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  “Mom, this is—” Cassidy started, but before she could introduce Noeli, Paloma had turned back to the kitchen.

  “So sorry. Just a minute. I have to keep this milk at the right temperature.”

  Cassidy turned to Noeli and mouthed, Sorry. Noeli shrugged.

  “You’re Cassidy’s friend?” Paloma asked, her back to the women.

  “I am!” Noeli smiled, though Paloma couldn’t see her. “You’re making cheese?”

  “I am. From the goats right here on the farm. Cassidy didn’t tell you we had goats, did she? We’ll have to sit down and talk when I can step away from this.” But Cassidy didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to hear any sentiments about her dad that her mom might try to bullshit. She didn’t want to think about how her mom would toss her dad’s papers that still littered the table into the trash, how she wouldn’t think twice about it. Coming home had been a mistake.

  Outside the window, Cassidy saw the tree she’d climbed as a kid, calling down to her dad to look how high she was. Beyond the tree was the briar-filled path past the chicken coop, where they walked together, stopping to see the sassafras and its three kinds of leaves. They’d heard a coyote howl on one of their evening hikes. Ken pronounced it “Ki-ote.” She’d reveled in the secret language and movements of their relationship—in knowing that he loved her more than anyone else in the world and that she was the person he wanted to share his memories and knowledge of the land with.

  Cassidy closed her eyes and watched the light swirl behind her lids, then opened them and looked at her phone. There was no service here, either, as she’d expected, and she didn’t feel like asking her mom for the Wi-Fi password. Cassidy caught Noeli’s eye and tilted her head toward the stairs. Noeli nodded and followed her, carrying their bags.

  Jane

  “How many people will be there?” Jane asked her nephew Henry.

  “I reckon a whole mess of ’em. A lot of folks really looked up to Ken.”

  Jane grumbled into the hand mirror Henry held up and slipped the pin of her brooch through her collar. She didn’t like large social gatherings now any more than she had at nineteen.

  After her first day at the FBI, Jane had been adopted by a quirky gaggle of gals in spite of herself. Flossie Henderson had been the social butterfly; Betty Brown, the queen of celebrations. Peggy Akins started every sentence with “Golly.” Polly Duncan was the eager beaver, volunteering for every extra bit of work that popped up. Erma Harvey found a new beau every week and talked incessantly about her latest love, always convinced he was the one she would marry. Dotty McIntire lay for hours on the sidewalk, working on her suntan.

  At the edge of their group was Claudine Wills. There were girls in the division who scooted their desks away when Claudine walked by. Jane’s friends did her the decency, at least, of politely ignoring her existence, allowing her to sit silently on the perimeter of their group as they ate lunch on the grass. Jane had never met a colored person in Buckhannon. She related, though, to the feeling of being on the outside, and she smiled at Claudine whenever their eyes met. When she found herself alone one afternoon in the powder room with the woman, they made small talk, and Jane found they got on easily. Claudine had wanted to be a WAVE, she told Jane, but at the time of her graduation from high school, colored girls were not allowed to enlist. She regretted being in civil service instead but was making the best of it, she said in a cheery voice.

  And so Claudine was the brave one. But who was Jane? The quiet one, she guessed.

  Most of the girls went out nightly.

  “I’ll go if you do,” Jane said to Claudine one day as they discussed their plans after work. The other girls grew quiet and turned to face the two women. Jane felt her face grow hot.

  “Oh, I’ll be at my usual joint on U Street, but thank you,” Claudine said. A palpable wave of relief swept over the other girls.

  Jane cringed but couldn’t blame Claudine. She was uncomfortable with the idea of nightlife already. She wouldn’t have subjected herself to the stares Claudine was sure to receive at a downtown club if her life depended on it.

  Eventually, though, Ding talked Jane into going out.

  “Take me out with your friends!” she implored. “I need some human contact.”

  “By human, do you mean male?” Jane asked.

  “Could you blame me?”

