tape and a pencil to mark where I needed to drill.

From the next room, Tara called, “I’m going to leave if you’re going to sing.”

“I’m not that bad,” I said with mock indignation.

“Oh yes, you are!” She was changing one of the twins in the next room.

We’d been friends forever. Tara’s husband, JB du Rone, was part of that friendship. We’d formed a little group of misfits at our high school in Bon Temps, Louisiana. What had saved us from utter outcast-dom was that we each had a redeeming talent. I could play softball, Tara was a great manager (yearbook, softball team), and JB was incredibly handsome and could play football, given good and patient coaching.

What put us on the fringes, you ask? I was telepathic; Tara’s parents were embarrassing, abusive, poor, and public in their drunkenness; and JB was as dumb as a stump.

Yet here we were in our later twenties, reasonably happy human beings. JB and Tara had married and very recently produced twins. I had a good job and a life that was more exciting than I wanted it to be.

JB and Tara had been surprised—amazed—when they had discovered they were going to be parents, and even more startled to find they were having twins. Many children had grown up in this little house—it was around eighty years old—but modern families want more space. Though cozy and comfortable for two, the house began to creak at the seams after Robbie and Sara—Robert Thornton du Rone and Sara Sookie du Rone—were born, but buying a larger place wasn’t a possibility. That they owned this snug bungalow on Magnolia Street was something of a miracle.