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AT THE BOTTOM of the staircase leading to the living room, Annie stops. She can’t see him, Abraham Pace, but she darn sure can hear him. She can smell him too. More and more, Mama shoos Abraham away at the end of an evening. Even after he and Daddy have sipped a good bit of whiskey and smoked a good many cigars, Mama tells him it’s not right he keeps sleeping on their sofa. He’ll be a married man soon enough, and a woman set on marrying a man doesn’t want him sleeping anywhere but in his own bed. Every time Mama tells him, Abraham complains that the gal of his, Abigail Watson, makes her cornbread white and who the hell ever heard of white cornbread. Abigail and her grandparents came to live here from over near Lexington when she was a child. They must like their cornbread white over there, but Abraham likes his yellow with an extra dose of sugar. After a good bit of this complaining, Abraham will finally promise to go home to his own bed next time around.
And yet, that’s definitely Abraham Pace snoring. His stocking feet will be hanging over one end of the sofa, and his head will be wedged at a disagreeable angle on the other end. He’s a large man, tall and broad, likely the tallest and broadest in all of Hayden County, so he doesn’t fit so well.
For the past month, since Mama first started talking about Annie turning of age, Abraham has been telling Annie it was his face her Aunt Juna saw down in the well. Clear as day, she saw me, he has told Annie nearly every day for a month. Said she knew it was me and that I was the one she’d marry. Said that even though your granddaddy didn’t think much of me. And then Abraham would laugh and say what would he think of me now, because, besides being larger than most any man in the county, Abraham owns more land than most any man.
Taking the path she’s practiced all day long, Annie crosses through the living room and kitchen. Opening the door slowly, because it does tend to creak, she looks toward the tree where Abraham sometimes ties up that dog of his. Tilly is her name, but tonight, Abraham has left her at home. Once outside, Annie rounds the side of the house and stops there, not knowing why she’s stopped but feeling like she’s waiting on something or someone. She’s waiting on Daddy. He’s talked a good bit about there being no one left up at that Baine place to give Annie any trouble, but still he’ll follow her.
Daddy knows Annie will be going to the well tonight even though she made yet another speech at the supper table, after a month of like-minded speeches, about half birthdays and ascensions and intended husbands being foolishness. Daddy didn’t believe her, and neither did Mama, but Daddy will have made Mama stay in bed and will have told her to let Annie do the thing every other girl gets to do. But Daddy will follow. He won’t let Annie know he’s there, watching over her, because a man who has gone from tobacco farming to lavender farming knows about things like pride and ego.
She’ll run, knees high and arms pumping, until she reaches the tobacco barn. That’s her plan. From there, she’ll be able to see the Baines’ house. She’ll see that it’s dark, the door closed, the shutters drawn. She’ll see that Mrs. Baine isn’t sitting on her front porch, rocking in her old rocking chair, a shotgun resting in her lap or propped up against the house within grabbing distance. Folks say that’s what she does, day in and day out, in case one of her boys tries to come back home. And when Annie is sure Mrs. Baine isn’t there waiting with a shotgun, she’ll run on past the barn, climb the dry-stack rock fence separating the Baines from the Hollerans, hoping it doesn’t crumble beneath her, and there, she’ll find the well.