“You shouldn’t be looking there,” she says, barely loud enough to hear the words herself.
“I can’t hardly help it. These other fellows ain’t going to be able to help it either. You need to get yourself out of here. Your daddy will have your hide. Mine too. You get on.”
Ryce’s hand loosens, but the touch of his fingers lingers. Annie crosses her arms over her chest. She can’t hear the rest of them anymore—not Abraham and those fellows laughing, not Miss Watson passing out her cornbread, not Ryce telling her to get on home.
“My Aunt Juna ain’t dead,” she says in little more than a whisper. “We get cards from her. Every Christmas, we get cards, and letters too.”
Ryce draws a hand down over his face and, in one motion, pulls his shirt up and over his head and hands it to Annie.
“Put this on,” he says into her ear. His breath is warm, but the skin on his chest is cool when he brushes up against Annie’s arm.
“Do they really think it?” Annie says, hugging the shirt to her own chest and staring down at her feet. “Who says that? Why do they think Juna’s dead?”
It’s a wicked thought, likely sinful, but Annie would be relieved if Aunt Juna were dead. She’d never again hear a car rolling up the drive and feel the fear that settles in her stomach, always her stomach, when she thinks Aunt Juna has finally come back. Annie has always imagined that living here with Mama and Daddy and Caroline and Grandma has kept her from being all so much like Aunt Juna. But if she were to come for Annie, maybe steal her away in the middle of the night, or maybe Mama would greet Aunt Juna at the front door and pass off Annie and her packed suitcase because she isn’t quite as sweet and kind and generous and abiding as Caroline, Annie would surely slip into being evil just like Aunt Juna.
Over the years, Annie has learned the sound of every truck and car that has reason to park outside their house. She knows Daddy’s and Abraham’s trucks and the cars Grandma’s lady-friends drive. She even knows Miss Watson’s car. She learned them all so she doesn’t have to live through that fear every time a car or truck rolls up the drive. She barely lets herself hope before the hope is gone. The cards have come every Christmas. Aunt Juna can’t be dead.
Standing bare-chested, Ryce lets his arms hang at his sides like he doesn’t know what to do with them.
“I don’t know nothing else, Annie. I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
“Stop looking,” Annie says.
Ryce shakes his head. “I ain’t. I ain’t looking. Jesus, Annie, I can’t help myself. I don’t know nothing else about Juna. Just go on. Just go on home.”
“I saw Jacob Riddle down in the well,” Annie says. “He’s the man I’ll marry one day.”
She’s telling Ryce even though he didn’t ask. Something about him looking at her the way he’s looking and the way his chest is pumping up and down and the way she can feel how warm his body is even though it’s cool to the touch makes her want to hurt him because she knows one day he’ll kiss Lizzy Morris and marry her and eat her glazed ham.
“And you tell your daddy that my Aunt Juna ain’t dead and that she’s back. He’s the sheriff and he should do something about it. You tell him that. My Aunt Juna ain’t dead, and she’s come back home.”
13
1936—SARAH AND JUNA
THE SUN IS rising, has barely broken the horizon. The light is lifting around me, the room turning from nearly black to gray. The fire was out when Daddy dropped Juna and me at home. Crossing through the doorway into a house where three people now live and not four felt like crossing into a stranger’s house. It was cold like that, cold like a house where you don’t know where to sit until someone pulls out a chair and you fidget because you don’t know what to do with your hands since you’re not the one doing the cooking or the cleaning or the serving. Cold like that.
Joseph Carl never told what he did with Dale. By the end, Joseph Carl was crying, and so much had been beat out of him, he didn’t seem altogether sure what he’d done and what he hadn’t done. He pleaded with Daddy to stop and said he would tell Daddy whatever we wanted to hear. Just tell him what to say, and he’d say it. He promised, swore to God almighty, just tell me what to say and I’ll say it. But no matter how much Daddy beat him, Joseph Carl couldn’t tell what he didn’t know, so Daddy and the others are still looking.