“Really? Does Andrew know? Is that why Mr. Kezzie called him over here? To tell him that? But why would that make him—?” She heard herself jittering and broke off with the first semblance of a smile. “And if I’ll shut up a minute, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

I reached over and squeezed her hand. “Carol’s dead, but her daughter’s come back to Colleton County. Andrew’s daughter. She owns her grandfather’s farm over near Widdington, and she also has a share of the carnival that’s playing at the harvest festival in Dobbs.”

“Daughter? Olivia?” April was bewildered. “But Andrew said she wasn’t his. He wouldn’t lie to me about that.”

“Maybe he’s honestly believed that all these years, or maybe he’s just talked himself into it, but trust me, honey. She’s his. He can get a DNA test if it’ll make him feel any better about it, but it’d just be a waste of money. She’s his child.”

“You’ve met Olivia? Talked to her?”

“I told you. She and her husband own part of the carnival that’s playing Dobbs. Her name is Tallahassee Ames now and it was her son that got killed Friday night.”

April sat there numb and speechless, and I could almost see her brain working under that thatch of wild brown curls as she processed the data I’d just given her. I poured myself another coffee and brandished the pot toward her half-empty mug. She nodded and drank deeply.

“If that’s true, he’d be Andrew’s grandson? My God! No wonder he’s crawled into a bottle.”

“The funeral’s tomorrow morning at ten,” I told her. “Over at the homeplace.”

She was bewildered. “Does everybody in the family know about this but me?”

“No. Just Daddy and me. We were waiting for Andrew to talk to you before we told the others. Doesn’t look like that’s going to happen, though, does it?”

I descibed how Daddy had been keeping tabs on the situation all these years and how Andrew had gone into denial Saturday afternoon and told us to leave him and his family out of it.

“Well, that was pretty dumb of him,” she said in exasperation.

“Maybe he feels guilty for not trying to find her in all these years,” I suggested neutrally.

April is as practical as she is pretty and has more common sense than a farmer’s almanac. “Now, why would he feel guilty if he’s been sure all these years that the baby wasn’t his?”

I shrugged.

Her hazel eyes narrowed. “Carol told him she wasn’t.”

“Yeah, but Mother told him she was,” I said, and described the visit Mother had made to the Hatcher farm when I was too young to remember, and how, when she finally persuaded him to return with her, Carol and Olivia were gone again.

“In the end, which one do you think he really believed in his heart of hearts?” I asked her.

There was a long silence, then April said softly, “Poor Andrew.”

“Yes.”

“And poor Olivia, too,” April said with returning briskness. “You say she calls herself Tallahassee now? That’s sort of cute, isn’t it? What’s she like, Deborah? Is she nice?”