The May Queen Murders (6 page)

ballot. The girl’s gotta be the brightness of spring. Back in the old

country, after our clans became Christian, the May Queen also re-

flected Mary and her holiness.”

Heather giggled, but her mother gave her a cross look and con-

tinued, “It’s been done this way for centuries, and I don’t reckon it’s

funny. The May Queen’s important. She’s gotta be gentle, virtuous,

and love the land and folks here. After years without one, I’m glad to

see a return.”

Papa poured a fresh glass of wine, his mouth twitching with what

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seemed half a dozen thoughts before he blurted out, “It’s a terrible

idea.”

Mama tore a chunk off a loaf of bread left on the table, popped it

into her mouth, and chewed as she spoke. “
Qué?
I don’t see a prob-

lem. The way Iris and the others talk, they miss it. Things will be

different than in the past.”

“Did you forget why we stopped?” Papa asked.

All the family focused on him. He didn’t sound angry or unrea-

sonable, rather hushed. He tipped his chair onto its hind legs and

folded his hands behind his head. “The townies, if they got wind of a

May Day ’round here, they’d send their preachers and pitchforks. We

don’t need that kind of trouble again.”

He walked over to the window to watch the storm blowing

through the vil age. Mama reached for the wineglass he’d poured

but hadn’t touched and swal owed it herself without stopping to

breathe.

“Timothy, Iris took it to council,” Aunt Rue declared. “It’ll be good

for the Glen.”

My father turned halfway from the window so the storm reflected

off his glasses. “So that’s it? It’s a done deal? May Day ain’t just a bad

idea. It’s
cursed.
You know bringin’ back May Day is trouble, and we

got enough.”

My aunt cast her gaze to her bel y while her husband approached

Papa and placed a hand on his shoulder, his arms strong from

kneading bread dough. Shadows drawn by the rain spil ing down

the glass formed wavy lines on their faces. Marsh had married my

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aunt two years before, some six months after her first husband,

Heather’s father, departed from a tobacco habit that put cancer in

his mouth.

“C’mon, Timothy,” Marsh murmured. “All that’s buried. Let it rest

in peace.”

“For twenty-five years, I’ve left it buried. Y’all had stories about

Birch Markle, and they damn near ruined the Glen. The way the

county police came in, tromped all over our land. They got the out-

siders talkin’ ’bout us and wonderin’ what we do. It took a year before

we could sell anything at market in town. I don’t wanna risk that, and

it’s all ’cause Rue wants Heather to get some attention.”

“That’s not —” my aunt protested.

“Real y?” Papa asked. “’Cause you know Ivy can’t be May Queen.

Did you tell Luz that?”

My gut tumbled. So it wouldn’t be me. Some other girl. I glanced

across the room to Heather, who stared at me, her expression oddly

plain. Mama saw my frown and asked, “Why not? You won’t let her

name be on the ballot?”

“She
can’t
be on the ballot,” Marsh said. “Both parents of the May

Queen gotta be Glen born.”

A flush came over Mama’s cheeks.
“Mierda.”

The tension in the house thickened, foglike in its depth. My

mother, the peacemaker in most disputes, ducked into the kitchen

while my father glowered. This was more than hackles raised. Some

history, some secret Papa wanted untold, moved from a forgotten

thing to one with substance. It spread to the corners and rose along

the wal s.

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I followed Mama and asked, “Why’s Papa so upset? Is it ’cause of

what they said about how I can’t be May Queen?”

She dropped the rosary working in her fingers, a remnant of

growing up Catholic. I picked up the chain of freshwater pearls and

lingered on the crucifix before handing it over. Mama tucked the

rosary into her apron. “If that’s all it was,
bonita.
Señoras
were so

excited about May Day . . . I thought Timoteo would be too, but the

past still hurts. I wasn’t here then. Sometimes, Ivy, it feels like no

matter how long I live in the Glen, I’ll never belong.”

