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a quart of frozen peaches out to thaw that morning before they'd gone to church and had looked forward to them right up until the time she realized Griffin was sitting in front of her. Seeing him there had just flat killed her appetite.
       It seemed strange to think of him with a name. He'd always been G. Luckadeau when she had let him into her memories.
       Annie rattled on and on while she ate all her soup and sandwich, asked for more, and polished off the last half of her mother's. Julie managed a few bites, but she might as well have been eating a sawdust sandwich. The peaches didn't even look good to her. They'd barely finished lunch and were thinking about cleaning out Annie's closet when the knock came to the front door.
       Julie jumped. She was not prepared for the show down, but if Griffin wanted a fight then she wasn't running from it, either. She would tell him exactly what she thought and without a single stutter.
       She took a deep breath and slung the door open to find Mamie Pickett standing there with an apple pie in her hands.
       "Welcome to our neck of the woods in Montague County," she smiled brightly. "Did I come at a bad time? You look like you saw a ghost."
       "No, not at all. Please come in. Thank you for the pie. Bring it into the kitchen. Drag up a chair. I'll make us a glass of tea and we'll share the pie," Julie said.
       Mamie followed Julie into the kitchen, set the pie on the table, and smiled at Annie. "Well, hello. You would be Annie? I'm Mamie Pickett, the lady who sold your mother this place. Think we could be friends?"
       Annie nodded. "But my best friend is Lizzy and then Chuck. Are they your friends?"
       "That would be Lizzy Luckadeau and Chuck Chester?" Mamie asked.
       "Yes, those are my friends. I'm glad we came here because this is where Lizzy and Chuck live. Momma, can I go play with the kittens and can I take a quilt? I think they are ready for me to tell them a story."
       "Yes, you can, but you know the rules. Stay in the backyard and—"
       Annie rolled her big blue eyes and intoned, "Don't go in the front yard where there's no fence."
       "That's right," Julie said.
       She slammed the old wooden screen door when she took off into the backyard.
       "I thought I'd like that door when I bought this place. It reminds me of one in a parsonage where we lived when I was just a little girl. I loved the way the slam sounded. It's not as nostalgic as I thought it would be," Julie admitted.
       "I hear you and understand. There was one on the house where I grew up, too. Maybe that's why I was always told to not slam the door," Mamie said.
       Julie poured tea into two recycled jelly glasses filled with ice and set one before her first guest. Mamie had light brown, shoulder-length straight hair she wore feathered around her square face, thin lips, and deep-set green eyes. She wore pink seersucker capris and a T-shirt and sandals.
       "I wanted to welcome you to our part of Texas, but I also came for a couple of other reasons, Julie. I own and operate my late grandmother's shop on the town square. Miss Molly's Shoppe—but most folks just call it Molly's. I do the realty business right out of the shop. In a town this size, you've got to diversify. Anyway, my grandmother died years ago, but she and Edna were friends of a sort. They grew up together up at Illinois Bend, and Edna made jellies and jams and pie filling, about anything that could go in a jar for us to sell. Did pretty good with it most years." She stopped to sip the tea. "There's a cellar under the house. Did I forget to mention that when we talked about it? Don't tell anyone. I'm supposed to do the complete disclosure thing and I forgot. I've only been doing this about a year. Anyway, I'll show you how to get down there."
       Mamie went into the living room and set aside one of the end tables. The carpet had been cut to fit a place about three feet wide and a little