June

by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

  “It’s just with everything going on, you know?” Hank said now, leaning forward on the table as though they were besties. “It’s a lot, you know?”

  Did she mean Tate and Max? Or Jack’s inheritance? Or something else entirely? Cassie nodded, to keep it neutral.

  “It’s just so…intense. There in that house? All together?”

  Cassie could agree on that. She took a chug of her milk shake and nodded. Were they friends now? Had they had a fight? Had they made up?

  “And honestly, with her sister there, it’s just…”

  “Yeah,” Cassie agreed, “they don’t seem to get along.”

  “First her dad dies! Then he leaves everything to you.”

  Cassie was glad they’d found some common ground. “Yeah, and then Elda—I mean, her sister—comes and attacks her, and we’re all stuck in that house together—”

  “Oh my god yes, and the stuff with Margaret and Max and the infidelity rumors.” As soon as the words were out of Hank’s mouth, she clapped her hands over it. Her eyes grew wide.

  Cassie forced herself to be very interested in the milk shake. She took a careful sip, allowing the cold lump to slide down into her gullet as Hank started to cry all over again. Cassie then asked, as casually as possible, “What infidelity rumors?”

  Hank’s hands were over her face as she shook her head. She was making this hmmmming sound that Cassie supposed was her version of a low sob.

  “Maybe it’ll make you feel better,” Cassie said, trying not to sound hopeful, “if you tell someone.”

  Hank squeaked a lengthy reply that Cassie couldn’t make out.

  “Huh?”

  Hank dabbed at her face with more of those leafy white napkins, then emerged to say, “Nondisclosure agreement.”

  These people were obsessed with their secrets. “Who am I going to tell? Anyway they’re pretty much my family now, so it’s totally my business.”

  Hank balled the soggy napkins into her fist, resting them on her lap. Her nose and cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright, as though crying had improved her. She checked behind herself and leaned forward with a low voice. “I don’t exactly know what happened. I wasn’t full-time yet. But supposedly”—and she checked around again in the most obvious way; had Cassie been looking to eavesdrop on anyone in the state of Ohio, she would have picked Hank—“supposedly something happened.”

  Cassie crossed her arms at the lack of information. “Like what?”

  “Like. You know. Cheating.”

  “With Margaret?”

  Hank nodded triumphantly.

  Of course. That was why Tate had fired Margaret. That was why Nick always bristled at the mention of Margaret’s name. “Margaret had been her assistant for a long time, right?”

  “Forever,” Hank mouthed, looking much more gleeful than she had only moments before. But then she caught herself, and glanced down mournfully at the milk shake.

  “You know you want it,” Cassie said.

  “I really shouldn’t have told you.” Hank was doing her best impression of a basset hound.

  Cassie crossed her heart. “Your secret’s safe.” A year before, such gossip would have slipped from her lips into the ears of the Pyke gallery girls she worked with—preceded, of course, by “Don’t tell anyone, but”—but really, truly, she had no one to tell. Even if she did, who’d believe she had the inside scoop on the most famous couple in the world?

  Hank lifted the glass to her blue eyes and examined it like it was poison. Her eyes squeezed shut. Right before she put the cold glass to her bubble-gum lips and chugged, she growled, “Bottoms up.”

  Lindie crouched in the azalea below Two Oaks’s front parlor window and watched June smile at Artie like a china doll. Slim and sallow, he sat beside June on the buttercup yellow couch, his long, limp hand resting between them like an ailing greyhound. Clyde and Cheryl Ann toasted the happy couple with goblets full of something brown and sticky, even though it was barely breakfast time. Cheryl Ann remarked how glad she was that they’d kept the church booked and gone ahead with planning the reception. Cheryl Ann and Artie had never felt like they belonged to Lindie, but Clyde and June certainly had, and the sight, first of Clyde laying a thick stack of bills into Cheryl Ann’s hand, and then of June pretending amusement at a quiet remark made by Artie, her laughter a thin, sad line carrying out through the screen, sent Lindie sprinting toward set, chest heaving with desperate sobs.