  As Jane anticipated, Ding was the life of the party. Even Flossie basked in the wind of her flapping red lips. Jane smiled at Ding’s jokes and nursed her gin rickey while her mind turned constantly to her brothers, her parents, the farm. She thought of the post office and Murphy’s five-and-dime. Jane didn’t miss them exactly—she just couldn’t stop thinking about them.

  “Killer-diller!” Ding’s voice broke into Jane’s daydreams, pulling her from Buckhannon back to Trade Winds, a nightclub that managed to feel both classy and dicey at once. A large round mirror on the opposite wall reflected the scene back to Jane, and she watched her friends seated at the blue tufted booth drinking and laughing in its dim reflection. Roman-style columns gave the club a bacchanal touch and chandeliers lent an air of sophistication. Mauve curtains behind the bandstand twinkled with stars—a clever trick with the lighting. An army man stood by the table, and Jane realized with a start that he was looking at her.

  “Ahem.” He coughed. Had he asked something?

  Ding nudged Jane in the ribs. “Of course she’d like to dance.”

  The other girls stared. Someone kicked her ankle under the table. But Jane could not make herself rise and take this handsome stranger’s hand.

  “Well, if she won’t, I will,” Ding said, and the soldier shrugged. Jane turned her legs to allow Ding past and watched as the young man led her cousin to the dance floor, Ding’s delicate hand in his strong one, his head bent so they moved cheek to cheek. He twirled her to “Jersey Bounce” and held her close to “My Devotion.” The solo saxophonist rose and then sat, two trombone players rose and then sat, and then finally a row of trumpeters rose, covered their horns with hat-like mutes, then lifted them to release the full glory of their brassy sound in a dizzying crescendo. Jane felt the music in her chest, lifting her, and then suddenly it stopped, the band all at once quiet as they cleaned their instruments. The soldier grinned and escorted Ding back to the table where Jane sat with the other girls, staring and slack-jawed. The man kissed Ding on the cheek and as he walked away, the buttons on his jacket caught the light from the wall sconces in a final gleam before he disappeared into the uniformed masses.

  That was the end for Ding. Though she’d always been boy crazy, over the course of those two songs, six minutes or so, a charming stranger had created a hole in her that couldn’t possibly be filled. Ding thought and spoke of nothing but men.

  “I do like a confident fellow, but there is something so charming and sweet about a boy who gets nervous around you,” she would observe over dinner. Other times, she’d remark, “Isn’t it funny that men are thought of as the tougher sex, but they’re the ones who want their dates to be soft and pretty? It’s rather adorable, if you think about it.”

  While Jane’s work numbed her, lulled her into a trancelike state that let her forget the war, her brothers, and everything else for some hours every day, Ding’s new hunger was distracting in a different way—a more effective way, Jane knew.

  On her day off, Jane watched as Ding kissed her lunch-and-swimming date goodbye at the front door and headed right out the back door to meet her dinner-and-dancing date in the alleyway that connected to Seventh Street.

  Jane tried to broach the subject over drinks. That night, a jazz band from New York City gave Trade Winds a sweaty, swinging feel. “You’ve gone khaki wacky,” she said over the music.

  “It’s my patriotic duty, isn’t it? We’ve got to keep our servicemen happy.” Jane couldn’t tell how serious her cousin was.

  “Golly, you are pre
tty,” a boy said, approaching their table in his air force uniform. He sat beside Jane, and his friend, another airman, sat on the other side next to Ding.

  As if they’d run drills, the airmen put their hands on the girls’ legs at the precise same moment. Jane jerked her leg sharply away. Ding leaned closer.

  “Where are you from?” she asked, as if this boy, who looked like every other boy she’d talked to these last weeks, was the most interesting man she’d ever seen.

  “Des Moines,” the airman said, taking a sip of brandy.

  “Des Moines,” Ding repeated, moving his hand farther up her thigh, almost under her skirt. Before he could breach her hemline, she grabbed his hand and stood.

  “Let’s dance,” she said.

  “Are you rationed, sugar?” the man next to Jane asked.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not up for grabs.”

