She wrapped the watch around her thin wrist, fastened it, and then tapped once. No use. Her eight minutes had finally run out.
Dusting off her dress, she trudged over to her vehicle with the tin. Inside the car, she mulled over what she had to do. Cradling the container, she knocked her knuckles on the lid a few times, thinking, then reached over to the passenger side and pulled out the diary tucked inside her purse, setting it beside her.
Flannery studied the soft-sky-colored journal and glanced at the old button tin in her lap, cutting her eyes back to the diary again. She’d been hauling the old diary around everywhere since she’d discovered it. Wouldn’t dare let that out of my sight.
After a minute she inspected Honey Bee’s watch again. Flannery had the urge to tap it once more, and after giving it three sharp raps, she pinned the crystal to her ear. The silence thickened. A sadness sunk her shoulders, but then she straightened in relief.
Plucking up the diary, Flannery placed it carefully inside the tin atop the pearls and bullet, stared thoughtfully out the window.
She needed to make one last stop. She started the car, pulled off Ebenezer, and drove over to the Butler cemetery.
Inside her family’s graveyard, Flannery saw the grass had been mowed, weeds plucked around the tombstones, and, like JoLynn had promised, fresh flowers perched atop the graves in polished urns. Flannery glanced through the trees, down at her childhood home.
Standing amongst the graves, Flannery studied her broken wristwatch and made one last reckoning with God. Finished, she drove down the hill past the Puckett house.
In the rearview, she saw JoLynn step out onto the porch, wave her dish towel, heard the concern rising in her voice. “Flannery, wait. Flannery, where—” JoLynn ran onto the gravel road, calling after her.
But Flannery couldn’t. Wouldn’t dare stop, not this time.
Moments later, Flannery drove through the Palisades, whirred down and around old Kentucky roads bathed in dappled yellows and cloaked in a peacefulness that clung to its crags. The trees were a bit scragglier at the tops than when she and Patsy had driven it, some a lot taller and thicker at their bottoms, though the rock face jutted strong, resolute.
Flannery rolled down her window and inhaled the honeyed breezes of mountain laurel, pine, and yellowwood blossoms.
Soon she saw the sign and pulled into the State Police Post Seven’s lot and parked.
Inside the stale building, a young receptionist looked up from her sandwich. With a mouthful of food, she asked, “Can I help you, ma’am? Are you lost?” She took another bite.
“I’m Mrs. Butler Hamilton,” Flannery announced to the woman hunched over her desk.
“Haven’t I seen you with the Pucketts?” The girl pinched off another glimpse under her flurry of thick false eyelashes. “Do you need to call them?”
“I’d like to speak with Trooper Claymore Green.”
“Ma’am, Captain Green is in a meeting,” she said flatly, swallowing the bite before setting the sandwich aside, “but if you’ll tell me what this is about, I can call another trooper for you.” The receptionist placed a hand on the phone, waiting, the bother set plain in her purple painted lips, the steady tap of a long nail with a cartoon painted on it.
“I’ll wait for Captain Green.” Flannery rubbed the rusted cookie tin in her grip, pressed down her skirts.
The receptionist shook her head, wagging pumpkin-streaked curls. “I told you, he’s busy. What’s this about?” the receptionist needled, eyeing Flannery’s dirt-stained hands, beat-up old wristwatch, and odd package.
“I have some information for him about an old matter. An old family matter and my missing paddle. And a few others who’ve been missing theirs.”
“Ma’am”—the receptionist sighed—“it could be a while. We’re very busy here. If you’d like to leave word stating what this is about, maybe I can have him call you later.” The receptionist took a big bite of her sandwich and then pulled out a telephone message pad from under a pile of papers.
“I need to see him about one of his old files—an open case. I’d like to close it for him,” Flannery clipped, dismissing her.
The girl choked on her food and had to swallow twice before she grabbed the phone.
Flannery shuffled over to the wall where a row of empty folding chairs sat, and took one, rattling the pearls and bullet inside the tin as she hugged it to her lap.
The receptionist made another phone call, whispering, spinning her chair around, turning her back to Flannery.
Flannery pried open the lid on the button tin and pulled out the small blue leather journal again.
Six months ago, a retired teacher from the elementary school dropped by and had admired the curious wooden box sitting on Flannery’s mantel. When Flannery told her she didn’t have a key, the woman pointed her to an antique dealer who went through all of his old keys, finding the one that opened the locked box that JoLynn had given her.
Flannery hadn’t risked breaking open the family keepsake, harming the heirloom, and was thrilled to find the antique key fit—until she saw what the memento held, saw what she couldn’t allow others to see, until now.
Inscribed inside, on the wood bottom, it read To Jean, Love Honey Bee, and was filled with an old diary that had belonged to Mama.
Footsteps fell across the buffed linoleum, smacking, startling the quiet. The receptionist glanced sideways at Flannery, pursing her lips. Flannery watched until the young girl disappeared into the mouth of a sterile hallway.
Crossing her nylon-lined legs, Flannery guessed the woman had surely gotten her stockings from a plastic egg. Settling back in her seat, she opened the diary to the first page. She had read it before—many times—but it deserved one last reading.
1931, April 7
It won’t be long now. I’m much stronger, and the fever is gone, though midwife Joetta Deer has ordered me to bed rest until my delivery.
Oh! My darling husband has cheered me once again. Honey Bee traveled to Lexington and bought this fine journal from a stationery store so that I may fill it with our blessings. Then he carved a beautiful box from the felled cherry on Butler Road for me to safeguard it in.
Dear Lord, thank You for Your goodness. Thank You for my good Honey Bee.
Flannery shut the leather journal and ran a gnarled finger over the smooth cover, glanced at her busted watch. In a minute she opened the book again and carefully flipped through the yellowed linen pages until her eyes came to rest on Jean Butler’s final entries. She admired the fanciful oval handwriting her mother had penned, lightly traced the elegant Spencerian Script that nowadays could only be found on an antique Coca-Cola sign tucked inside an abandoned filling station off some forgotten state road.
Her eyes filled a little, and she slipped a finger under her glasses and wiped away the dampness.
1931, April 20
The stork is coming this week. I just know it. I can feel it somehow, in my bones, in this sweet spring air. Honey Bee painted the nursery and has fussed for days in the barn, finishing the walnut cradle he’s making. It is beautiful and big enough to hold triplets, even.
Lord, don’t I look like I swallowed three pumpkins. Dear Honey Bee pokes good-naturedly that I may have been sampling in the watermelon patch too long.
I never told a soul, but the day I learned I was pregnant, I found two yokes in my morning egg. Won’t my darling Honey Bee be surprised!
Thank you, Gracious Lord.
1931, April 22