“You got any idea where Aunt Margaret is?” I asked Billy. “I called her last night but didn’t get an answer.”

“Joel said she went down to Greenville to see that grand-baby.”

“Did he say when she’d be back?”

“No, but she’ll be here in time for the singing tomorrow night. She doesn’t miss those, even for a grandbaby.”

Billy looked toward the back aisle where Allen lingered.

“So what brings you all up here?” he asked me.

“That girl’s drowning.”

Billy pointed to the hornet’s nest behind him.

“That nest is nothing compared to the one stirred up since it happened, but I guess your daddy’s already told you that.”

“We haven’t talked in a while,” I said.

Billy’s eyes registered disappointment but little surprise. We’d grown up on adjoining farms. As children, Billy and Ben and I had built secret clubhouses in the woods and seined for minnows in Licklog Creek. On rainy days we played Monopoly and Chinese checkers. Sometimes my cousin Joel would play too, but it was usually just us three. Momma called us the Three Musketeers. Billy and I had stayed close through high school and college at Clemson.

“What exactly happened to that girl?” I asked.

Allen clutched a toothbrush and toothpaste in his hand, but he lingered in the aisle, pretending to check out the fishing equipment.

“What I know is she was picnicking with her family and decided to go wading,” Billy said, “above Wolf Cliff Falls, of all places.”

“Did her parents try to help once she got in trouble?”

“Her mother dove into the pool three times. She’s lucky the hydraulic didn’t shove her under that rock as well.”

“What’s a hydraulic?” Allen asked, coming up the aisle to stand beside me. He placed the toothbrush and toothpaste on the counter.

“A place where an obstacle makes water move in a circular motion,” I said. “It’s kind of like being inside a washing machine.”

“Except in this case it’s a washing machine to the tenth power,” Billy added.

“But she’s not in the hydraulic?” Allen asked.

“No,” Billy said. “She’s behind it.”

When Allen opened his billfold, I noticed the plastic photo covers were empty.

“That comes to four dollars and thirty-two cents by my ciphering,” Billy said, taking Allen’s five-dollar bill.

“So she’s under that big rock on the left side of the falls?” I asked.

“That’s my understanding. Randy took an underwater camera down there last week. The current makes it hard to see, but the people who looked at the film claimed they saw a body.”

Billy handed Allen his change.

“But the father didn’t go in the water?” Allen asked.

Billy nodded.