  “He’s back,” she whispered to Jack later that day, in front of the Congregational church. They’d both been too busy to discuss June any earlier; with the looming deadline of the wrap just on the horizon, there were no more idle moments. But for now, the camera operator was setting up a tricky shot, and Diane was taking her beauty rest. “Artie,” Lindie clarified. “June’s fiancé.”

  Jack squinted off toward the throng gathered in Center Square.

  “She’s going to marry him.” Was he dumb?

  “That’s her decision,” Jack finally said. Lindie fought the urge to pick up the stone at her foot and pitch it at his head as he sauntered off.

  So it was up to Lindie, then. She needed to talk sense to June; it was simple as that. They’d been unkind, but they’d mend their fences. She pushed away the memory of June’s fingers counting off her deficits; after all, she’d also been cruel, keeping Artie’s letter from June. And perhaps June was right, perhaps the letter was the perfect example of what June had been saying: Lindie thinking she knew best when really it was June’s life. Lindie took the letter from the cigar box under her bed, where she’d kept it hidden alongside a note her mother had once left on the kitchen table asking Eben to buy a loaf of bread, and the blue meany marble she’d won off Bobby Prange, and the buffalo nickels and silver dollars she’d collected over the years. Perhaps the time had come to lay the letter humbly at June’s feet, to show June she’d learned, and was changing.

  Eben made a rare, proper dinner that night—pork chops and crosspatch potatoes. Lindie washed the dishes and dried and put them away, all the while keeping her eye on June’s darkened window. But then Eben took up with his earmarked Chicago book in the squealing rocking chair on the front porch. Lindie was exhausted, but instead of letting her limbs sink into the humid sheets, she lay awake, mind tumbling. She waited Eben out and tasted victory when, past midnight, she finally heard him mount the stairs. When his snore began, she crept out her window and scrambled down to their meager lawn, then across the road and onto the Two Oaks property.

  Lindie had done this dozens of times: across the side lawn, up the column, onto the roof of the porte cochere, and into June’s window. She could do it with her eyes closed, without cracking a branch. Her ascent started out the same as all the others. But one instant, she had a foot perched on the rough-edged stone upon which the column rested, and the next, she found herself unexpectedly bathed in blinding light.

  “Linda Sue.” It was Cheryl Ann’s voice, just beyond the source of that light.

  Lindie put her hands up like a fugitive, shielding her eyes.

  “June is tired,” Cheryl Ann said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Tired of you disturbing her beauty sleep.”

  June had turned Lindie in! The realization stung. June was probably at her window, watching Lindie right then, with gleeful revenge in her heart. Lindie remembered June’s cruelty, the way she’d spat out the word sir, and felt nauseated by sorrow. “Yes, ma’am.” She turned toward home.

  “If you come back again like this, Linda Sue, I’ll see to it you’re properly punished. Your father may not be concerned about your nighttime excursions, but the police arrest prowlers.”

  Lindie hung her head in surrender and loped back across the lawn. Cheryl Ann kept the light on Lindie’s back until Lindie set foot on her own porch. Lindie gingerly turned the doorknob and tiptoed inside, but she was a fool if she believed Eben wouldn’t be hearing about this tomorrow.

  —

  On set the next morning, L
indie spotted Thomas. She’d had little time to gather herself, but she knew one thing: she wasn’t going to give up on June. She’d seen the way June wrestled with herself when she told Jack things were over. June could be as mad as she wanted, but Lindie was going to fight for her happiness, even if June wasn’t.

  Thomas was the one who’d been driving Jack out to meet them at Idlewyld, and Lindie felt sure he must have some bit of useful information. She watched him climb out of the Olds, then stride across Center Square toward the cast trailers. She called his name, but he didn’t stop. She sprinted to catch up, a stack of fake election signs weighing down her arms.

  She noticed the envelope immediately, with the initials “J.M.” written across the front, in what she could have sworn was June’s hand. A bit of luck. “What’s that?”

  Thomas kept walking. “Mind your own business, Linda Sue.”

  “Who’s it for?”

  Thomas shared Apatha’s unnerving talent of rarely betraying what he was feeling. It was a quality Lindie found inconvenient in old women and downright dangerous in any kind of man, especially one who was privy to the secrets she was also keeping. “Oh, come on, be a pal.”

