“They don’t belong to you, I don’t think,” Grady said.

Juan waited for him to say more. Grady became self-conscious.

“I mean, I s’pose if they came with your place, then you’d think they’re yours, a’course. But those belonged to the Brayer family. I recognize them.”

Juan looked down at the chairs he’d just spent an hour and a half cleaning. Rosa had really had a vision of how these chairs were going to look outside of Tortillas. She wanted them arranged just so; he knew the way her mind worked. The same mind that had decided their daughter would be named “Penelope” and nicknamed “Pen” long before they’d even conceived. The mind that planned the menu months in advance, that obsessed over colors in flower displays, that wouldn’t let anyone help her make her signature empanadas. Juan didn’t want to have to tell Rosa that her chair brainstorm wasn’t going to happen.

“I think the Brayers just lost track of ’em,” Grady was saying. “But those gold plates are pretty recognizable.”

Surely they weren’t real gold. Was that why this was such an issue? Juan wondered. Now Rosa would be even more upset if he let them go.

“What does ‘K.S.O.’ stand for?” Juan asked.

Grady straightened.

“Something someone else knows about, I guess,” he replied. “I’ll tell Travis Brayer you’ve got his chairs. Maybe he’ll be fine with you keepin’ ’em, you never know.”

Juan nodded slowly. From the tone of Grady’s voice he could tell that Grady believed that Travis would not be fine with Juan keeping them.

“It’s just that, in this country, you can’t come in and take things that rightfully belong to others, that’s all,” Grady said.

Juan remained silent. Grady reddened a bit.

“Anyway, I love that sauce a yours,” he continued. “Could I get some more? I’ll pay for it, a’course.”

Juan looked Grady directly in the eyes.

“I’m all out,” he lied.

Grady held Juan’s gaze for a moment, then looked off at the purple sky.

“Well, let me know when you make more and have some to spare. I really do like it.”

Juan nodded.

“Sure, amigo. I’ll let you know.”

Walton hadn’t told Jiminy that he’d been in the room when Lyn had come to see the bodies of her husband and daughter on that June night in 1966. He hadn’t told Jiminy much of anything, really. With Roy and Grady listening, he’d said a tiny bit about Edward, Lyn, Willa, and Henry, but there was so much more. Way too much more.

When Henry Hunt had found the bodies of Edward and Jiminy Waters two weeks after they’d gone missing, he’d brought them by the hospital to get them cleaned up. After some strong resistance, Walton had tended to them. And then Lyn had arrived.

Walton closed his eyes at the memory. In fifty years as Fayeville’s doctor, he’d seen a lot of pain. And in all of that time, nothing matched the crumpling of Lyn Waters.

She didn’t make a scene, like some people did when confronted with the corpses of loved ones. She didn’t pound her fists into the wall, she didn’t tear at her hair or explode into paroxysms of sobs. She looked at them—one long look at her dead husband’s face, one long look at her dead daughter’s. Then she stared straight ahead, into a void visible only to her, and her face fell off of itself. Walton didn’t know how else to describe it: As far as he could tell, whatever was alive in Lyn had poured out of her in that moment. It had streamed out of her nostrils, and her slightly parted lips, and the corners of her eyes. In a rush, it had fled.

Walton had gone cold at the sight. Henry had hurried to take Lyn in his arms, but she’d held up her hand, stopping him with a silent command. She’d looked at them both with hollow eyes, then turned and walked out of the room. From then on, Lyn had seemed no more than a shell of a human, filled only with haunted echoes of previous life.

Walton hadn’t mentioned any of this to Willa’s granddaughter, but that June night was seared into his memory. After Lyn left, one of Edward’s brothers had come to collect the bodies. There’d been a funeral that Walton hadn’t attended, but he knew where the gravesite was, and over the years, he’d found himself occasionally driving past it at night after leaving the hospital. On this night, he found himself headed there again.

He steered his car off the pavement and continued up the dirt road. At the top of the ridge, he stopped to take in the view. The lights of HushMart flickered behind him, but before him the hills rolled out as far as a person could see. By the soft glow of the nearly full moon, he could make out the inky curves of the Allehany River as it flowed around and between and against, patiently wearing down the land.

Walton climbed out of his car and walked up the slope to the huge magnolia tree, aware that the ache in his knee was worsening. He’d managed to hang onto all his original joints thus far, but he saw artificial ones in his future. He was under no illusions about being in decline.

At the start of his retirement, Walton had written several books about the history and geology of Fayeville. In one chapter about Fayeville plants, he’d actually featured the tree that was now before him. It was enormous, and the smell of its flowers could be sweetly overpowering, especially when a breeze blew down from the bluff. Amid the fallen blossoms on the ground were headstones, marking the graves of dozens buried in the magnolia’s shadow. Nobody white was buried here—there was a county-maintained cemetery in town for them. This magnolia tree cemetery was more haphazard and bureaucracy-free, maintained by people nobody paid. It was where the black residents of Fayeville had been burying their dead for over two hundred years.

Walton fished a pocket flashlight out and shined it on the spot he remembered. There they were—two rough-edged stone slabs that peeked six inches above the ground. They’d risen higher forty years ago, but the gravestones were settled in and tilting now. They seemed at peace.

As a rule, Walton didn’t believe in visiting people’s graves. He never checked in on the final resting plots of his own friends and relatives—he preferred to remember how they’d been alive. And he considered himself extremely rational. He knew the ground only held decomposing bio-matter, not the spirits or souls of the departed. But ever since he’d watched Lyn fly out of herself and walk away, he’d felt drawn to the place where her loved ones had been laid to rest. In visiting their graves, he attempted to pay them some kind of tribute, or apology.

It wasn’t until he had turned to walk back to his car that his eye caught the glint of white on the wooden cross that marked the start of the cemetery. He trained his flashlight on it and stepped closer, wincing at the pinch in his knee. The letters were big, and freshly painted, he guessed. The empty spray-paint can from HushMart was discarded nearby.

Walton exhaled slowly. There’d been a time when those letters had seemed omnipresent around Fayeville. There’d been a time when Walton had identified with them. He’d learned since then, and now the sight of the recently branded “K.S.O.” on the cross made him weary. And worried.

“Was I wrong to chase her off?” Bo asked.

He was tossing a football with Cole, syncing his regret to the spiraling ball. He imagined hurling his doubts away from him with each arm pump. Unfortunately, they kept slamming back into him.

“Dude, you don’t want her pity,” Cole replied with a shrug.

Cole had been Bo’s best friend since they’d met in Little League as five-year-olds. Whereas Bo had always been talkative and bright, Cole was a man of few words, many of which were “dude.” Still, the two of them understood each other perfectly.

“Yeah, I don’t need this, you know?” Bo said. “I should just stick to my plan—lay low, save money, get ready for med school, get out of here.”