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MAMA AND DADDY and the others were supposed to play cards, but not thirty minutes after Caroline falls asleep, Abraham Pace and Miss Watson say their good-byes from the porch and climb into Abraham’s truck. The engine sputters and rattles and fades as it drives toward the road. Grandma is all the time saying how fragile Miss Watson is, so most likely, she was still angry with Abraham for shouting out and that’s probably why they didn’t stay for cards.
Another thirty minutes and the last lamp is switched off and the springs in Mama and Daddy’s bed creak as they crawl in. Their muffled voices travel down the hall and through the small crack where Annie and Caroline’s door isn’t quite shut. Then they fall silent, and lastly, Grandma’s quiet snores float up the stairwell from her downstairs bedroom.
Abraham’s dog is gone, same as the last time Annie made this trip, and even though there’s no moon, she’ll know the way. She passes through the kitchen, the light over the stove helping her to walk around the table without bumping the chairs. She pushes the door open only enough to slip through and holds on until it settles in its frame.
She ran up the hill last time and had a candle and matches that she knew would light her way once she reached the top. She has neither this time, and she walks instead of runs through the rows of lavender.
She’s feeling bad for lying to Caroline. She always feels bad when she lies, but most especially when she lies to her sister. Caroline never lies, probably doesn’t even understand the inclination. She has no need for lying. She never does anything wrong, so no need to lie to cover up. She always does well in school, so no need to lie about grades to Mama and Daddy. She doesn’t understand about people who have to lie just to make their way.
Where the rows of lavender end, Annie stops, closes her eyes, listens, and draws a deep breath in through her nose. She wouldn’t have known before that Aunt Juna is a smoker, but after finding all those cigarettes, she knows. She inhales again and yet again. No stain of cigarette smoke in the air. Opening her eyes, she looks toward the dark barn. No orange tip glowing in the doorway.
She’s come at midnight, same as last time. Her heart is beating hard and fast in her chest. If she finds someone, it’ll likely be her mother, her real mother, and Annie is ready to tell her to go. She’ll tell Aunt Juna every Baine isn’t gone like she thought. Ellis Baine is back, and so she has to go. And if Aunt Juna already knows that and if that’s the reason she’s sneaking around instead of walking right up to the door and knocking and saying hello, then she should go because no one wants her here.
The envelopes Annie took from Mama’s bedside table are hidden under Annie’s pillow. She had planned to read the letters, every one of them from the first to the last, while everyone else was busy eating ice cream and spice cake. Pulling each letter from inside its card and pressing it flat, Annie had studied it for a date. Most had at least a year scribbled in the top margin. A few were dated only by the numbers Mama wrote on the back of the card. Annie sorted the letters into a single pile, the most recent on the bottom, and the one dated December 1937 on the top. And that’s where she had begun.
She drew her fingers over the slanted writing as she read the first letter. Some of the ink words were more faded than others. She held the thin yellow paper lightly and read only as far as the second line. Annie would have barely turned one when that letter arrived. Caroline would have just been born. Mama likes to say, whenever Annie or Caroline has a birthday, that she and Daddy loved Annie so much, they couldn’t wait to get started on Caroline.
In those first few lines, Aunt Juna wrote her congratulations to Mama and Daddy for having another perfectly lovely daughter. How blessed you are, Aunt Juna wrote. And then Annie stopped reading the letter, folded it over, the one letter and the rest of the pile, and slid them and the stack of cards under her pillow.