Chapter 4

The east wing was dark except for the light over the barn door, which came through the window in a long yellow bar.

She went in quietly. The man in the chair was awake. She knew because his eyes moved when the floorboard creaked.

"It's me," she said. "Junie."

She knelt at the wall and set the flashlight down and worked her fingers under the bottom edge of the frame. It gave. Not much - a quarter inch, maybe less. Something was behind it, between the board and the wall, and it had been there long enough that the aluminum had bent around it.

She pulled the frame out and reached in and touched paper.

Folded paper, soft at the creases, yellow at the edges. She got two fingers on it and slid it down and out.

She unfolded it on the floor with the flashlight held in her teeth.

It was a page torn out of a farm ledger - she knew the kind, her mother ordered them by the box - blue ruled lines, a red margin, a torn edge on the left. Written on it in shaky black ink, uphill on the right side, the way an old man writes when his hand is tired.

She could read the date at the top. March 4.

She could read a name in the middle. OWEN PIKE.

And at the bottom, two letters and two periods: A.K.

Junie sat back on her heels.

Owen Pike was her grandfather. She had met him four times through glass. She had a picture of him on her dresser from before - standing in a barn aisle with a foal's head in both hands, laughing at the camera.

She looked up at the man in the chair.

He was watching her. His mouth was open a little, and his good hand was gripping the arm of the chair so hard the tendons stood up, and there were tears running down the gray stubble on his face, and he was not making any sound at all.

Junie folded the page, held it against her chest with both hands, and ran.