Page 38 of Junie

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Mrs. McQueen sips brandy by the dressing table in the Emerald Room, where she’s been staying now that Miss Taylor is gone. Junie eyes the half-empty bottle gleaming in the candlelight.

At least she’s already drunk.

“Get me out of this dress,” Mrs. McQueen slurs before Junie can curtsy in greeting.

Junie peels off the black dress in one motion to reveal the woman’s pale skin, white with raised, blue veins. She undoes the pins in Mrs. McQueen’s graying blond hair until it falls long across her shoulders, then retrieves a long-sleeved sleeping gown.

“Good, that’s better,” Mrs. McQueen says as Junie slips the gown over her head. “Now sit down.”

“Ma’am?” Junie asks. “You’d like me to stay?”

“You heard me. Sit. I have things to discuss with you.”

The clock on the wall ticks toward the quarter hour. Junie lowers herself onto the ottoman at the foot of the bed, perching on the edge.

“You know, I always criticized my late husband for his love of drink,” Mrs. McQueen says. “I hate to admit it, but I believe I may have been the one in the wrong. Have you ever had a sip of alcohol, Junie?”

“A little, ma’am, when I was ill as a child,” Junie says. “I didn’t care for the taste.”

“Liquor isn’t about the taste, silly. It’s about the feeling. Here, take this,” she says, pouring brandy into an empty glass. Junie swirls the brown liquid in the glass and puts it to her lips. The liquor licks her throat like hot coals.

“Don’t wince like that when you drink, it wrinkles the skin,” Mrs. McQueen says. “Now, Junie, I’m tired of small talk this evening and I expect you to indulge me in some real conversation.”

“I’m…not quite sure what you’d like to discuss, ma’am.”

“You like stories, don’t you, Junie? Books and all that?” Mrs. McQueen says, draining the brandy glass and extending her hand for another. Junie’s eyes widen, and Mrs. McQueen laughs.

“Oh, don’t be so shocked, dear, I’m not angry. I know my daughter well enough to know she wouldn’t bother keeping anyone around who couldn’t keep up with her reading. Besides, you do a terrible job hiding it with that vocabulary of yours. You think a common Negro could comprehend, let alone pronounce the word ‘exquisite’? But it’s fine, because no one has ever indulged me enough to let me tell my story. So that task must fall to you.”

Junie shifts in her seat, eyes toward the ticking clock on the wall.

“All right, ma’am,” she says.

“Good. Well, as you know, I’m not from America originally, but the truth is, I’m not from England, either. I’m from an utterly useless village in Scotland, where everyone’s about as provincial as they come. Luckily, a winter with an aunt and uncle in Liverpool was enough time for me to drop that horrid Scottish accent and adopt proper English customs. That aunt and uncle, you see, are how I met William. They were some of William’s father’s most loyal buyers, running the fabric factory as they did. After we were betrothed, the journey took months, first on the ship across the ocean, then by land until we got to Alabama. It looked like a wasteland to me, a hopeless, savage place, until we finally reached the plantation homes. When we arrived at Bellereine, I remember being so impressed by the size of it all. William was quite handsome then, much more so than his father, and charming. We married straightaway. But, it took me no more than a few days to realize my husband was a weak-willed fool. He was a fool, don’t you think?”

“I ought not to speak of the dead,” Junie says. “He was a…fair man.”

“Quite the diplomatic answer.” Mrs. McQueen pours Junie more brandy before adding some to her glass. The mistress takes another long drink, her eyes clouding.

“Most men have the sense to hide their indiscretions with servants, but not my William. It was so disgustingly obvious, the way he watched that woman clean the house and serve the meals like a dog. I even ignored how much that girl child looked like him when she came, how much she took after him.”

That woman. Junie’s mother.

