Today is Friday the 13th, supposedly the unluckiest day of the year. Tomorrow is the 14th, Valentine's Day. What does it say that the unluckiest day of the year hands off to the most foolish—or the most optimistic?

To me, it says hope refuses to die. As it should.

Now, my mother—bless her contrary, stubborn heart—always insisted the 13th was actually the luckiest day of the year. She never explained why. Just said it was so, the way country folks do when they know what they know. Mama, God bless her, often blissfully ignored the difference between facts and opinion. If she believed it, it was so.

She and I didn't agree on everything (what mother and daughter do?). But I agreed with her when it came to Friday the 13th. For me, it's always signaled good luck.

But I know most folks don't see it that way. Which makes me wonder: Do killers who plan to kill hold off on the 13th? Do thieves who plan to steal decide maybe another day would be better? Does superstition give conscience a little breathing room?

My mother grew up as a sharecropper’s daughter in Virginia. Born in 1917. Grew up during the Depression. Knew hunger. Knew pain. She left home when she was fifteen years old, boarded a Greyhound bus for New York City.

She never went back.

She worked as a maid for rich white folk out on Long Island. Grew older, more tired, met my father, had me. Pretty soon, she found good reason to send him packing. So it ended up being just her and me.

Precocious, I read every book I could lay my hands on. The stories were great, but they weren’t enough. They weren’t mine.

Folks like to talk about the good ole days. But those days were never all good. Or neat. And they sure weren't quiet. The only thing neat was how the tough guys preferred their whiskey. And the only thing quiet were the still-warm dead and the witnesses desperate to stay alive.

This morning I woke up smack dab in the middle of an anxiety attack. It started before I even opened my eyes. I could already hear him, Ole Mr. Nasty running his mouth, listing every errand I hadn’t run, appointment I hadn’t made, dream I hadn’t realized before 2024 was done.

You know him. Mr. Ole Nasty. The voice that’s never satisfied. The one that greets you at dawn like a bill collector. You didn’t finish that. You said you’d do this. Remember that book idea from three years ago? Still waiting.

Never mind the book I polished and released last summer. The other three manuscripts I finally finished over the course of last fall. Nope. Nope. None of them counted.

According to Ole Mr. Nasty, only what I hadn’t done counted. Anything I had didn’t.

So I lay there in the dark and fought to give in. Yup. That’s right. I wanted to give in, give up. Figured it would be easier. But I couldn’t. Mama was the daughter of a sharecropper. Daddy was the son of a coal miner. Folks who didn’t have it in them to quit.

Turns out, I don’t either.

These days before New Year’s Eve? That’s when people get restless and brave. They review their lives like evidence and look at the year ahead like an escape route. Hope’s dangerous. So is regret.

Marion stood at her kitchen island arranging cheese cubes while her twenty-pound honey-glazed ham turned to carbon at 425F degrees. She'd been standing there for eighteen minutes now, watching it through the oven door like television. Like meditation. Like prayer.

The first review was lovely. Detailed, thoughtful, generous. Very reassuring. Made me feel good, real good. All tingly inside.

Then I hit the second one.

Or should I say it hit me?

Meet Catherine Tucker, author of Tall Cotton—a blistering tale of race, justice, and survival in 1970 Mississippi. A boy fighting for his mother. A lawyer facing his own demons. A town steeped in secrets. Our conversation goes deep into what drives a writer to walk that road.

Winter nights hold secrets differently. The cold makes people honest, or desperate, or both. Loneliness sharpens. Old grudges thaw. And every memory somebody tried to bury claws its way to the surface in time to wish them a merry Christmas.

Every year around this time, some poor bird somewhere makes the news for escaping its fate. Usually it’s a farm upstate, sometimes a backyard coop in Queens. There’s always a photo — the turkey darting across a road, feathers flying, looking both ridiculous and determined. And for a moment, we all root for it. The great escapee. Can’t say I blame him. Some years, we all want to escape Thanksgiving.