SPEAKING OF SUMMER

      Copyright © 2019 by Kalisha Buckhanon

      First hardcover edition: 2019

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.

      Portions of the novel appear previously in the following publications under the following titles: “Speaking of Summer,” Intellectual Refuge, Volume 8 (June–August 2015); “Speaking of Summer,” excerpt, Cat on a Leash Review, Volume I, Issue I (Fall 2016); “Night Wind,” NYU Black Renaissance Noire, Volume 17, Issue 1 (Winter 2017).

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Buckhanon, Kalisha, 1977– author.

      Title: Speaking of summer : a novel / Kalisha Buckhanon.

      Description: First hardcover edition. | Berkeley, California : Counterpoint, 2019.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2018052245 | ISBN 9781640091917 (hardcover)

      Subjects: LCSH: Sisters—Fiction. | Missing persons—Fiction. | Bereavement.

      Classification: LCC PS3602.U264 S74 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018052245

       Jacket design by Jaya Miceli

       Book design by Wah-Ming Chang

      COUNTERPOINT

      2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

      Berkeley, CA 94710

       www.counterpointpress.com

      Printed in the United States of America

      Distributed by Publishers Group West

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      For M.C.

      To live life as a woman is to live life on the defense.

      —BRIE LARSON

      A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.

      —OSCAR WILDE

      Speaking of Summer

      CONTENTS

Prologue

Winter

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

       Seven

       Eight

       Nine

       Spring

       Ten

       Eleven

       Twelve

       Thirteen

       Fourteen

       Fifteen

       Summer

       Sixteen

       Seventeen

       Eighteen

       Nineteen

       Twenty

       Twenty-One

       Twenty-Two

       Twenty-Three

       Fall

       Twenty-Four

       Twenty-Five

       Twenty-Six

       Twenty-Seven

       Twenty-Eight

       Twenty-Nine

       Thirty

       Epilogue

       Acknowledgments

PROLOGUE

      I was the nice-looking, well-dressed woman running down 151st Street in Harlem after school and before evening rush hour on a bright day at the end of August in 2015.

      If you saw me with my purse half-open and my balance tested more than once, you were wrong to laugh and right to be alarmed.

      If you saw me trip and bust my lip, you were right; it really did hurt. If you thought I was being chased and you failed to call the police, I thank