It could have been round any corner in her own big city.

It could have been in the very next class at the college from which she was meant to get

a degree.

Not that she was looking for love, but it was looking for her, capricious, inconvenient

for bidding, and it announced itself as love will 400 miles from home to everyone's

surprise.

And if she saw only the promise, the sparkle of it.

Well, she was young.

What could she know of the powers arrayed against so fine appearing as hers?

I never would have thought in a million years this would have been the direction that this

actually went.

Oh, good.

Certainly not her father, and not sparkle.

That was her name, by the way, sparkle.

Her name and her attitude, effervescent, is what she was in high school at cheerleader,

and college enthusiastic for a while.

And then it was the summer of 1998, and sparkle was 20.

And she was, she announced ready for life, whatever that might be.

Is that age, you know, where they think they are ready to grow up, and she had spent two

years at college on her own, and just wasn't ready to come back home and live, you know,

under the rules in the house, necessarily.

So sparkle packed her bags, said goodbye to her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, and announced

...