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longer. "This picks up and this door leads to the cellar where Edna kept the stock that she sold to me. I brought along the price list from last year. Last time I was here, there was still some stock left and I'm running low. Would you sell me what's left?"
       Julie nodded. "Sure. Did she use particular recipes for her stuff?"
       "I'm sure she did and they're probably somewhere in the kitchen. Would you be interested in keeping up the business? I'll buy all I can sell and that's a lot. You want to lead the way, or you want me to go first?"
       Julie took the first step into the dark cellar. Mamie followed and flipped a switch at the bottom of the narrow staircase. The sides of the cellar were concrete and the floor was poured concrete. It was cool without being musty. There had to be vents somewhere. Julie found them up near the top of the shelves, which lined every possible inch and were filled with jams, jellies, canned fruit, pie filling, picante sauce, and other home-canned delicacies. There were so many names on the fancy little labels that Julie couldn't possibly remember them all.
       Mamie picked up an empty box and began to fill it. "I'll take pepper jelly. You'd be surprised how well it sells to tourists. I've been out of picante sauce for two weeks so I'd best have half a dozen jars of that."
       "Where did she get the labels?" Julie asked.
       "I have no idea but I bet there's paperwork some where around here. You got a computer? With just a little work, I bet you could make them yourself and you could change the label to fit whatever you want to call your business."
       "I'll have to think about it," Julie said, but she was already thinking about making squash relish from the abundant crop of yellow squash in the garden.
       They carried two boxes up to the living room and set them on the table—twenty-four quart jars of merchan dise. Mamie wrote her a check for a hundred and eighty dollars. "I sell this stuff for $14.95 a jar and can't keep it on the shelves. I pay seven-fifty a jar for it. If you want to go up on your prices should you decide to keep the business going, that's fine. I'll just adjust my prices when you do yours."
       "I'll think about it for sure. I love gardening and canning. I cleaned out her closets yesterday. Know anyone who'd be interested in having her clothing?" Julie asked.
       "There's a Goodwill store over in Wichita Falls. I'm going over there tomorrow for a meeting. Want me to take them for you?"
       Julie refilled their glasses. "That would be great."
       "Cute kid out there. She looks just like Lizzy Luckadeau."
       "She's so excited about having someone else around with that streak in her hair that it's all I hear about," Julie said. She didn't want to discuss the fact that her daughter belonged to Griffin. She hadn't even had time to process the information much less put any part of it into words.
       Mamie finished the last bite of her second piece of pie and began, "Now about Edna. Back during the Civil War, some folks came out here and settled at Illinois Bend. Called it Wardville at first but then, when the post office was granted, they named it Illinois Bend because a lot of them came from that state. It had about three hundred people back then. That would be back when my great-something grandmother was born. She and Edna's grandmother knew each other and the next generation were friends and then Molly and Edna were born right before the flu epidemic of 1918. They would have been about two or three years old then. They talked about losing relatives during that time."
       "Why did she never marry?" Julie asked.
       "It was the Lassiter curse. Her aunt got left at the
    altar by a man and died an old maid and then the exact same thing happened to Edna. She never talked about her experience, but Granny Molly knew about it. She said she was to stand up with Edna and the night before the wedding, the man took off without even