“I couldn’t seem to mother a child past birth, just like my mother. It was like she was showing off, putting that baby right in my face. Then came Violet, a pale weak thing. William swore that the woman’s second child wasn’t his, that she’d fallen for some field Negro. And I knew it was true. I saw the way looking at her and that baby ate him inside. He drowned it all in drink. But I didn’t care much by then. As soon as the Old McQueen died, I forged his name on some sale papers and had her shipped as far away from here as I could. By then William was too drunk to notice. I remember, the day after it was done, sitting on that very porch there, with the burning sun coming up over that sea of cotton, and thinking that for the first time in my life, I was where I belonged. I could always see something in this place William couldn’t. I can see the real beauty in it. And beauty is the only thing worth protecting.”

Junie’s fingers curl inward like the blackened edges of burning paper.

“That’s enough for now, dear,” Mrs. McQueen slurs. “I’m ready to sleep now. Turn back my covers for bed, will you?”

Junie stiffly prepares the bed, and Mrs. McQueen slinks into the covers.

“Do you need anything else tonight, ma’am?” Junie asks. Mrs. McQueen simpers with a hiccup.

“Well, Junie, it seems I can’t resist telling you how the story ends. Come close so you can hear me properly and I don’t have to raise my voice.”

The grandfather clock downstairs chimes ten times. Junie hasn’t had her supper yet and her stomach is grumbling.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but Auntie—”

“Come.” Mrs. McQueen’s face sets to stone, before the edges of her thin mouth curl into a smile. “Come now. This is the most important part.”

Junie slowly steps toward the old mistress.

“Because you see, my dear,” Mrs. McQueen whispers, “it wasn’t until that bastard girl caught on to who William was that things became so irritating.”

Junie’s blood cools at her core.

“William, the fool he was, knew well enough he had no business granting any of the Negroes any freedoms, let alone ones with such…difficult parentage. So, you see, I handled William’s mistake again. I destroyed the freedom papers and found a buyer for the girl, so she wouldn’t be our problem any longer.”

A weight drops in Junie’s stomach. It was never McQueen, drunk and inattentive, who sold away her mother and destroyed Minnie’s freedom.

It was the mistress who’d ruined them all.

“The girl fell ill, or so they say, before I could sell her. But you knew this already, didn’t you?”

Junie raises her head, her eyes meeting the mistress’s sharp grin.

“I don’t see what you mean, ma’am.”

“That’s why you killed my husband, isn’t it?” Mrs. McQueen says. “You thought he ruined your little family?”

Junie has lived this moment night after night in her nightmares, the moment they found out what she’d done. In her dreams she screams in terror, falls to her knees to beg forgiveness, or sprints away to flee her fate. Instead, as the moment opens itself before her like a freshly blooming rose, Junie feels the silty bottom of the freezing river, hears the ringing of the current in her eardrums, and tastes the scummy river water as though it were filling her lungs again like it did that December.

She sees the same indifferent darkness of a certain death.

“Ma’am, Mr. McQueen died of yellow fever, like my sister.”

“Oh, I’m no fool, girl. Nobody catches a fever and dies that quickly.”

Junie scans her surroundings for an escape plan. There will be no Minnie to save her from drowning. If she is going to survive, she has to fight the current herself.

“I commend you for it. It’s certainly something I thought of doing more times than I’d care to admit. Now go, please,” Mrs. McQueen says with a wave. “You’re bothering me now. And tomorrow, make sure my tea has the right milk? I know you used canned this morning.”

—

Junie was four years Old the first time she watched something die.

Outside of the cookhouse on a hot night, a roach lay so still and fat Junie thought it was a rock. Instead, after a few moments, the roach tore in half. Junie watched as dozens of white worms as long as blades of grass wriggled out of the deflated carcass before she recognized the horror she’d seen and screamed.

As she paces down the staircase into the parlor, she wonders ifshe is destined to be torn in two by the parasitic rage and hatred she can’t release. Among the uncountable pleasures the McQueen family has stolen from Junie, their most profound theft is stealing her right to scream. She clutches a velvet pillow from the sofa and holds it to her face. A cry, muffled by the fabric, erupts from her core. She wails, clenching the pillow until her nails tear holes in the cover.

