“Okay … she writes that the cause of death is still unclear, but apparently Mr. Avery became unwell at a party he was hosting for friends and neighbors at his home on Saturday afternoon and collapsed at approximately five P.M. downstairs in his wine cellar.” I looked up. “She must have gotten the time of death from Bobby or Win.”

“Anything in there about you finding him?”

I skimmed the rest of the story. “Nope. Win Turnbull, local medical examiner, pronounced him dead at the scene. Blah, blah, blah … nothing we don’t know. No funeral plans have been made so far, but in lieu of flowers the family requests that donations be made to the Miranda Foundation.”

“Looks like they abandoned that plan to claim he died in his sleep,” Quinn said.

“What difference would it make, anyway?”

“Beats me. Maybe Clay is hoping nothing leaks out about the family being pissed off at Prescott for supposedly wanting to sell the Trib. It doesn’t look so good now that he’s dead.”

“You can’t keep a secret like that,” I said. “Word is going to get out sooner or later.”

“Maybe Clay was hoping for later.”

I refolded the paper. “I think we should send a donation to the Miranda Foundation.”

He nodded. “Did your parents know her? Miranda, I mean. How old was she when she died?”

Five years ago Quinn had moved to Virginia from California when my father hired him just before he died. Even if Quinn lived in Atoka for another fifty years, folks would still say that he was “from away.” No one expected him to understand the convoluted and intertwined history, genealogy, and backstory of Southern families like mine and the Averys who had lived on the land we owned since before the country was founded. Although to Quinn’s credit, he was becoming assimilated enough that once or twice I had heard him referring to the crew as “y’all” or its Southern plural “all y’all.”

“Leland knew Miranda,” I told him, “but she died before he and my mother were married. She was in her mid-twenties. Everyone was shocked because it was so unexpected. She was perfectly fine, then a week later she was gone.”

“It must have nearly killed Prescott and Rose to lose both their children within a couple of years of each other,” he said.

“I’m not sure which was a worse tragedy,” I said. “Miranda came down with the flu one winter and within days she had pneumonia. Then she got an infection that turned into sepsis. By the time they got her to the hospital it was too late.”

“Someone at the party yesterday was talking about the motorcycle accident that killed Tommy. He was speeding and he’d been drinking. No helmet.”