  “Engaged?”

  “Something like that.”

  They sat side by side, drinking but not speaking. Though the gin made her feel progressively looser, Jane barely moved, fearing any incidental contact might give the airman the wrong idea. She finished her drink and got another, then another, as Ding danced on and on with the boy from Des Moines. The night faded into bebop and gin, jitterbug and jive.

  “Wasn’t that marvelous?” Ding asked as they tiptoed past Mr. Plunkett’s makeshift room.

  “Spectacular,” Jane said.

  She woke up the next morning with a pounding headache.

  “Do we have to go?” Ding asked, apparently no better off.

  “We have to go.” Jane nodded.

  They dressed slowly, exaggerating their misery. “You were really sauced last night,” Ding said.

  “So were you, able Grable.”

  Ding stuck out her tongue.

  Jane reached for her lipstick and noticed something on the counter. It was a small gold brooch, no bigger than a penny, octagonal with three blue mountains across the center. Above the mountains were the letters AEF. Below them, it said 80 Div.

  “What is this?!” she demanded, holding the insignia in front of Ding’s nose.

  “Christopher Columbus!” she exclaimed. “I thought I dreamed this. It’s the boy’s from last night—his pin!”

  “Did you tell him you’d wait for him? Do you know his last name?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Jane. Don’t you see? It’s not about really waiting for him. He knows that.” Ding’s eyes were far off and dreamy. “It’s about the hope. He needs me—the idea of me.” She snapped back to the present and looked right at Jane. “But his name’s Dean Willet, if you must know. I always know their names.”

  With this, Ding had snatched the pin, squeezed it into her palm, and tucked it safely into her pocketbook.

  Jane stood frozen, fingering the pin at her own neck. Where were they going again?

  “You need a hand with that, Aunt Jane?” Henry asked.

  “No, no. I’m fine. Thank you.”

  Henry set the hand mirror back on the tray of Jane’s walker and cupped her shoulder with his hand. Jane looked up at him, her eyes meeting the grief in his, and she remembered. “Oh, Henry,” she said.

  Her nephew nodded. “I know. I know.”

  Cassidy

  Paloma started the dented teakettle to boil and joined Noeli and Cassidy at the long wooden table. “Your father built this table,” she said.

  “I thought so.” Cassidy stroked its surface as if the scratches and dents might contain a secret message. Pinterest would call it a “farmhouse table.” The table, the Mason jars, the dented woodstove, this little home that barely held back the encircling wilderness—they were the archetype for a hipster trend. She’d never thought about it, but her family’s house would make a decently unique camming background.

  The kettle whistled and Paloma rose, returning with three steaming Fiestaware mugs in a shade Cassidy knew was named “sunflower.”

  “Your dad didn’t want a funeral,” Paloma said, lifting her tea bag up and down.

  “Why are we having one?” Cassidy asked.

  “It’s more a celebration of life. A memorial.”

  “You didn’t waste any time preparing.”

  Paloma ignored this and Cassidy stared quietly into her cloudy cup. She took a sip, then another. She had barely reached the thick clover honey at the bottom of her mug when guests began to show up, the gravel driveway serving as an arrival bell for each car. Ken’s coworkers came first, walking up to the house in their blazers, skirt suits, and curled hair, large bouquets of carnations and deli trays in their hands. They looked out of place so dressed up in this remote setting.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” they said, each giving Cassidy a hug.

  “Thank you,” Cassidy said.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  “He was a wonderful man.”

  “Thank you.”

  “He would be so proud of you.”

  “Thank you.”

  It was just like camming. Smile and say thank you. Let everyone think you were who they wanted you to be.

  Paloma herded the growing crowd out to the porch, where they huddled, speaking in low voices, occasionally glancing in Cassidy’s direction with sympathetic faces while she and Noeli hunched together and whisper-laughed about everyone’s hairstyles.

  Grandma Jane arrived, shuttled by Henry, her cousin Ding’s son.

