“The primroses are ready,” Granddad had told June, hours after having to take her out of school for what she’d done to Heather Atkinson. He could barely conceal his disappointment in what she had done, his shock, too, filling his eyes and mouth, which he repeatedly cupped with his hand while drawing a large breath. June thanked him for telling her about the primroses, her voice laced with exaggerated gratitude, a tone of hyperappreciation. She plucked a handful from the yard and placed them in a jam jar on the table. By then Granddad was already walking toward the bungalow, leaving her there, not bothering to see the arrangement she’d made. His announcement of the flowers being ready had just been something to say, words to fill the quiet trouble weighing down both houses.
After placing the flowers on the table, June stood back with an animal’s instinct that her father was no longer resting upstairs the way Grandmam had left him, that he had instead come out of his room and left the house without her seeing. When June reached his room she found the door slightly open, and she knocked and it gave. He never left the door like this, whether he was in the room or not. June slipped inside for the first and only time she could remember. The air smelled of the musky-sweet pomade her father used to control the waves in his hair. Clothes hung over the sides of open drawers as if washed up on rocks, the furniture draped in shirts and pants and jackets June had never before seen. The piles were jettisoned across the floor and bed, and everywhere in between her father’s maps and atlases were folded or crumpled or torn, along with wadded balls of typewriter paper. The room was heaped and bundled in layers of brown, ash, and green.
June searched the rest of the house, but she wouldn’t find him. She knew this, but felt it necessary to plod step by step for the sake of order, because with order she might be able to reclaim the day, and their lives would fall back into the place where they had always been and belonged. She would make amends with a posy of bluebells and daffodils and sprigs of thyme for Mrs. Atkinson. She would apologize to them all, and they would forgive her because when a person stepped up and took responsibility, Granddad said, others could not help but show mercy.
When June reached the back door, she saw that the clothesline had been cut away, lopped off at the center, pieces of line dangling from each post. The scissors from the kitchen drawer lay in the grass.
She’d remained in the doorway for what must have been only minutes, because how long could a child stand in one place like that, though it felt in memory like hours before her grandparents told her to get inside and shut the door. Grandmam said, “He’s gone to see that woman, Mrs. Atkinson, to apologize for something he’s done.” And Granddad said, “What he’s done?” and Grandmam gave him a look, and switched to Irish.