Jiminy was waiting for Lyn when she pulled into the drive Thursday morning. Waiting outside, sitting on the stump of the oak tree that a storm had taken down two summers ago. Willa had planned to get it removed before observing that it made a convenient chair. For shucking corn or snapping beans or just letting the breeze soothe some of your day, Lyn thought, as she climbed slowly out of her car. Not for someone looking to bother her before she’d had her coffee.
“Get any worms?” Lyn asked, as Jiminy jumped up and moved toward her.
Jiminy looked confused. Lyn didn’t feel like explaining her early bird joke, even when Jiminy began looking behind her and nervously dusting off the seat of her jeans.
“Did you talk to Bo?” Jiminy asked.
Was that what this was about? Lyn wondered. She didn’t think it had gotten to that stage yet with these two, though it was surely headed there, if someone didn’t intervene. Whether Lyn or anyone else liked it, she could see it hovering, waiting to be.
“Not about anything special,” Lyn answered.
“Well, can I talk to you?” Jiminy asked.
Lyn looked at her expectantly.
“You may not want to discuss this and I may be out of line,” Jiminy continued a bit breathlessly. “But I heard something that I want to ask you about.”
“Shoot,” Lyn said, and wondered why the girl winced.
Jiminy took a deep breath.
“I heard about what happened to your husband and daughter,” she said.
It was Lyn’s turn to breathe deep. Here was the abyss, suddenly at her doorstep.
“I heard how they went missing, and how they turned up killed,” Jiminy continued. “And I am so sorry. I don’t know the words to say how sorry.”
Lyn didn’t say anything back. She sank down onto the stump Jiminy had vacated, setting the paper bag of potatoes she’d brought with her on the ground and letting her purse slide down her arm to keep it company.
“She had my name,” Jiminy blurted.
“You have hers,” Lyn replied quietly.
“Right, of course, I have hers. I didn’t mean . . . My mother knew her?”
“Your mother worshiped her.”
“How uh . . . how old was she when she passed?”
Bo’s great-uncle hadn’t been completely sure. He’d said around fifteen. Willa had said nearly eighteen, though she really hadn’t wanted to say much about it at all.
“She didn’t ‘pass,’ she was shot in the head and thrown in the river,” Lyn said evenly. “There was nothin’ gentle or natural about it.”
Jiminy kept her eyes trained on the ground, but Lyn saw they were leaking tears.
“She was seventeen,” Lyn continued. “Smarter than all get-out. What I lived and breathed for.”
Besides Edward, Lyn added in her head. She’d lived and breathed for him, too.
“And your husband . . . ?” Jiminy asked.
“Edward was shot in the back. Thrown in the river, too.”
They weren’t very good swimmers, not that it would have mattered by that point. Still, it was something that had tormented Lyn, the thought of their souls trying to leave their bodies and not knowing how to swim to the surface. She had to imagine they’d left earlier. She had to imagine that, or she’d go insane.
“Do you know who did it?” Jiminy asked softly.
The only answer that would make any sense to her was some demon up from the underworld, something that sucked and snorted pure evil.
Lyn was shaking her head. Which is what Willa had done, and Bo’s uncle before her.
“They really never caught them?” Jiminy asked incredulously.
Lyn raised her gaze to meet hers.
“You act like they even tried.”
Chapter 4
Jiminy began sneezing immediately upon entering the Fayeville Public Library. There were no other patrons inside the tiny two-room building to object, but the librarian behind the counter looked startled.
“May I help you?” she croaked.
Jiminy wondered if she was the first person to whom the librarian had spoken all day.
“Yes, thank you,” Jiminy replied, sneezing again. “Sorry, I’m allergic to dust.”
The librarian looked offended. Jiminy forged ahead.
“I’m trying to find information on something that happened in Fayeville in June of 1966. Do you have newspapers from that year?”
The librarian blinked once, twice, three times. Jiminy wondered if this was some physical manifestation of her mental process. Maybe she was flipping through options in her brain, clicking them forward with her eyelids like an old-fashioned slide show. Finally, she spoke.
“Nothing besides the Fayeville Ledger. You gotta head to the big city library for the big city papers.”
And the fast-talking, big city gals, Jiminy added to herself. The librarian didn’t seem to be using these terms with any sense of humor, but they struck Jiminy as fake, like they’d been written in a script to be used when outsiders came a-callin’.
Was she an outsider? Jiminy felt connected to this town through her family, though she’d really only spent a little over four months of her life here, all totaled up. She’d been raised elsewhere—not too far away, but definitely elsewhere. Her mother hadn’t ever wanted to come back to Fayeville, even before her breakdown.
“I’m Willa Hunt’s granddaughter,” Jiminy offered, to prove that she wasn’t completely out of place here. She felt it was important to make that known.
Sure enough, the librarian softened.
“Your grandma’s a good woman,” she said. “Taught me biology, matter a fact.”
Jiminy knew that Willa had been a schoolteacher, but she still had trouble picturing it.
“She encouraged me to be a doctor, actually,” the librarian continued. “Said there was no reason a woman shouldn’t be. Said she’d always dreamed of being one herself, but it wasn’t meant to be.”
This was a surprise to Jiminy. She’d never thought of her grandmother as someone who harbored unfulfilled dreams.
“You said June 1966?” the librarian queried.
Jiminy nodded, realizing she’d been mutely preoccupied with her inner monologue. Her tendency to do this didn’t do wonders for her social interactive skills. She goosed herself to speak.
“I’m looking for any write-ups about something that happened that month. A couple of murders,” Jiminy replied.
“Well that woulda been front page news, so it should be easy to find,” the librarian answered. “I don’t remember hearing about anything like that though. You sure you got your facts right?”
Jiminy nodded.
“All right, the old papers are over there.”
The librarian directed Jiminy to the Fayeville Ledger archives, which consisted of a stack of cardboard boxes filled with yellowed newspapers in various stages of decomposition. Jiminy found the “1966–68” box and sneezed her way through to June. Since the Ledger was published biweekly, there were only two thin copies from that month, and neither had any mention of Edward and Jiminy Waters.
There was an opinion piece that caught her eye, though. It was titled “Coon Season” and it was written by Travis Brayer. She assumed he was related to Bobby Brayer, who was currently running for governor. The Brayer family owned a huge old cotton plantation just outside Fayeville. Jiminy didn’t pay much attention to politics, but a person couldn’t help but notice the billboard at the edge of town that read, “Fayeville: Proud Home of State Senator Bobby Brayer.” Several “Brayer for Governor” signs had colonized the patch of grass beneath it, along with most of the yards in town.
According to Travis Brayer’s article, he was upset about the “Negro uprising” happening in a neighboring state and felt compelled to warn the citizens of Fayeville that such dangerous unrest could spread to their own backyard if they didn’t stand guard and tamp it down. He made reference to “that uppity Meredith boy” and urged his fellow townspeople to stay vigilant.