“Well, I’m going through it, piece by piece,” Nessa said. “That’s my job tomorrow afternoon while y’all are at work.”

“Be my guest.” April finished off the last bite of her cake. “But don’t come whining to me when Nanny Lucy scolds all of us in our dreams.”

Flynn shut the door to the closet and carried the suitcase to the living room. He set it in the middle of the floor and sat cross-legged in front of it. “Y’all going to join me?”

Nessa sat down beside him. April left the table and took a place on the other side. “I’m keeping my distance from that thing.”

“She’s gone, April. She can’t hurt you anymore,” Nessa said.

“The whole time I was in that room, I wondered if my mother had looked in the closet and that’s why God struck her dead.”

“You poor thing,” Nessa said. “I remember being sent to my room to pray about my sins. I figured it was me God was going to punish, not my mother, who, I was sure, had a halo under all her big hair.”

Flynn flipped the two fasteners holding the suitcase shut. “And all this time, I thought I wanted to live either with Uncle Isaac because you had two parents”—he glanced over at Nessa and then turned to April—“or with Nanny Lucy because we had so much fun here in the summertime, but I’m beginning to think that I might be less scarred than either of you two.”

April pointed at the suitcase. “I’m not so sure I want to be close when you open that thing.”

“Hey, things were tough around here, but none of it is your fault. You’ve got to make yourself believe that,” Flynn said. “And yes, I’m speaking from experience. I blamed myself for years for not being a perfect son. If I had been, maybe Dad wouldn’t have been a womanizer. Maybe he would have been content to be a single father and go to my academic meets instead of the bars to look for another lady. It took a long time, but I realized all that wasn’t my fault. Nanny Lucy wasn’t well, and you didn’t create her problems,” Flynn said.

“I always thought it was all my fault because I was like my mother.” April sighed. “I’d just as soon take that thing and everything in the closet and her bedroom out in the yard and have a bonfire with it.”

“But there could be answers to all our questions right here.” Flynn eased the top open and let it drop back onto the hardwood floor. “Surprise! If our grandmother had evil spirits locked up somewhere, they aren’t in the suitcase. Looks like old papers and packets of pictures.”