  “Run and play.” His eyes darted around. Lindie felt a flash of victory; he was afraid of trouble, and the quick flit of his eyes gave that away.

  She decided to let him go; at least she’d gotten something. Maybe she could use it; all she had to do was find out the trouble he was avoiding, and why. “If you don’t tell me where you’re taking it, I’ll just watch you,” she called after him.

  “Watch me, then.” He strode off without looking back, knocking on Jack’s trailer door and disappearing inside without a backward glance.

  —

  If Thomas saw her hiding in the bay laurel beside Jack’s car at the end of the day, he didn’t let on. He smoked his pipe atop the hood until Jack arrived, then popped down to open the door for him. Lindie took her chance, jumping up and rapping the other rear window. Jack didn’t look all that surprised to see her, nor, for that matter, did Thomas, who slipped into the driver’s seat and started up the engine. Lindie made a frantic gesture for Jack to unroll the window. He obliged with a tolerant smile.

  “Was that a letter from June?” she asked. She knew she seemed desperate to these men, but they were running out of time; the wedding was less than two weeks away.

  “Last I heard, what a man reads in a letter addressed to him is his affair.”

  “But this is an emergency!” She howled. “Don’t you understand? She is going to marry that horrible tree trunk of a man!”

  “Should I go?” Thomas asked Jack, flashing Lindie a dirty look in the rearview mirror.

  Lindie grabbed the top of the window with both hands; they’d have to drive off with her. “You don’t know her like I do, Jack. She will marry him. Sure, you’ll be done filming next week. You’ll go back to your fancy house and your steak dinners and kissing Diane DeSoto, but we will still be here. June will still be here. And there will be no one left to stop her from making the biggest mistake of her life.”

  Jack’s eyes flashed for a split second; she knew she’d hooked him. But what he said was heavy with resignation: “I can’t change what she wants, and neither can you, Rabbit Legs.”

  That nickname was getting on her nerves. She shook her head, even as she wondered if she’d lost her mind. Why did June’s destiny, her heart, seem more important than Lindie’s own? It might be love, but it was something else too, wasn’t it? Something June had put her finger on. Something more selfish than that.

  But Lindie didn’t let that revelation stop her. “What did her letter say?” she begged.

  Jack watched her a moment, then sighed. Pulled it from inside his jacket. Held it out:

  Dear Jack—

  I can’t see you anymore. Please understand it’s nothing to do with you. I’m certain your heart will heal more quickly than mine. It’s no use trying to change my fate. Thank you for the paints. Thank you for giving me back a little hope. You’ll never know how much it means to me.

  Yours,

  J.

  “ ‘Yours,’ ” Jack said, tapping at the simple word and shaking his head as the car idled.

  “She can still be yours,” Lindie said softly. “You just have to try harder. You’re a champ at getting out of sticky situations, right? You said it yourself. So get her out of this. Please.”

  Lindie let go of the car. Jack rolled up his window. Thomas drove off, a filmy dust rising from behind the tires to leave the girl, coughing, in its cloud.

  That night, in bed, Lindie heard it again: the screen door opening, followed by the sound of Eben’s “Hello.” She was dead asleep, but the possibility of a visitor jolted her into full, alert consciousness. The night sky spilled with a smattering of stars, like salt across a tabletop.

  “I get you anything?” she heard her father ask. She hoped he wasn’t speaking to Clyde.

  But it wasn’t a man’s voice that replied. Lindie had a hard time grabbing hold of who the voice belonged to; its alto pitch was soft, but not girlish. She crept down to the bottom of her bed to be closer to the vent.

  “Make yourself at home,” Eben replied. Then his footsteps disappeared under Lindie and into the kitchen, where he took out a pot and set it on the stove. She couldn’t imagine anyone coming over in the middle of the night to ask for soup, but that was all her mind’s eye could see: her father’s hands prying open a can of Campbell’s tomato while some strange lady sat in their rocking chair.