  “How are you, darling?” Grandma Jane asked Cassidy. She looked elegant in her own black skirt suit—a crisp white shirt under her jacket and an ornate diamond pin at her neck. She could wear anything she wanted and never look out of place. The feel of the farm adjusted to Grandma Jane, not the other way around.

  “I’m okay,” Cassidy said, taking her hands. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, darling. I’m fine.”

  Other cousins arrived then, loads of them. Cousin Lina asked Grandma Jane if she needed some water. Jenny took her arm and kissed her cheeks. Gregory talked to her about his homemade wine and said nothing about Ken or the memorial. Cassidy thought this was nice.

  They all hugged Cassidy and told her they were sorry, then fluttered and fussed around Grandma Jane, who waved off all of their offers for help but never refused conversation.

  “How is Maggie doing at that new school?” she asked her brother Cliff’s boy, Craig.

  “Didn’t you say Macklin has a girlfriend now?” she asked her brother Billy’s daughter, Hannah.

  It seemed from people’s responses that she might be a few months behind on the family news—that the latest events weren’t quite sticking, but still, Grandma Jane was in the loop.

  Eventually Paloma led the murmuring mass down the plank stairs at the back of the porch like a Pied Piper, her songlike voice beckoning: “Let’s move this way, folks,” and “We’ll begin shortly.”

  As the line wound its way through the trees, Cassidy was struck by how quiet a group of nearly a hundred people could be, and by the volume of the nature sounds around them—the birds, scattering squirrels, wind in the leaves.

  At an old maple, the line rounded into a large circle, clusters of people in unlikely groups—well-dressed work friends with old hippies, Cassidy’s teachers with second cousins from out of town. Everyone stared at the ground between them, a spongy tapestry of brown and gray.

  “We’re here to honor Ken,” Paloma announced with practiced ease. The circle stood at attention and Noeli elbowed Cassidy affectionately. Cassidy realized her jaw was clenched, so she wiggled it back and forth. On her other side, Grandma Jane held on to Cassidy’s hand for balance on the uneven ground. “Ken and I met on the Charles Bridge, a moment of pure serendipity.” Cassidy had heard the story a hundred times and her mind wandered. Could you call something you regretted serendipity? Wasn’t everything serendipity? Paloma was
just recounting the past, not saying a word about her feelings. “We wanted a child more than anything,” Paloma went on. “We poured our hearts into having a baby.” Cassidy looked around at the assembled group and searched their tearstained faces for genuine emotion. Had they absorbed the reality of it all more than she had? They were all rapt, watching Paloma. “Finally we returned here to West Virginia to reconnect to Ken’s homeland.” Cassidy wished her mom would admit how trapped she felt in Ken’s “homeland.” She wished she would say out loud that nothing Ken or Cassidy ever did was enough for her to be happy here.

  Cassidy’s thoughts were interrupted by the crunching of leaves. Simon was trying and failing to inconspicuously make his way down the hill, late as always.

  Cassidy was surprised she hadn’t noticed Simon’s absence. If she were visiting under different circumstances, he was one of the few people she would have gone out of her way to see. Simon slipped behind her and Cassidy broke away from Noeli’s elbow, stepping backward out of the circle to give him a quick hug. His flannel shirt and beard smelled like chimney smoke.

  “Simon!” Grandma Jane smiled and patted his chest.

  “Hi, Grandma Jane,” he said. “Hey, Cass.” He looked into her eyes, holding contact for several seconds, waiting as always for Cassidy’s emotions to set the tone for his own. Cassidy nodded reassuringly and he nodded in response, then found a spot in the circle on the far side, near the local dance teacher.

  The memorial attendees found their groove, and as one wrapped up their tribute, another stepped forward to speak. “Ken hated two-line headlines,” a coworker said. His other colleagues nodded and chuckled. “So this week, I’m writing his memorial in the paper. I’m going to give him his one-line headline.”

  Cousin Henry and Paloma looked to Grandma Jane expectantly, but she remained quiet, holding tight to Cassidy’s hand. Cassidy, too, wondered if she should speak. What would she say?