The realization hits her. Wordsworth never spent days preparing food. Keats never cleaned a chamber pot. Coleridge didn’t have to sneak around to read a book. Those who sought the sublime were white men with lives of leisure. They sought an unattainable beauty because they’d already attained everything else.

Yelling is not enough. She has to destroy something of theirs, the way they’ve destroyed everything of hers.

She shoves her fingers into the holes, ripping the pillow apart until threads fly from the seams and stuffing falls at her feet.

Even in the half-light of the candle scones, Junie can tell it isn’t made of down feathers like the McQueens’ other pillows. She grabs a handful and holds it toward the light.

Wiry, black coils of human hair.

The same as Muh’s and Auntie’s short locks, hidden under scarves.

The same as Minnie’s and her mother’s.

The same as her own.

She rips each pillow open, spilling entrails of curls until the room is covered in a fine layer of three generations of her family’s hair.

Just somethin’ that happens when you get older, Granddaddy had said. The McQueens have stolen their hair and used it to make pillows. She rushes toward the open window and vomits.

When she turns around, Violet is standing at the base of the stairs, her hair disheveled from sleep.

“Junie? What’s wrong?” she says, stepping into the parlor. “Why are all the pillows ripped?”

Junie hardly hears her, instead focusing on the grandfather clock’s tick toward the next quarter hour. Mrs. McQueen will torture Junie the rest of her life for what she’s done. Violet’s seen that she’s ruined the parlor. She has under an hour to find Caleb and leave this place.

There are no more facades worth maintaining or lies worth telling.

“Go back to bed, Violet,” Junie says, running for the back door and into the night. She starts toward the stables, Violet’s calls at her back.

She’s following.

Junie picks up speed until a brush of cold air whirls around her. She spots the glowing shape in the field. Minnie floats from the woods into the clearing, bright and strong as the summer sun.

“Where in the hell are you going?” Violet asks, catching her breath.

Junie curses. The distraction slowed her pace enough for Violet to catch up. She remembers the knife in her pocket. She won’t let anyone stop her, not even Violet.

“Junie,” Violet says, stepping toward her. “Tell me where you’re going.”

“What does it matter to you?”

“Where are you going, Junie?”

“Christ, Violet, I don’t care if you whip me, or kill me, or sell me, or whatever it is you see fit to do,” Junie says. “But I will not spend another moment of my life knowing I didn’t try to get out of this hell when I could.”

Violet paces backward, her arms wrapped around her abdomen.

“You know they’ll hunt you if you leave,” she whispers. “They’ll hunt you and drag you back here however they have to.”

“I don’t give a damn,” says Junie. “I won’t stay here. I won’t waste the only life I have rotting away in this place.”

Violet drops her arms and takes a step toward Junie.

“I know,” Violet says. “That’s why I’m comin’ with you.”

Junie backs away, eyes narrowing.

“What do you mean?”

“I heard you this afternoon, talking to Caleb,” Violet starts. “Tryin’ to convince him to go. Tryin’ to save him from Beau. I thought I might be angry or sad that you was planning to run away, but all I felt was alive, for the first time in months. I went back into my old room and I found my Jane Eyre. Beau’s forbid me from reading, but I sneak when he ain’t around. I read the end, after the fire, when Jane goes back to be with Rochester after he goes blind, and I cried. Because that’s what love is, ain’t it? Runnin’ as far as you can to be by the one you love’s side, no matter what it means. So I’m runnin’ too, Junie. I’m runnin’ to Bea, because she’s my Rochester. I’m runnin’ to get away from that evil man who will have me chained up with a hundred of his babies, if he ain’t got one in me already. And I’m runnin’ for you, because you’ll always be my greatest friend, and you deserve your greatest love, too.”