The sadness in my mother’s face pained my chest, and I didn’t

know what to say. Sometimes even silence felt like a falter.

She patted her apron pocket. A loop from the rosary strand peeked

out from the eyelet trim. “Jay called on your father today. Another

dog, this one only bones.”

The subject change wasn’t a relief. I prayed it wasn’t a dog from

the clinic — maybe some farmer’s hunting hound — but if the poor

beast was only bones, we wouldn’t know which owner to visit.

“The skull was missing,” Mama went on, though the distant look

on her face made me wonder if she was talking to me or speaking to

rid her mind of the image. “Can’t imagine who’d do such a horrible

thing. I don’t want you and Heather down by that water. Too much

blood in it.”

All the times I’d done laundry in the river, listening to Denial

Mil ’s churning wheel, and the times Rook, Heather, and I went fish-

ing, the water was clear when it skimmed through my fingers. Now

my mind made it sludgy red, with bits of fur and meat clinging to my

skin as the blood oozed past.

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A sudden thump from the room above the kitchen shook the

light. For a while after Mamie had gone silent, she sat with the family,

taking in the clunky sounds only happy busyness made. She’d knit,

a muted but steady presence. Not now. Perhaps her silence final y

removed her from the living world.

Footsteps gave way to the squeal of a door opening and a fork

scraping a plate as she set it on the table outside her room. I started

up the stairs between the kitchen and dining room. Mamie’s door

was shut, and her plate was nearly full on the table.

I let myself into the room. My grandmother sat in a rocker be-

side a window overlooking the Glen’s fields. The kerosene lamp on

her desk spread a gold glow across the dark. In the corner, Gramps’s

shotgun was propped against the wal , unused since his death years

ago but still within reach — ready for those nights if the screaming

from the woods got too close. Some nights it sounded as if Birch

came out of the woods and into the fields, but I’d always been too

scared to look out my window because
what if he was there?

“Mamie, everything all right?” I asked. “You didn’t eat much.”

She didn’t move from her rocking chair. Her profile split the win-

dow, the sharp nose and high cheekbones common in Templetons

— but not me. Blue lightning bloomed around Mamie. Some sandy

wisps sprouted near the wings of her red hair, which she kept in a

bun. She’d worked the land as a girl, and the once-creamy skin had

ruddied under the sun. But in the few pictures that existed, ones

where she was young, she looked like Heather.

Mamie gave me a good study, her face a lattice of wrinkles. Her

china-blue eyes narrowed as she assessed me, and then her hand shot

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out, grabbing my wrist around the red thread bracelet. That grip was

tough, no gentleness, while she flipped my hand from side to side

and bent my fingers this way and that.

Then for the first time in years, Mamie’s tongue loosened enough

to make a sound.

“Hmm.” It was a grumble of a noise, but it was something.

Something she didn’t like.

She dragged me by the wrist over to her desk. I smelled the musti-

ness of time past and held still while she pulled off the glass chimney

from the oil lamp and unscrewed the burner and col ar. She tugged

the red string on my wrist with one of her burled fingers, breaking

it so it fell to the floor. My wrist was naked and slippery without a

string, but Mamie seemed intent on not letting that last long. Her

hand dove into her apron pocket, and she snapped a new length of

red thread from the spool with her teeth and dredged it through the

oil in the lamp where a small string of red wool already drowned.

Use the oil, girl,
Mamie had told me when I was no older than five

or six. She’d brought me to her room with the promise of making a

Victorian-style silhouette, but instead, she thrust me in her rocking

chair and knelt on the floor with her kerosene lamp in pieces on

the desktop.
Can’t go runnin’
’
round these parts with no oil on your

strings. That Mexican mama you got keeps them evil eyes off you, and

while her ways are fair enough, you gots to have the oil to slick off the

bad spirits and bad intentions. May no violent or poisoned death come

your way when you’re oiled well enough.

