TWELVE

James cleared the front seat of an old green pickup, throwing ropes and egg cartons and empty milk jugs into a box and putting it all in the back with Biz, Lucy, and Kendra. They sat up high on the wheel covers, Biz and Lucy on one side, Kendra on the other. Sonnet had disappeared.

“Is that legal in Vermont for them to sit back there?” I asked.

James adjusted the mirror. “To ride in the back of Mr. Green-Jeans? No, but in our town, no one cares.”

He backed out of the steep driveway and we headed off down the road, his right foot working the gas and brake pedals, the sneaker on his left, fake foot resting on the floor. Traffic clogged up in the center of town. Masses of people crowded the sidewalks. A big family stopped in the middle of the road to take a picture without even caring that James had to slam on the brakes to keep from hitting them. I jerked forward.

“What are they doing?” I asked.

“Taking pictures, it looks like.” James grinned at me. “Most of these are tourists and 4-H families. County fair starts tomorrow.” He pointed to an overhead banner that spread from one side of the road to the other.

“I don’t really know what a 4-H family is,” I said.

“You’ve got a lot to learn about country living, then,” he said.

We chugged through town and finally hit the open road. I sat back and stuck my arm out the window, letting the air make it rise and fall like a whip. The road snaked left and right, then straightened for a bit, rose up a hill, and dropped down so suddenly my belly tickled.

It was nice, driving in Vermont. Instead of concrete barricades and hundreds of cars zooming by, the side of the road was lined with leafy trees and stone walls winding their way through the countryside with us. It was miles before we saw another car. James raised his hand off the steering wheel to wave, and the lady coming toward us did the same.

“Who was that?”

He shrugged. “Just another person on the road.”

I could see why someone might like to live here, if they didn’t want a city life. Mama had to have a city. I thought again how it might be nice to come back and visit on vacations and drive on this road and sit on the front porch during the summers. After we went back to Georgia, of course.

Ten minutes outside town, we turned onto a gravel driveway between two stone pillars, drove slowly past rows of headstones, crested a small hill, then went down a slope. James eased the truck next to a tree with long, leafy branches. Heavy clusters of green acorns pulled the limbs down over a black iron fence surrounding a yard. A small, white stone house sat in the middle. The roof peaked over a leaf design with Austin embossed in the center.

“This is your family plot,” he said. “Some of the headstones are so old the inscriptions are worn off.”

I put my hand on the door handle. “Which one is his?”

James nodded toward the mausoleum. “He’s in there.”

“Is that place big enough for coffins?”

“No, only urns. He was cremated.”

I tucked my hand back into my lap. The idea of going inside that building with jars full of dead people’s ashes creeped me out more than thinking about going inside that barn the first day.

“Did you go inside at his funeral?”

“No. I wasn’t there.”

“You weren’t? Why not?”

“Deacon was the only one,” James said.

One of the girls knocked on the back window. “Can we get out?”

James looked in the mirror and put a finger to his lips.

“Your dad didn’t want a funeral.”

My chest squeezed tight. “That’s why Mama said we didn’t come, but part of me didn’t believe her. She never liked talking about him much.”

“She was telling the truth. We had our own family memorial for him, once Sonnet was ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“She was with him at the accident. She was in shock, so we waited.”

My brain swirled again. These people, this town, everyone knew so much more about my daddy than I’d ever thought to know.

“Mama said he got hit by a truck. Is that true?”

James nodded. “He was trying to open the door of a car that had gone off the road. There were people trapped inside. They said he slipped backward right when a truck was coming around a curve. Driver was texting. He went to jail.”

“Where was Sonnet?”

“She was still in your dad’s car. Luckily, she didn’t see it happen.”

“Was she close to him?”

“She was. They were a lot alike. He taught her to paint.”

No wonder Sonnet looked at me like I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t want to get out anymore. I didn’t like the way the whole thing made me feel. I wanted to go home and pretend I’d never seen this graveyard. It had been easier in Georgia to not think about him; but here, in Vermont, my daddy was everywhere. I felt trapped.

“Can we go back now?”

“You don’t want to get out? I’ll go in with you, if you want.”

“No, it’s okay. Now that I know where it is, I’ll bring Mama,” I lied.

The truth was, I had no intention of ever bringing Mama. I wasn’t even sure I’d come back myself. Sonnet had more right to him than I did. Now I understood why she hadn’t come.

The girls pitched a fit when I had James drop me off at home instead of going back to their house. Biz and Lucy said they had something “really important” to show me. Kendra told them both to shut up.

“Don’t say shut up!” Lucy wailed with tears in her eyes. James lifted her from the back and put her up front next to him.

“Sheesh, now I have to listen to them keep on carrying on about it,” grumbled Kendra. “As if three months wasn’t enough.”

I had no idea what she meant, or what the girls needed to show me, but it didn’t matter. I needed to be alone in my room for a while. I needed time and mental space to let everything I’d learned that day settle in my head. I needed time alone to think.