“Tell me,” I say, my voice raising, giving them one more chance.
It’s hard to believe that minutes ago I was singing a song about grace and everything felt right. But now, everything feels wrong. What hurts the most is that I’m being lied to by the one person in the world I thought I could count on—Mama.
A secret needs to be told. A secret that involves me. A secret, it appears, that Mama has no intention of telling.
CHAPTER SIX
Wildflower
A tremor runs through my body like a bird coming back to life that a cat has left for dead. My teeth chatter. It feels like it is twenty degrees outside and I am without a coat. It’s been years since I’ve had a spell like this, probably since the night Lily was born.
“Have Daniel take Lily,” I tell Aunt Sadie through chattering teeth.
Aunt Sadie pulls Daniel aside to speak to him and everyone leaves shortly afterward. Daniel and Jo take Lily to their house.
“Sit over here,” Aunt Sadie says to me.
The memories come close together like labor pains, forcing me to remember what I’ve spent years trying to forget. The sound of Johnny running close behind me, and then finally catching up. The helplessness of being thrown to the ground, the breath forced out of me. The smell of the liquor on his breath.
“Wildflower, you’re going to be all right,” Aunt Sadie says. “Breathe deeply for me.”
Aunt Sadie sounds like she’s midwifing one of her expectant mothers. I remember the night she helped Lily come into the world. Giving birth teaches a woman how to surrender and just let life do to you what it insists on doing. However, I don’t get the reward of a newborn at the end of this. What I’m giving birth to feels like something old that shouldn’t still be alive.
Lily out of sight, I curl into a ball on the porch. Mama brings a quilt and Aunt Sadie wraps it over me. The wood feels cool on the side of my face, and I can smell the aging pine. Mama asks Aunt Sadie what she should do. The last time I heard that worry in her voice was when she and Daniel carried me home after Johnny left me for dead.
“Don’t worry, Nell,” Aunt Sadie says. “She needs to do this to get free of the ghosts. It won’t last long. Maybe you could make her a glass of tea.”
With that, Mama goes into the house, and I’m glad she’s gone. Now it’s just Aunt Sadie and me.
“What’s happening?” My voice shakes to match the chattering of my teeth.
“You stored up all that hurt from years ago. It’s good that it’s coming out,” she says. “Best thing you can do is not be afraid of it.”
Aunt Sadie reminds me to take deep breaths of mountain air to soothe myself. The trembling scares me. I want to believe it won’t last long. Mama arrives with tea and puts it on the porch next to me. Aunt Sadie asks her if we can be alone, and Mama goes into the house again, this time taking the shotgun sitting next to the screen door. I remember Johnny breaking into the house and Amy wounding him with the same gun. The next morning, Daniel, Nathan and I followed the blood trail and found Johnny dead at the bottom of the ravine. Dead from the fall, not the gunshot wound.
A breeze comes up that rushes below the floorboards. It carries the dank smell of the dirt that lives under the porch. I shiver like I’m shaking off a fever. At the same time, sounds and pictures of the past come without my bidding. Aunt Sadie sits next to me on the porch, running a gentle hand through my hair like she did when I was a girl. Waves of panic rise and then fall. I count them. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. I wait for more, but the shaking stops.
“Good girl,” Aunt Sadie says.
Though I’m not a girl anymore, I feel like I’m thirteen again, the age of the memories. Aunt Sadie rubs my back, offering me every bit of comfort she can. I remember how solid she was after it happened. I’m not sure what I would do without Aunt Sadie. Then and now.
Time slows. My breath deepens. Minutes later, I make my way to sitting, the quilt falling from my shoulders.
“I feel better,” I say.
“Good.” Her face relaxes into a smile.
“What happened?” I ask her, taking a sip of tea.
“It must have been Melody Monroe showing up,” she says. “It woke up all those memories that had been sleeping.”
“I haven’t felt that way since—” I can’t say the words.
“I know,” she says.
“It felt awful. Like it was happening again.”
“You needed to release it,” Aunt Sadie says. “You needed to rid yourself of that pain that got buried.”
