Thomas Birdsey—Dessa Constantine

Thomas Birdsey—Dessa Constantine is presented as a deeply valued friendship, most clearly through Thomas’s own repeated description of Dessa as his very best friend. The bond reaches the reader through Dominick Birdsey’s recollection at Thomas’s funeral, where her absence makes visible how much Thomas had loved her.

Thomas’s Best Friend

Thomas repeatedly told Dominick that Dessa was his “very, very, VERY best friend.” The emphatic wording, remembered as something Thomas said many times, makes the friendship an enduring part of how Dominick understands Thomas’s attachment to her. The evidence establishes Thomas’s affection directly, though it offers no scene of the two together.

Remembered at the Funeral

During the service, Dominick kept expecting Dessa to arrive and imagined gesturing her over and holding her hand. Her absence hurt him, and he understood their shared history as more than the failed ending of his own relationship with her. He also remembered that Thomas had loved Dessa. When a car door slammed, Dominick briefly thought she had come; the person hurrying down the hill was Lisa Sheffer instead. The moment places Thomas’s friendship with Dessa within Dominick’s grief: she is missed not only as someone from his own past, but as a person beloved by his brother.