Flora went into labor that night, three months before her time. I stayed at the Aunt Jane Place but couldn’t sleep, and sat watching the lights burn in the windows of the Homeplace. I thought of my father. Had he lived and another of us died, he would have been no comfort. He would have kept his own counsel and gone out to tend the cows. I was not sure that I had loved him. I mourned his death, but it was because no one else could be Father, and because there would be no more chances to earn his love.

Miles came up sometime after midnight.

“I thought you’d be awake,” he said.

I nestled against him. His shirt smelled of sweat.

“The baby’s dead,” he said. “It was a boy. Lived less than an hour. Ben held him when he died.” He began to cry. “It’s my fault. I should never have talked Daddy into selling his trees.”

“How could you know what would happen?”

“Aunt Becka thinks it’s my fault. I’m scared she hates me.”

“Course she dont. Aint you her kin? Aint we all kin?”

“I love you, Carrie.”

I patted his back. “I love you, too, Miles.”

“I loved Daddy. I did. I swear I loved him.”

“I know it.”

We named the baby Orlando and buried him in the May cemetery at the mouth of Scary Creek. He lay next to Tildy May Bishop, our mother. It was as though he had been conceived for just this purpose, a stunted effigy to lay in place of his missing namesake.

Flora did not go to the burying and did not leave her bed until a month afterward. When she finally ventured outside, she would have nothing to do with caring for the animals. She was afraid, she said, that she would accidentally do them some harm.

Ben built a house of wood with the money from selling the trees. It had six rooms and a large front porch all painted white. Ben said it was the last thing our daddy did for us.

Seven

ROSA ANGELELLI

I POLISH THE GLASS CASES WHICH HOLD THE BUTTERFLIES, in Senore Davidson’s big sunny room with all the books.

Look, he tells me. He points to the butterflies. I catch this one in this place, and that one in that place. Gold. Africa. Purple. Louisiana. He goes everywhere for the butterflies.

Rosa, he says. You should know some of these names. They are Latin. Your Italian language is from Latin.

I shrug my shoulders and smile. Still, I do not know it.

See this one. I go all over the world for it and never find. Then I catch it here, on Blackberry Creek. What do you think of that?

I look at it. Argynus Diana. I will name my daughter Diana. Now I have only sons.