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WHEN ALL THE bread is sliced, and Mama and Grandma have started on their second cup of coffee and the lavender-scented air is almost too thick and sweet to breathe, Mama invites everyone into the living room. She says it’s because they’ll be more comfortable while they wait and maybe Annie and Caroline can even sleep a bit on the sofa. But really, Mama wants to go into the living room because from there she can look out the picture window and see the barn at the top of the hill. She won’t see the well or the tomato garden or even the littlest bit of the Baines’ roof, but still she’ll want to watch. Even when there is no dead person, Mama sometimes looks out that window. She’ll stand there for the longest time, her forehead resting on the glass, her breath fogging the window if the weather is cool enough, but always she lets the curtain drop and steps away when someone walks into the room.
At the sound of gravel crunching under a truck’s tires as it rolls to a stop, Annie opens her eyes. The steam has cleared and the house is cool, the air soggy as always in the early-morning hours. At some point during the night, someone threw a blanket over her. She gathers it around her shoulders and sits up, and as soon as she does, the memory of the empty well and the coming of the lavender and someone dead up at the Baines’ place fills her up.
Caroline is already awake, her blanket folded in thirds and draped across her legs. She sits on the edge of the sofa, her feet planted on the floor, her hands resting in her lap. Even the soft light of the sun just beginning to rise is enough to make her hair shine.
Mama hears the truck too. She steps away from the window, which maybe she’s been looking out all night long, and calls to Grandma. Walking into the living room from the kitchen, drying her hands on the apron tied at her waist, Grandma slides around her rocking chair and massages its wooden back as if it were a set of shoulders. Grandpa carved the chair for Grandma, and it’s all she has left of him, God rest. Stepping off to the side of the chair, Grandma gives it a nudge. On the smooth oak floors, it moves easily on its wide runners, rocking forward and back. Forward and back.
“What is it, Mama?” Caroline asks. “Is it Daddy? What’s happened?”
“Sit tight. We’ll hear soon enough.”
“You been feeling it, haven’t you, child?” Grandma says to Annie and begins rocking that chair a little faster. “You kept telling me and I wouldn’t listen. Shame on me for not listening.”
“Stop it, Mother,” Mama says. “I won’t hear any of that.” And turning to Annie, she says, “You too. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Annie says, wishing Mama would save some of her scolding for Caroline, who is the only one truly deserving of a scolding. Annie thinks to say as much, but that rocking chair keeps rocking, and something about it is concerning. She takes a step toward it, sliding one foot and then the other. That empty chair creaking and whining as it rolls forward and back makes Annie certain sneaking up on it is the thing to do. Each time it begins to slow, Grandma gives it yet another nudge.
Annie has always known Aunt Juna is her real mother, though she isn’t certain how. She wonders if that’s why Mama is oftentimes short with Annie, quick to give a warning or brace herself for one of Annie’s misdeeds. Mama has never told Annie that Aunt Juna is her real mother. Daddy, neither. Someone must have once said something. Probably Grandma. Probably she said something when she thought Annie was too young to understand. Maybe she and Mama were playing cribbage at the kitchen table or piecing together fabric squares for one of Grandma’s quilts, or maybe Grandma was peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink, and the conversation turned to what different coloring and stature the two Holleran sisters have. Caroline is dark-haired with blue eyes, just like Mama, and already she has the same pleasing shape as Mama. Daddy says Mama is soft in all the right places, which makes Mama swat at him and wag a finger for talking such a way in front of his girls.