Chapter 3

Her mother was at the kitchen table with the feed invoices and a red pen.

Della Marsh had been bookkeeper at Kettering Hall for eleven months. She reconciled the operating accounts. She ordered the feed and the vet supplies. She said good morning to the man in the east wing every day without once meeting his eyes, which Junie had noticed and never asked about.

"Mama," Junie said. "The man in the east wing wants me to look behind his board."

The red pen stopped.

"What board?"

"The whiteboard. The one Uncle Dane wipes. Mr. Kettering pushed my cap under it. Twice."

Her mother set the pen down very carefully, the way she did everything. "Junie. That man had a stroke. He can't-" She stopped. Started again. "He can't tell you anything."

"He pointed."

"He points at things. That's what they say he does."

Junie waited, because when you wait, adults fill the quiet.

Her mother filled it. "Your grandfather is in that facility because of a barn fire. Nine years ago. Two horses died, a man got hurt bad, and the state said your grandpa set it. He didn't. He wasn't even on the property until after eleven that night, and I have said that to every lawyer, every reporter, and every review board in this state until I ran out of people to say it to." Her voice stayed flat the whole way through, which was worse than yelling. "I took this job to get into the trust records. Eleven months. There is nothing in them."

"And Mr. Kettering?"

"Mr. Kettering was going to the county attorney the next morning." She said it like a thing she had said a thousand times. "He wrote something down. He was found on the office floor that night and never spoke again, and nobody ever found the paper, and my father got twelve years."

Junie thought about the man in the chair, and the way his hand had come up off the arm, shaking, pointing.

"He looked at me," she said.

Her mother's jaw moved. She picked the pen back up. "Finish your supper. Stay out of the family's rooms."

That night Junie lay awake and listened to the house settle. Somewhere after the hall clock struck eleven, she got up, put her jacket on over her pajamas, and went down to the mudroom for the flashlight.