“It ain’t old times anymore, Violet.” Junie stumbles, sinking to the ground. “You’re, you’re—”

“I’m a fool,” Violet says, sitting down next to Junie. “Worse than a fool. I hurt you. I hurt you so many ways, Junie. I ain’t never going to forgive myself for what I’ve done, and I don’t expect you to, either. But please, if this is the last thing we ever do together, let it be this. Let it be us getting ourselves out of this hell.”

Junie turns to face Violet, taking in the familiarity of her red curls and freckled cheeks. They haven’t sat this close to each other in months. Violet is right; she can never forgive her. But they can be by each other’s side, one last time.

“Your mother,” Junie says. “She’ll never let me leave.”

“Beau won’t, either,” Violet says. “He’ll keep me trapped in that house as long as I draw breath. We have to run now, while they’re sleeping.”

Junie rubs her face with her palms.

“That’ll only give us a head start. They won’t stop until they drag us back to the house.”

Violet’s shoulders slump. Junie looks up at the house, pure white and towering, an impossible thing to bring down.

Violet’s eyes fall to the wooden walls, and her smile curls like the edges of burnt paper.

“What if there were no house to drag us back to?” Violet says.

Her eyes meet Junie’s as her grin grows.

“What do you mean?” Junie asks.

“I always do burn an awful lot of candles, don’t I?” Violet says. She leaps to her feet and rushes back into the house, coming out a couple minutes later with a lit tapered candle. The wooden house frames creak. Bellereine is a flimsy thing, a palace made of pine.

Junie gapes and lets out a laugh.

“Follow me,” she says. “I know the first thing I’d like to burn.”

The girls step into the rose garden, where the spring roses peek from their buds to see the moonlight. The garden is a meticulous imitation of nature—calculation, imprisonment, grooming, all for the sake of making something beautiful.

The girls stand next to the gate, where wisteria vines tangle their way up from the garden onto the porch columns. The fire flickers behind Violet’s palm.

“Should we really do this?” Junie says. “If we…we can’t take it back. It’ll be forever.”

“Beau and Mother will never let us go otherwise,” Violet murmurs, looking at the flame. “We’ll start something small; that’ll give ’em enough time to get out of the house, and by then, we’ll already be gone. Besides, it’s what Bertha did in Jane Eyre, right?”

“Didn’t she die in the end?”

“Don’t matter if she did,” Violet says. “She did it trying to get free.”

She passes the candle to Junie.

“You ought to be the one to start it, Junie.”

When Junie stares into the flame, watching the place where the orange turns to black, she imagines this fire to be the same one she held over Grimm’s Fairy Tales with Caleb each night, the same one that had burnt her poems that night in Montgomery, the same one that emanated from Minnie’s naked body the night she found her spirit over the river.

Junie steps toward the curling edge of a green vine. She lowers the flame as though she is lighting a candelabra. Curls of smoke twist in the breeze as the flame creeps up the vine, first along the fence, before climbing to the columns.

All fires burn as one.

“Your turn,” Junie says, passing the candle back to Violet.

Violet paints the flame over her mother’s prize roses, eyes sparkling as the green leaves and delicate blooms sizzle in fire. Smoke pools in the air as the fire leaps to the next rosebush and the column begins to singe. The girls run from the garden back into the field, watching as the blaze peeks over the garden gate.

“We ain’t got much time,” Junie says. “The fire will catch, and even if it don’t burn down, it’ll be enough distraction to keep them off us long enough to get real far away. Let’s make for the stables. We can take some of Taylor’s things and make for—”

The crack of caving wood echoes over the plantation like a thunderclap.

Junie and Violet scream, jumping back from the flames.

Minnie stands on the porch, dipping her hands into the flames that creep over the garden fence. She lifts the fire in handfuls, smearing it over the exterior walls, columns, and windows until they split in explosions of glass and ash. She tosses the flames through the shattered windows of the Bellereine house, and Junie and Violet watch transfixed as black soot surges into the night air.

“Minnie!” Junie screams, unthinking. She turns to see if Violet noticed, only to find her mesmerized in horror.