  While he was in the kitchen, the woman said nothing. Lindie churned with possibilities: it was Diane DeSoto, come to hire Lindie to work on every film set with her; it was a secret liaison; it was Cheryl Ann, demanding punishment for Lindie’s trespassing. But Diane would have driven up in a car and Lindie had heard no motor; and no man—not even Eben—would leave a woman he loved unattended (and who could imagine her father in love with anyone?); and Cheryl Ann would have had no qualms about marching over in the middle of the day. The puzzle of the visitor’s identity teased at her, the suspense excruciating, and she nearly traipsed down the stairs, feigning thirst, just so she could get a glimpse.

  But then Eben came back into the dining room and said, “Ready,” and Lindie heard the shuffle of someone else’s feet as this unknown woman came to meet him at the table.

  “Mmmmmm,” the woman said, after a moment. She had tasted it. Lindie wished for superhuman smelling powers.

  “More vanilla?” he asked. “Honey?” and, in a flash, Lindie knew exactly who it was. Those years when Two Oaks had been hers, Apatha had made her cups of steamed milk with vanilla and honey if she couldn’t sleep, or burned with a fever, or had skinned her knee. Lindie could still feel the weight of Apatha’s dry hands atop hers on the kitchen table.

  “Cheryl Ann caught Lindie last night,” Apatha said.

  “You don’t think I heard?”

  “How she supposes I’ll be able to keep that feral child in line is beyond me.”

  Eben chuckled. “I’m sorry for your trouble. I could nail her window shut, but then that girl would just saw a hole in my damn roof.” Apatha laughed too. Lindie’s pride purpled as she blushed in the dark.

  “At least she’s scared now. She walked by today and she”—Lindie imagined Apatha freezing in a mocking pose, moving her eyes back and forth as though Lindie had actually looked anything like that. Really, she’d just moved on, because Apatha was sweeping the porch, and the way she’d lifted the broom at the sight of Lindie didn’t exactly say warm reception. But Eben guffawed as if he didn’t know Apatha was exaggerating.

  “I appreciate your coming,” he said, as their cheer faded.

  “Anything for you, Eben. You know that.” So there was a reason he’d invited her; Lindie was ready for them to move on.

  Eben cleared his throat, ready to talk business. “I’m hoping you can shed some light on something I’ve been…well, not investigating, that’s not the right word…”
<
br />   Apatha was patient as he searched for the one he wanted. She was always happy to let someone finish his own sentence.

  “I’ve discovered an inconsistency,” Eben declared at last. Did he sound a little nervous? “You know that development Clyde has up over on the other side of town? He’s calling it Three Oaks.”

  Apatha’s laugh was dry.

  “The estate’s name isn’t the only thing he stole,” Eben said. “He took Mr. Neely’s land, Apatha. A good portion of the land he built on isn’t his. I can’t believe I didn’t catch it. I guess I thought no man—not even Clyde—could be that proud. Course, he claims it was an innocent mistake. But you know as well as I do that he knew it all along.”

  If Apatha was shocked, she didn’t let on.

  “Naturally,” he continued, “I want to protect Mr. Neely’s interests, especially because Clyde just about came right out and said he doesn’t care it’s Neely’s land. He says once June marries his brother, Artie, it’ll as good as belong to him.” He whistled. “So’s I get to thinking—Clyde doesn’t know for sure who Neely’s giving all his money and land to once he dies. I don’t know either, and I’m Mr. Neely’s accountant! So last week, I go down to Mr. Neely’s lawyer in Columbus. I decide I’m going to find out if Clyde’s scheme will turn out as planned after all.”

  “And?” Apatha asked.

  “And—the lawyer says he can’t help me, because Neely doesn’t own any of it by himself. The lawyer says there’s another person who shares every cent with him. Says that person’s the only one besides him and Neely who knows this, and, if that person survives him, she’ll be inheriting every cent.” He took a breath so deep that Lindie could hear it through the floorboards. “And, Apatha, he says that person’s you.”

  The silence that followed this last statement was not uncomfortable or cold. It was firm, like Apatha. Temperate. It carried up through the vent and over Lindie, as she tried to understand what her father and the lawyer and Apatha and Mr. Neely all knew. Apatha said nothing, as though she was waiting to see if Eben would drop the matter. But Eben Shaw was damn fine at cards, and he’d be glad to sit there all night.