Mama comes back outside asking if I need anything. Though I am calm, she looks worried. I reach for her hand and squeeze it. I wonder if she ever gets jealous of the closeness between Aunt Sadie and me—her dead husband’s sister.
Aunt Sadie and Mama help me to stand, and I feel almost normal again.
Mama goes back inside, and Aunt Sadie and I sit on the porch swing.
“Lily is upset with me,” I say. “I don’t blame her. She deserves to know the truth.”
“You can’t protect her forever,” Aunt Sadie says.
“I just want to know why Melody Monroe is back in Katy’s Ridge,” I say.
“Maybe she’s trying to rid herself of painful memories, too,” Aunt Sadie says.
“You don’t think she’s come back just to stir up trouble?” I ask.
“If she has, it’s worked. But it could also be for the best,” she says. “Gifts come in surprising packages sometimes.”
“I wish you wouldn’t speak in riddles,” I say.
“But you’ve always been good at riddles,” she says to me with a wink.
I pause, unable to fully take in all that the day has brought. We slowly rock the porch swing and look down the hill.
“Did you know that Lily is almost the same age I was when it happened?” I say to Aunt Sadie.
She lets out a moan, followed by a sigh. “Oh my, I never thought of that.”
“I was so young,” I say.
Aunt Sadie takes a deep breath. “Nobody should have to go through what happened to you,” she says, her words soft.
“Should I tell Lily the truth?” My question is in earnest now.
Aunt Sadie pauses for what feels like several minutes, but what might have been seconds instead.
“I honestly don’t know,” she says. “I wish I did. I imagine there will be tradeoffs with either choice you make.”
“But what if Lily gets angry with me? What if she doesn’t understand?”
“There isn’t a child alive who doesn’t hate their parents at one time or another.”
I wonder how Aunt Sadie got so wise about children when she never had any.
“I don’t remember hating Daddy,” I say.
“If he had lived longer, you might have,” she says. “Joseph wasn’t perfect. He could be as stubborn as an ox sometimes.”
To my surprise, I remember the mule that carried Daddy home on the stretcher that last time. Memories have come unbidden all day.
“Isn’t it odd that Melody would show up fourteen years later? To the day?” I ask.
Aunt Sadie nods. “There’s an invisible world out there that we barely take into account,” she says. “A world full of mystery and coincidences.”
However, it’s the visible world I’m worried about. “What if Melody tells Lily what happened?” I ask.
“How would she even know?” Aunt Sadie says. “She was living in Kentucky with her aunt by then.”
“Someone from Katy’s Ridge must have told her about Lily,” I say.
“I’m not sure who she’s in touch with,” Aunt Sadie says. “There wasn’t a soul at Johnny’s funeral.”
Surprised, I turn to look at her. “You went to Johnny’s funeral?”
She folds her arms, as if feeling a sudden chill. “It was just me and Preacher and a bunch of crows in the trees.”
The hairs prickle on the back of my neck.
“Help me understand why you would go to the funeral of someone
who nearly beat me to death,” I say, trying not to feel betrayed.
After a lifetime of knowing her, I can’t remember a single time I’ve been upset with Aunt Sadie. Until now.
“I felt sorry for him,” she says, offering no apology.
“And you didn’t feel sorry for me?”
“Of course I did,” she says. Her eyes don’t release me. “And if you recall, I was there for you the entire time.” She pauses and looks at me. “Maybe all that hurt you stored up had anger in it, too.”
At that moment, I am not willing to tell her she could be right.
“I believe that everybody should have at least one additional person present at their birth and at their funeral,” she says. “I don’t care what unforgiveable sin they’ve committed.”
It is the midwife in her that sees it this way, and perhaps it is the little girl in me that is hurt that she could go to Johnny’s funeral while I was in bed, unable to move, covered with cuts and bruises.
“I know you’ve been very loyal to me, Aunt Sadie.” My voice is softer now. “It’s just a surprise, I guess. A surprise on top of the shock of Melody showing up. I had forgotten she even existed. It never occurred to me that she might know about Lily and show up some day to see her and talk to her. It never occurred to me once.”