“The fire…” Violet mumbles, her wide blue eyes reflecting the raging orange. “The fire…it’s too fast, it’s too fast, Junie…”

“Minnie, it can’t burn so quick! They got to have time to get out!”

“They ain’t gettin’ out,” Minnie says, arms deep into the flames.

“It’s too fast!” Violet whispers. “It’s too fast!”

“Stop! Stop it, Minnie!” Junie staggers toward her sister as the garden gate bursts into a barrier of flame.

“This ends tonight,” Minnie says, dragging the flames toward the wraparound porch. “They burn to ashes tonight.”

“It’s too fast for Momma!” Violet screams. She runs for the door, and Junie grabs her wrist.

“Violet! You ain’t going back in there—”

“The fire’s too big! I can’t leave my momma to die like that. I can’t.”

Violet wiggles free and runs into the burning house.

Before her right mind can stop her, Junie chases after her.

—

Bellereine’s walls are burning scarlet, like stepping inside the entrails of a felled beast.

The house roars and cracks in its struggle to stay upright as Junie runs inside. Instinct takes her toward the breakfast room, where she is greeted with a wall of fire.

The garden’s flames leap over the porch to lick the massive windows, obscuring any view outside in blinding light. Fingers of smoke stretch from underneath the double doors and twist themselves upward until they threaten to suffocate her.

The room will not last much longer.

Junie sprints out with a scream, slamming the servant’s door to the breakfast room. As she does, the windows shatter, the glass and window frames pelting the closed door behind her.

The back of the house is already gone.

She takes the long way around, past Old Toadface in the dining room, through the parlor, and finally into the foyer.

“Violet!” Junie screams, her throat stinging from the smoke. Her eyes burn from the ash and heat. The embers from the breakfast room have already burnt through the double doors, consuming the velvet curtains of the sitting room behind the stairs and meeting the fire in the hallway of the study.

The grandfather clock next to the front staircase ticks, a quarter till eleven.

She could run now, out the front doors and on to the stables with enough time to get Caleb. The house is a tinderbox; it will be ashes by the time she makes it to the riverbank. She could leave without Violet. Violet chose to come back inside the burning building. She can fend for herself and meet whatever fate she might.

“Mother! Mother!” Violet’s sudden cries pierce through the roaring flames.

Junie deflates with resignation.

They are bound, her and Violet. First in friendship, now in rebellion.

She drags the neck of her maid’s dress over her nose and mouth, squinting to make out the path up the staircase.

“Mother.” Violet pounds the door to her mother’s room, shaking the knob back and forth. “Mother, please! Wake up, wake up. Open the door!” Speckles of blood tint the white door where Violet’s knuckles have knocked.

Mrs. McQueen has locked herself inside.

“Violet, we—”

“I can’t leave my mother.”

“The fire’s spreading fast, we have to go—”

“I won’t leave her. Mother!”

Orange flames from the parlor whip into view, cocooned in blankets of smoke. The scent of charred mahogany wafts to the second floor. Junie gags and coughs as Violet howls.

“Violet,” Junie says, catching her breath. “We will die here if we don’t run now. She wouldn’t save us from this burning house. She would save herself.”

“She’s my mother,” Violet heaves. “I won’t leave my mother to die.”

Deep in the pit of her stomach, Junie wants to see Mrs. McQueen burn. She wants to delight in the unbridled rage and vengeance. She wants her to feel the pain Junie feels, the hopelessness she’ll suffer as the fire consumes her.

But leaving Mrs. McQueen to die won’t undo the horrors she has committed. It won’t bring Minnie and their mother back.

The knifepoint in her pocket is thin enough to fit into the lock in the door. With a bit of finesse, the lock will give.

“Get out of the way,” Junie yells. Violet throws her tiny frame into the wooden door again, but it doesn’t give. Junie draws the knife from her apron pocket and approaches Violet at the door, who immediately backs away. Junie tries to steady the knifepoint in the lock with shaking hands. The lock clicks, and the door flies open.