Now she tied the soaked string on my wrist. “Mamie,” I said, “is

there something else?”

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She crisscrossed her hands as she waved me off, ushering me out

of her room to the steps.

“Mamie, please?” I begged.

Her gaze held mine. A flex in her lips, twitch of her fingers.

Nothing. She didn’t — couldn’t — speak.

As I carried Mamie’s barely touched dinner plate down the stairs,

oil leaked from my wrist to drip off my little finger. At the base of the

steps, I heard the click of Mamie’s door as it shut.

Outside, the rain eased. Heather bounced on her toes in the kitch-

en and checked the window in the back door. She tugged the red

thread around her wrist and moved with an impatience so palpable

I could’ve grabbed it.

“You’re wound up,” I said.

“Waitin’ for the rain to stop,” she explained. She cocked her head.

“You upset about the May Queen thing?”

Yes, I was jealous, though it was hard to admit. “Maybe a little.”

“It’s stupid, to have it based on who your parents are. It’s gonna

be a popularity contest.” She scoffed. “Look, I’ll tell my mama that I

refuse to be nominated if you can’t be.”

“Don’t do that. You deserve to be on the ballot,” I said.

“So do you! You love the Glen, Ivy. If anyone should be May

Queen, it’s you, and that you can’t — No, I don’t want it. Give it to

some other girl. Maybe Violet.”

The gesture was thoughtful and lifted the corners of my mouth.

Heather hugged me and kissed my cheek before she took a hooded

shawl from the wall hooks near the door.

“Wh-where are you goin’?” I asked.

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She slipped the shawl over her shoulders and drew the hood to

hide her curls. “I gotta go. Cover for me?”

Heather, come on. You can tell me what you’re up to. You tell me

everything ’cause you’re almost my sister.
I didn’t say that.

“They’ll notice you’re gone.”

“They’re drunk on honey wine, and Mama has baby brain. It’s all

she thinks about.” She giggled. Her face was soft, but her voice needy.

“Do this for me, Ivy.”

“Will you tell me what’s going on?”

“So many questions. Now I’ve gotta go, so please? I’ll tell you

about it later.”

I should’ve asked more questions. Instead, I sighed in tacit agree-

ment. “What do you want me to tell them? If Marsh notices —”

“He’ll what?” Heather snorted. “You’re assuming he remembers I

exist.”

She frowned, and I rubbed her shoulder. She was her daddy’s girl,

no surprise since she was named for Uncle Heath, but that Aunt Rue

remarried so soon after burying him was tender yet. It didn’t matter

much that Marsh was all but family for years, being close to my fa-

ther and al . On good days, Marsh and Heather were cordial at best.

On most days, they didn’t speak to each other.

“
If
that man realizes I slipped out, say I’m checking the horses.”

“Heather, with the animals gettin’ killed, I’m worried.”

“All the more reason for someone to check the horses, don’t you

think?”

“No!” I winced at the loudness of my voice, and Heather went

to the doorway to make sure our parents were still occupied while

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I trailed behind her, whispering, “Let Marsh do it, or my daddy, if

you’re so worried.” She glared over her shoulder, and I realized she

wasn’t concerned about the horses at al . “You’ll get in trouble for go-

ing out. It’s night, and isn’t safe.”

Her lips perked in a coy smile. “Sometimes you gotta face danger

to find what you’re looking for.”

That was where we differed. Heather wasn’t afraid. I was terrified.

I closed my eyes with a sigh. Her lips brushed my cheek in a swift

kiss, and then she disappeared out the back door without a sound.

I should’ve tried harder to keep her.

The rain hitting the windows paused, but the sound of water

draining off the tin roof and trickling over the gutters remained. It

was too dark to make out Heather’s shape once she climbed the horse

fence separating her garden from the neighbors’. I found a broom

in a closet and swept all traces of crumbs and dust into a neat pile

before brushing it out the door.

In a way, it wasn’t fair that Heather could run off and be Heather.