At lunch, the sky was dark as dusk. After school, though it was clear a storm was brewing, I hooked up with Trav and wandered the countryside, like maybe I could find the answers I was looking for hanging from some tree or sitting on some rock. It felt good to fight the wind, like it was cleaning me somehow. I found myself wishing again and again that I had a brother, a real live brother, I could talk to.

It was the first time I thought of him as someone who could’ve helped me, when all along I’d been thinking of all the kinds of things I would teach him. For one, he’d be the best marble shooter in Elliott County. Not counting me.

For two, we’d’ve fished together down to the creek and, when he got older and wouldn’t drown ’cause I’d taught him to swim, I’d take him to Silver Pines Pond. Probably at first I’d secretly hook a fish for him and hand him the pole, so he could think it was his catch. I figured you did things like that for little brothers.

And for third, I would’ve made him his own flip. With him and me being such great marble shooters, plus Momma’s pecans, we’d never run out of ammo.

Wind painted the trees side to side instead of up and down, and I was near home when the first big, fat drops hit the dirt road. Then the skies opened up, and I was nearly upon it before from a flash of lightning I saw the bicycle by our front door. I folded myself into the wind and ran the last twenty yards.

Trav barked once at it, a sound barely covered by the rumble of thunder.

“Hush, boy. Keep quiet.”

He put his maple-syrup-colored muzzle into my curved hand. With a lick and a cock of his head, he let me know he wasn’t about to give away our position.

I knew sure as shirttails that Teacher had come to return my flip and apologize for the misunderstanding.

I wondered how long she’d been waiting and was glad to have let her stew a bit. ’Course I’d be gracious, but she had to learn. You didn’t just go off half-cocked, jumping to conclusions before getting all the facts.

I ran inside along with about ten gallons of rainwater and stopped just inside the front door to let the water roll off my face. I was ready to accept all coming apologies, along with my flip, only to find Miss Arthington sitting in Momma’s company chair and Daddy nowhere to be seen.

“Why, oh! Hello, LizBetty,” she said, looking even more startled than she sounded. Then she raised her voice. “LizBetty, I was just talking with your father about—about the essay contest. Asking him whether you planned to enter. And also—also whether he could possibly help build us a lectern for the readings that day.”

Daddy came in looking pink and sheepish. “Possum, what’choo doin’ here?”

I felt a cold run down me. I realized right about then that I also was not likely going to get back my flip. “I reckon I still live here, don’t I?”

“Well, of course you do, sugar. What I—”

“Anyway, me and Trav only came in to get something to chew on. I didn’t know you’d be all busy. With a busybody.” I whispered that last part.

Daddy’s face turned colors like fall trees. “What did you say, young lady?”

I didn’t fear Daddy would give me a lickin’ right in front of Teacher. Still, I moved my way closer to the door. “I said, sir, I didn’t know you had company, is all. I’ll just be gettin’ out of the way. I can see I’m not needed or wanted.”

“You’re going back out in the rain?” asked Miss Arthington in a voice so high it sounded strangled.

“Good weather for night crawlers, and we’re already wet,” I said, and me and Trav scooted before he could hang any more crimes on us.

It was Trav’s idea what happened next, I swear. Maybe ’cause there’s a little overhang on that side and the ground is higher. He went and sat under the window to the parlor. I tried to call him, but he just looked at me; then he lay down. I had grabbed him by the scruff when a soft laugh floated past the window. A laugh that belonged to none other than Teacher. She must have gotten wet when she was closing the window. But I could hear their voices hanging on the air, like laundry being pegged.

First Daddy’s, low and warm, then hers, light and musical. I slid onto the ground against the house and listened like if my whole body was made of ears, but over the drumming rain, I could not make out but a few words each.

“… nice … pretty … ” That was Daddy.

“… sweet … simple … my best … so glad you … ” And her. Then, “… courting.”

Courting?

She laughed again, and I heard Daddy’s roasted chestnut of a chuckle, and the floorboards squeaked. Next came an unfamiliar humming of an unfamiliar tune, and I knew she was alone.

I shifted slowly to my knees and turned myself toward the window slow and cautious, like a turtle changing direction. Then little by little I raised myself. Just as I cleared the sill, I heard Teacher’s voice exclaim, “Oh, will you look at that!”

Found out, I dropped to the ground like a treed coon shot between the eyes. Twister winds blew in my head, and I ducked against the brunt of discovery.

Nothing happened.

I opened my eyes. Nothing.

I lifted my head. Nothing.

I unwrapped my arms from my bent-up legs.

Another laugh floated through the window, and I understood. I was not discovered. Trav panted a relieved smile at me.

I climbed back up to the window but off to the side and risked peering in. What was the worst that could happen?

I wished I hadn’t asked myself, because I’d likely get answers aplenty.

But a month of carnival rides could not have shook me like what I saw. I crouch-ran away from the window, toward Momma’s tree. But sick with the idea of facing her, I headed instead for the woods.

Trav followed at my side, and when we hit the tree line, we both broke into a dead run. I might have been trying to run out the scene in my head, but not even a hounded rabbit could run that fast. What I had seen burned my eyelids so that even if I closed my eyes, the pictures wouldn’t go away.

What I had just seen was unreal.

What I had just seen was Daddy holding a pretty little something of red paisley on yellow. Miss Arthington was holding up a dark green with mallards flying over it.

Even though her back was to the window, I didn’t need to see more. That green had two blue pockets up front and a pretty blue collar, which I knew well.

I knew because these were two of my own sweet Momma’s best and most favorite dresses, which she made herself. She cut the patterns from newspaper and imagination on our kitchen table. She sewed them herself with her own warm white hands. And when we went to Scotties for flour, she let me pick the flour sacks with the patterns I liked. I remembered those flying ducks. That red paisley might have been my favorite.

Momma only had but four or five dresses that kept any shape or color after all the wash-wear-work of her life, and she’d been buried in one. Here were two of the others.

I ran.

Daddy giving away what was left of Momma.

I ran.

And they laughed about it.

I couldn’t run far enough fast enough.

Would Daddy see Momma or that venomous trickster of a teacher when she danced around with her bobby head protruding from my momma’s best dresses? That couldn’t happen. Daddy was for surely a right bit delirious with missing Momma, I could hold to that, but I couldn’t deny what I’d known in the back of my thick skull for some time; my daddy was, sure as a snake bite, courting Miss Arthington somethin’ fierce, and I had to stop it. Had to get out of that darn school so Teacher would have no business left to come dimpling her way into our lives!