Two days later, Daddy went to Abraham Pace and told him Juna was gone. Told him she gave birth to that baby of Joseph Carl’s and walked right out the door. Next, Daddy went for John Holleran. I don’t know what Daddy told John or what he promised him or what he confessed to him, but John came. He never asked after Juna. Never asked where she’d gone or why she’d gone. That’s the thing that makes me wonder if John has always known.
We were married two weeks later. Same as John, folks didn’t ask much after Juna. The fellows slapped John on the back, told him it was high time he strapped himself in. The ladies stood at arm’s length from me and tipped forward to get a closer look at the baby. If she was sleeping, they’d ask me straight out. Does she have those black eyes? Dark brown, I told them. As dark as brown can be. Annie is as sweet as a baby can be.
John and I lived with Daddy those early days. We slept in the room Juna and I once shared. For the first three months, John slept on the floor. Cold as that floor was, he slept there. I never wore the slip I’d been wearing that night with Ellis Baine, never mentioned the thing John had seen. I wanted him to know I’d never been with a man, not Ellis, not any other. I wanted John to know he’d be my first and he’d be my last. I wanted him to know his mama had been right about our future together. But I couldn’t say those things without bringing to mind the thing John most likely saw every time he closed his eyes.
It was nearly spring and we had buried Daddy when John finally came to our bed. I didn’t have to tell him he was the first, and I would say it brought him some peace to find it out for himself.
“That’s a cold hard floor,” he said when it was done.
24
IN AN HOUR or so, folks will begin to arrive. As Annie and Mama walk out the door, Grandma fusses at them for running off, but Mama says they’ll be back in plenty of time and motions for Annie to climb into Daddy’s truck. Mama never drives Daddy’s truck, but today she will.
At first, Annie thinks they’re headed to town because they drive down the hill same as always. But then Mama takes a hard right and starts back into the hills again. She’s wearing her new dress. It’s pale green, and Lessie Collins in town stitched it up so the top is molded to Mama’s body. It shows her every curve and valley such that Daddy couldn’t help rubbing that stubbly chin of his against her neck.
Daddy is sleeping in his own bed again for the first time in two weeks. After Daddy carried Annie home from the Baines’ place-taking care she never saw what had become of Ellis Baine-Daddy, the sheriff, and Abraham talked for a good long time while Miss Watson sat in the back of the sheriff’s car. Once Abraham and the sheriff left, Daddy and Annie waited at the kitchen table until Mama came back from town. When her car pulled up outside, Daddy told Annie again that when he finally drew his last breath in this life, he’d still not have forgiven himself for raising a hand to her but would she please take Caroline and Grandma upstairs and give him and Mama some privacy.
At first, Grandma wouldn’t let Annie eavesdrop from the top of the stairs, but after sitting on the beds and hearing nothing but quiet in the house, Grandma said it wouldn’t do no harm and told Annie to go have a listen.
There wasn’t much to hear from the top of the stairs either. Mostly just Mama crying, not hard crying, but the kind of crying that stuck in the back of her throat and choked off every third or fourth word. Daddy said Abraham had no choice but to fire his gun. Likely Ellis Baine wouldn’t have pulled the trigger, but likely wasn’t good enough. That was Annie up there, and likely wasn’t good enough.
Mama doesn’t stop the truck outside what’s left of her childhood home. Annie never knew her granddaddy on her mama’s side, the man who built this house where the sun rarely shines. That’s what Mama always talks about when she talks about her childhood. No sunshine, she says. Can you imagine? Lord, our socks and shoes never dried. Grandma says Granddaddy’s history sizzles underfoot, but Annie doesn’t ever feel him.
Annie knows now why they drove the truck. She presses a hand to the dashboard as Mama drives up the hill behind her old house. At the top, she stops, yanks off the leather gloves she slipped on so as to not ruin her nails, throws open her door, and climbs out. Annie does the same. Giving Annie a wave to join her, Mama walks to the front of the truck.
There’s sun here. Mama shields her eyes, looks off to the left and to the right. Small mounds of dirt, light brown and each with a hole at its center, litter the ground. Each hole is a spot where the cicadas broke through. Back home, the mounds have mostly been trampled over. The cicadas are singing still, though they’ve dwindled in number. Soon enough, the summer will be a quieter place. There will be more of the critters next summer, but not of this same kind. These cicadas won’t come again for seventeen more years.
“There,” Mama says when she sees it, whatever she’s looking for. Taking long, quick, sure-footed steps because she exchanged her white heels for a pair of boots before setting off, she starts walking.
It’s the fourth Sunday in June. Abraham was supposed to be married by nightfall. Miss Watson never found her something new and something blue, though her dress had been twice altered. But that wedding won’t happen. Instead, Abraham will move south of Lexington, where his daddy got his start. Sheriff Fulkerson thought it might be best for everyone if Abraham put some distance between himself and Miss Watson. The man deserved a fresh start. Like Daddy, Sheriff Fulkerson knew he had no choice but to do what was done. When next Abraham stepped into Grandma’s kitchen, clutching his hat and looking small again for only the second time in his life, Mama wrapped him up in a hug as best she could seeing as how big he was and how small she was. He might well be Annie’s daddy, her real daddy, but mostly he’s still just Abraham.
Annie and Mama walk toward a cluster of trees. Must be water running nearby for such a cluster to grow so thick. Mama stops before she steps into the shade of those trees, and with one hand still shielding her eyes, she points with the other.
“You been wondering what’s become of your Aunt Juna,” Mama says. “She’s there. Somewhere in there.”
“Ma’am?”
“It’s the best I can tell you, Annie. Don’t know who was up there that night, who left those cigarettes you found, though I do believe you found them, but it wasn’t your Aunt Juna.”
“You been writing those letters every Christmas?” Annie asks.
Mama nods. That’s why Aunt Juna knew Caroline and Annie were precious as little girls and then lovely as young women.
“I thought one day you’d learn about Juna being your mama and that it would comfort you to know she loved you. Thought it would comfort you to think she was still out there, somewhere. But you’re my daughter. No more to say about it. She was your Aunt Juna, that’s all. I was the one to first hold you when you came into this world. You’re mine and your daddy’s. That’s who you are.”
Annie steps closer, but like Mama, she doesn’t step into the shade. She might come here again, if there’s a sizzle in the air or something claws at her, but otherwise, she thinks not.
“We’d better get on,” Annie says. “Grandma’ll be wondering.”
ANNIE DOESN’T HAVE to wait long for Ryce Fulkerson to arrive. He comes alone, riding his bike instead of coming with his parents in his daddy’s patrol car. Annie promised Caroline she’d tell Ryce straightaway about not seeing Jacob Riddle down in that well, but before Annie can finish cutting the lavender bread the way Grandma likes it cut and make her way out to Ryce, Lizzy Morris has arrived too.