Mrs. McQueen leans next to the window in her dressing robe, staring down over the burning rose garden as though it were any other evening, save for the flames kissing the second-floor windows. Junie snatches a handkerchief from Mrs. McQueen’s dressing table, wrapping the fabric around her face to muffle the smoke.

“Mother?” Violet cries, rushing toward Mrs. McQueen.

“I can’t see the fields,” Mrs. McQueen says. “Are the fields burnt yet?” The smell of alcohol radiates from her mouth.

“Mother, the house is burning, we have to run—”

“We can still fix it as long as we have the cotton fields,” Mrs. McQueen says. “As long as we have the cotton, we can survive.”

“Mother, do you hear me? The house is gonna go any minute.”

“I won’t leave,” Mrs. McQueen says. “As long as we have the cotton, we can save it all. As long as we keep the fields, we can save it all.”

She stumbles from the window, repeating the words like an incantation.

The fire has reached the roof, scorching the outsides of the windows. The emerald wallpaper curls off in long strips, dropping to the floor to reveal the pinewood underneath it. The heat begins to sting Junie’s skin like the touch of a hot iron. Sections of the ceiling collapse in piles of ash and splintered wood, revealing the inferno, scorching the attic.

“Violet, we have to go now!” Junie yells.

Violet grabs her mother’s wrist to drag her toward the door. Mrs. McQueen throws her brandy glass to the floor, sending shards around the room. Violet jumps back in terror before wrangling her mother’s wrist again.

“I will not leave this house. I will not leave this house—”

“The windows are going to blow,” Junie screams. “Get back, get back!”

Violet runs from the windows as Mrs. McQueen wriggles free. She stares into the fiery distance.

“As long as I have cotton, I have my house. As long as I have cotton, I have my house. As long as I have cotton, I—”

The three windows explode into a thousand shards, propelling glass, smoke, and flame into the room. The force throws the girls away, their backs colliding in unison with the wall. When Junie opens her eyes, her arms and legs are freckled with bleeding cuts and fragments of glass. The room reeks of burnt feathers as flames feast on the four-poster bed. She sees Violet slumped against the wall.

In the center of the room lies Mrs. McQueen’s blackened body, the skin so profoundly burnt the bones and sinew are exposed. Her face is charred beyond recognition; the fire left only a gray eye behind that twitches in its socket, her body squirming helplessly as the fire burns.

If Violet sees the state of her mother, she’ll never leave.

“Violet.” Junie shakes her awake. Violet blinks slowly with heaving coughs. She shoves her arm under Violet’s, dragging her to her feet and out of the bedroom.

The ceiling creaks in warning. The foyer chandelier sways before coming loose, crashing to the hardwood floor in a spectacle of sparks and crystals.

“Violet, you need to run with me. The roof ain’t gonna last much longer.”

Violet chokes on smoke, her eyes dazed.

Windows burst, walls crumble, and furniture splits in an orchestra of carnage. Junie hunts for any path of escape as the heat and smoke close in. Her head is spinning now, her body nauseous from the taste of burning wood. Her limbs grow weak as she assists Violet toward the staircase, each breath an agony. The downstairs windows burst in a series of detonations. Her heartbeat drowns the thunder of fire as she watches the inferno close in around the foyer.

She can’t die here. It can’t end this way.

As her knees begin to give from underneath her, cold pierces through the inferno.

In the center of the room, hovering above the destroyed chandelier is Minnie, her arms outstretched, holding the flames back until they form vertical walls.

“Now,” Minnie hisses. “No time.”

“Vi,” Junie says, coughing. “This is it, Vi, please.”

“The fire…” Violet wheezes. “We won’t make it.”

“We got to try, Violet, we got to try.”

Violet nods.

“Now?”

“Now!”

