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here,” I drawled on. Nathan gave me his skeptical look, the one suggesting I’d been reading too many tragic tales.
    Now a foot taller than I, having shot up like Jack’s beanstalk these past months, Nathan peered down at me over the rim of his spectacles. Using his pointer finger, he shoved his glasses a bit higher on his nose.
    “You know, Sis, it’s only 6.3 miles to the Aarsgard place. Old Jack could get you there in … one hour and twenty-three minutes.”
    “I know,” I sputtered, somewhere between a sob and giggle. Nathan’s seriousness always unmuzzled a case of the sniggers in me. “Guess I’m just feeling a little blue tonight.” Then a true batch of melancholy hit me between the eyes. “First Holly will leave, then it’ll be Molly, then Polly. I’m afraid every time one of The Ollys leaves, they’ll take a piece of my heart with them.”
    Nathan’s eyebrows closed rank. I knew the gears of his rapier-sharp mind were grinding away in search of comfort words.
    We heard the creak of the porch swing and watched with unconfined interest as Holly and Flynn entered the house, ill-disguised blushes firing their cheeks. Holly unfurled her left hand, displaying a small stone of exquisite beauty, embedded in gold.
    “Holly … it’s lovely,” Mama stammered. “Just … beautiful.”
    Falin clutches entangled the couple, squeals and laughter flying unfettered about the room. The twins, however, fled grasping arms and cheek kisses as though the family had contracted a deadly disease.
    “Hey, Flynn, old boy—pretty shrewd—getting engaged on Holly’s birthday. That way you just had to buy one gift. Right?” Elo smirked as he shook Flynn’s hand, but his eyes gleamed with what looked like the stamp of approval.
    The April night hummed with laughter and claps on the back. Soon we perceived the sound of the Aarsgard wagon, winding its way up our drive. We rushed outdoors in greeting as Aarsgard offspring spilled onto yard and porch. As our family welcomed family-to-be, I was torn between wanting to discuss wedding plans with the adults and the desire to linger a while longer in the realm of my childhood. After a moment’s deliberation, I scampered off to the barn, joining those oblivious to the ways of love.

    On June 30, 1928, the belfry chimes of Christ’s Chapel pealed across the township of Coldwater, announcing Holly’s marriage to Flynn Aarsgard. From high noon until one o’clock, a chime tolled every sixty seconds, symbolizing the townspeople’s wish for sixty years of wedded bliss. Such was the tradition of our small community.
    Two weeks after Holly’s wedding, my thirteenth birthday arrived, at the peak time of cotton season we called, “working from can-see to can’t.”
    Like popcorn in Mama’s kettle, seedpods burst open, each boll releasing five locks of pure-white cotton. Overnight, Mr. Peavy’s green fields turned as white as the snow-capped mountains I’d viewed in Papa’s periodicals. To maintain high market value, Mr. Peavy harvested his cotton crop with haste, prompting a flood of pickers into his overripe fields. ’Twas a season in which we talked, breathed, and lived cotton.
    Images of my family during cotton season remained engraved on my mind. They never changed.
    At twilight, the twins and I habitually gathered at the kitchen window, making a game out of who could spy the family first. I thought of Papa and his brood as a troop of weary cotton soldiers, trudging home at dusk after a long day’s battle with the hot Texas sun. While the family made their way across washboard fields of ebony loam, I reheated supper and poured tall glasses of cool milk. And while my family tended swollen fingers, lacerated by razor-sharp cotton tines, I tamped down my guilt, for I was the sole adult in our family who didn’t sweat out each summer in Mr. Peavy’s cotton furnace.
     

Seven
    Papa always kept his family entertained and informed, seldom reining in his witticisms or teasing