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.
More and more folks arrive, all of them wandering through the lavender Daddy and Annie haven’t yet cut. Many of them wander to the top of the hill where they’ll see the Baines’ place and the well and the spot where Ellis Baine died. Annie wants to yell at them to get away and give the man his peace, but Mama says there’s no need for yelling because their curiosity will pass in good time. The legend will die now, Mama says, but she’s wrong. Even though Joseph Carl Baine didn’t kill anyone and he isn’t Annie’s daddy, for these folks, Aunt Juna lives on. Joseph Carl being an innocent man makes Juna Crowley’s legend all the bigger.
But Mama was right about curiosity. It’s short-lived, and as folks fill their arms with bundles of the fresh-cut flowers, each one tied off with a satin ribbon, hug them close, and bury their noses in the blossoms that have finally burst wide open, they begin to forget about the Baines and the well. They take pictures, spin so their skirts puff up like Mama’s sometimes does. Lizzy Morris drags Ryce along as she follows after all the other ladies. And like all the other fellows, Ryce tags after.