Energy surges through Junie’s body as she sprints down the stairs, Violet a pace behind her. Minnie holds back the wall of fire and smoke. They run past the grand piano, its strings snapping as the wood burns. They sprint through the parlor, where the throw pillows taint the air with the smell of burning hair. They hurry through the dining room, where fire singes the fan rope to string and the table to dust.

They run past Old Toadface, now collapsed on the floor, a burnt canvas with two ever-watching eyes.

They land facedown on the grass, finally, as the east wing crumbles to its foundation.

—

Junie and violet crawl toward the cookhouse and fall on their backs in coughs and tears, choking and gasping for fresh air. As Junie’s breath steadies, the starlight diffuses under the thickening smoke. Junie sits up to stare at the blazing house.

As the columns burn, their sparks leap to the grass and bushes surrounding the house. It is spreading far faster than any of them can contain. It took the house in a half hour; how long until it takes the stables, the cookhouse, the cabin? Everyone is at risk now.

“Violet,” Junie says, whipping away from the fire to pull Violet upright. “We got to go. The fire, it’ll spread, we got to warn ’em.”

“Junie,” Violet murmurs, “the fire, it’s going out. I don’t know how, but it’s going out.”

“The fire’s gonna burn the cookhouse. We got to—”

“Junie, look.” Violet pushes Junie’s shoulders to face the house, and Junie’s mouth drops agape.

A hundred glowing haunts, their light filled with the infinite variabilities of a candle’s flame, circle the burning house. They collect their transparent bodies, forming a barrier the fire can’t permeate. In measured steps, they float closer together, pushing the fire back until all that is left is the blackened wreckage. As the fire dims, the wraiths float into the woods, disappearing into the wind.

Minnie is last among them. She floats toward her sister, placing a kiss on Junie’s forehead.

“For you,” Minnie says, a smile on her lips. “For them.”

Violet can’t see the haunts. They are a gift only for Junie.

“Find me at the riverbanks,” Minnie says. In a surge of power, she burns brighter, as if she’s absorbed the fire’s energy into her own soul. She disappears into the woods.

Violet curls in on herself, sobs shaking her frame.

“I didn’t save her, Junie, I didn’t—”

“She didn’t wanna be saved, Violet.”

“Mother and Daddy…I got…I got nobody,” Violet whispers. “And Taylor, he’s…”

“He’ll be gone, too, now.”

Violet falls into Junie’s shoulder, as tears of grief and relief shake her ash-covered body. Junie wraps her arm around her. The embrace is as nostalgic and ill-fitting as a childhood dress.

“Where do we go now, Junie?”

“It’s like Jane did after she found out about Bertha,” Junie says. “We run and make a life of our own.”

“How?”

“The house is burnt to ashes. Everybody inside is gone. Mr. Taylor is dead. They’ll think you’re dead, too,” Junie says. “Nobody will be looking for you.”

Violet shakes anew with tears.

“Bea. I can find her,” she cries. “I’ll get a boat or a coach. I can go to her.”

“Fetch some men’s clothes,” Junie says. “Caleb will have some in the stables. When you get there, tell him it’s time. He’ll know what I mean.”

Violet takes both of Junie’s hands in hers.

“Come with me, Junie, please,” Violet says, seizing Junie’s hands. “We’ll all go to New Orleans—you, me, even Caleb. We’ve survived this world together, we can make it in the next one, too.”

Junie squeezes Violet’s hands, the same pale, soft hands she’s held as long as she can remember. There’s an untold story in their grasp, one that takes them in wagons and on steamboats to the unknown. They’d hear the great music, see the great sights, maybe even make it all the way to France like Violet has always wanted. They’d be the adventurers in the books they’d grown up reading together.

It is a good story.

But, looking down at the tally on her wrist, still firmly in place, she knows it isn’t hers.

“I have my own way,” Junie says. “With Caleb. With my family.”

New tears form in Violet’s eyes. She nods, looks back at her burning home one last time, then turns to meet Junie’s eyes and squeeze her hands.

“You are the best friend I could ever have, Junie. And I’ll be sorry until my grave that I wasted it.”