“We’d like to think life is predictable, but it isn’t,” Aunt Sadie says, staring off into the distance.
All of a sudden I am tired of Aunt Sadie’s wisdom and tired of a past that won’t seem to rest.
“I need to go to work,” I say to her, which is the only thing I can think of to say.
The day has contained too much history, and I need to get away. But I also need to talk to Bee and the mill is somewhere we can have privacy. I pretend I’m not angry at her, and give Aunt Sadie a hug. Then I follow the path that Melody Monroe took down the hill.
Twenty minutes later, Bee enters the small office at the back of the sawmill where I sit at Daddy’s old desk. Sometimes I can still smell him here, as though he never left. One of his old flannel shirts hangs on a nail on the back of the door. I refuse to move it, even this many years later. On a rustic bookcase in the corner are several books and a collection of things my sisters and I made him when we were girls: clay ashtrays shaped like hand prints with his initials in the palms, acorn paperweights heavy with school glue, boxes made of sticks meant to hold letters, and brittle dried wildflowers filling ball jars.
Bee sits on the edge of the desk. Her father used to own the sawmill, but over the years he let me buy him out with a portion of the money that came in. Now, it is mostly mine. The mill is the first thing I’ve ever attempted to own, besides my truck. Bee’s parents live in Rocky Bluff now, but Bee still lives in their house in Katy’s Ridge near the elementary school where she teaches.
“What’s happened?” she asks. “You look awful.”
Bee is an expert worrier, and I try not to give her anything to concern herself over. But I need a friend to listen to me. Someone I’m not related to, and who didn’t go to Johnny’s funeral. My hurt feelings return. For some reason it feels like everything has changed in the last few hours.
“Two things happened today,” I begin. “One is that I had a horrible fight with Aunt Sadie.”
Bee smiles like she thinks I’m joking. When she figures out I’m not, she repositions herself on a chair near the desk, her posture arrow straight.
“She told me she went to Johnny’s funeral,” I say.
Bee grimaces. “Why did she do that?”
“It doesn’t matter why,” I say. “It’s the fact that she did it at all.”
Bee touches my arm. “Calm down,” she says. “I’m sure she had her reasons. Aunt Sadie wouldn’t do anything to hurt you on purpose. You know that.”
“I do know that,” I say. “That’s why I was so shocked.”
Bee nods her understanding.
“But that’s not the biggest shock, Bee. There’s more.”
She looks at me with renewed worry.
“A stranger showed up at the house a little while ago. At least I thought it was a stranger at first.”
“Out of the blue?” asks Bee.
I nod.
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense. Who was it?” She adjusts her sweater, and I notice the latest bumblebee she’s stitched onto one of her blouses.
“It was Melody Monroe,” I say.
Bee lets out a soft gasp, “Melody Monroe?” She pauses. “What is she doing back in Katy’s Ridge?” she asks.
“I’m not sure, but she showed up on our doorstep right after supper. She mentioned Johnny.”
The look on Bee’s face confirms that I’m not overreacting.
“Are you okay?” Bee asks again, reaching her hand toward mine.
“Not really,” I say. “It was like seeing a ghost, and I had this strange reaction afterward. I couldn’t stop trembling.”
Bee scoots to the edge of her chair. “What did Melody want?”
“She spent a lot of time looking at Lily, and then mentioned Johnny’s name like she was threatening to tell.” A brief quiver returns.
“You look flushed,” Bee says. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I tell her about my reaction after Melody left and how Aunt Sadie said it was a way to release old hurts. I tell her Aunt Sadie said it was a good thing, but she looks doubtful.
“How did Lily react?” she asks. “Did she say anything after Melody left?”
“She was full of questions about who Melody was, of course, and didn’t want to let it go.”
“Sounds like her.” Bee taught Lily in school, back when she still called herself Becky Blackstone instead of Bee.
“Can you blame her for wanting to know who her father is?” Bee twists a strand of thin long hair and then pushes it behind her ear.
