Like Carol for Andrew, Allen Stancil was a part of my past I’d just as soon not talk about and certainly not with Daddy, so we sat silently for a few minutes, sipping our iced tea and watching a pair of wood ducks dabbling out on the pond. It’s still pretty peaceful here. Without the occasional beep-beep-beep that drifts in on the wind during the workweek as dump trucks back and haul, one could almost forget the pile of houses that are being built across the creek a half mile away. On this quiet Saturday afternoon, all we could hear at the moment were birdsongs and the hum of insects.

“I reckon Sue told you a lot of things there towards the end,” Daddy said finally.

I nodded.

“Things you still ain’t talked about?”

“A few.”

“I won’t much use to her there for a while, was I? To you, neither, the way I put it all on you like that.”

No denying that it had been hard. I was the only child still at home that summer. The boys were all busy building careers or getting their crops in, getting married, getting divorced, getting babies. And Daddy was gone half the time, too. All of them were unnerved by her dying and the intensity of her need to talk. Daddy was hurting so bad and in such deep denial that he couldn’t—wouldn’t—listen until it was almost too late.

“She understood,” I said, taking his big, work-roughened farmer’s hand between my own. “You were there when she needed you the most. And she knew that you would be. She told me so.”

He squeezed my hand tight, then pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. “Durn ragweed,” he muttered, as if I didn’t know that he’s never been allergic to any plant. “I believe I could drink another glass of that tea if you’re offering it.”

As I refilled his glass, he said, “Tell me about Olivia. Or Tallahassee, I reckon I ought to say.”

So I told him as much as I knew, omitting the circumstances of Braz’s conception and the fact that Tally’s first marriage had been in name only. And yes, I sort of glossed over Braz’s record so that it didn’t sound too much worse than Reese’s and A.K.’s. Or Andrew’s and Will’s.

Or his, either, for that matter.

“A lot of people look down on carnival people, think they aren’t much good,” I said, “but—”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Like that Cher song.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t you remember? Your mama used to like it. I learned how to play it for her to sing. ‘Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.’ That was the name of it.”

He hummed the chorus, his fingers tapping out the rhythm on the glass tabletop, and for a moment, I could hear Mother’s throaty voice as she sang the line about the hypocritical men who hurled insults at the carnival folks and then came around every night eager to buy tickets for the kootch show.