I walk to the window and back again, something I do when I’m at a loss.
“Pacing won’t help,” Bee says, like she is an expert on going back and forth.
She wears one of her navy blue skirts with a white blouse and a yellow sweater that perfectly matches the yellow of the quarter-sized bumblebee stitched onto her collar. Bee has offered to stitch a wildflower onto the bib of my overalls to honor my nickname, but I’ve declined.
“You were sweet to come over,” I say, but Bee is distracted, as if visiting a part of her past, as well.
“I taught Melody before she moved away,” she says. “It was the year her sister Ruby died. They were such a sad pair, those girls. Melody didn’t talk to anybody but Ruby at school, and then after Ruby died she quit talking altogether.”
“I was in Ruby’s grade, remember?” I say.
At first, she looks at me as if this can’t possibly be true, but then nods as she remembers.
Bee is six years older than me and she was just out of teacher’s college when she came to teach at the small elementary school in Katy’s Ridge. I was in eighth grade and she taught me for one year before I went off to Rocky Bluff High School. She was Miss Blackstone then.
“Ruby’s funeral was so sad,” Bee says.
I flash on the oak tree where Ruby hung herself and shudder. I was always afraid of dying young back then. Not because of Ruby. But because two years earlier I overheard Mama tell Preacher during a home visit that she had given birth to a baby named Beth who died right before I was born. After that, death felt too close. It could have been me that died instead of Beth.
“I went to the Monroe house once,” I say to Bee. “It was easy to feel sorry for them. Good luck just couldn’t find them.”
“The father showed up at school one time when I was alone,” Bee says, her voice low. “He didn’t do anything, but I had a feeling that he wanted to. It was probably good Melody moved away,” she continues. “I just hope wherever she went was better.”
“Given the way she was dressed today, I’m not so sure.”
Bee frowns.
“Maybe I should tell Lily about Johnny before Melody does,
” I say.
“Do you really think Melody would have that much nerve?” Bee asks.
“It looked like it today.”
We pause, and I lean against Daddy’s desk.
“Maybe you should just play it by ear,” Bee says. “Maybe that secret sense you’re always talking about will tell you if it’s the right time or not.”
We say our goodbyes. I’m not convinced I need to rush out and tell Lily about her father. I’m also not convinced I need to keep the secret.
When I go home, I find Lily at the kitchen table playing rummy with Mama. Rummy is Mama’s favorite game and she can play for hours, causing her opponents to drop out from sheer fatigue.
“Who’s winning?” I ask.
Lily’s lips are tight and she doesn’t look at me. Over the years, we’ve had a few spats that provoked a pout or a snarl at most, but she’s never refused to look at me. She’s not the type to punish with silence. That would mean she couldn’t ask questions.
Mama gives me a look that says: She’s just like you. See what I’ve had to put up with?
I pour myself a glass of tea and think of the willow tree up at the cemetery. I want Daddy to help me make sense of what I should do. Losing him was horrible. But losing Lily, even for an evening, feels like more than I can bear.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lily
Refusing to look at Mama, I fume in silence. Between my huffing and sighs of exasperation, I play cards with Granny, who isn’t in the mood for niceness, either. We don’t talk, and each take turns slapping down our cards on the kitchen table like we’re pissed as rattlesnakes over the hand life has dealt us. Mama finally leaves, tossing a sigh into the discard pile.
“You finished punishing her yet?” Granny asks me.
It’s unlike Granny to take Mama’s side. “Who’s punishing who?” I say. “I have a right to know, and you know it.”
If I had any nerve at all I would go over to that Melody woman’s house and ask her what in the hell she has to tell me. I’m a big girl, I tell myself. I can handle it. At the same time, I wonder if I can.
“I wish we had a telephone so I could call Pearl,” I say to Granny, who lifts an eyebrow as if she’s studying me. “We’re practically the only family in Katy’s Ridge that doesn’t have one.” It’s 1956, for God’s sake, I want to add, but Granny will not tolerate cussing in her kitchen.
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