Chapter 25
The sun had already burned off the morning chill by the time Junie and I spread the picnic blanket under a tree in Violet’s front yard.
Mid-July in Linwood meant wildflowers everywhere—columbine, paintbrush, lupine—and the air smelled like warm grass and river water and the strawberry jam I’d slathered on Junie’s sandwich.
Rowdy eased down beside the blanket with a sigh, settling into the shade, while Piggie Smalls snorted through the grass nearby.
Junie sat cross-legged, purple plate balanced on her knees, inspecting her sandwich. “Did you know the average strawberry has two hundred seeds?” she asked. “Ty has this seed catalog in the store I was reading a few days ago.”
I grinned and handed her a lemonade with a curly straw. “That’s crazy. Do you think we could grow a whole patch from a single strawberry?”
Junie nodded, straw already in her mouth. “Maybe if we did it right.”
We ate in comfortable quiet; the mountains providing the perfect soundtrack for this lazy day.
Up close, the siding on Violet’s house still looked like a before picture: peeling paint, a few boards warped from decades of sun and snow.
But from the blanket it looked almost cheerful, the new porch rail gleaming white against the old farmhouse bones.
Ty had left after breakfast for the rink, ready for an off-season practice with the Mayhem and an investor’s meeting to discuss the expansion project. He’d kissed Junie’s forehead, squeezed my hand, and whispered, “Have a good day, girls.”
Today, though, today was about me and Junie.
I pulled a fistful of clover and dandelions from the grass. “Want to learn something useless and pretty?”
Junie’s eyes lit up behind her black glasses. “I like learning.”
I laughed and started splitting stems with my thumbnail. “Flower crowns. My Aunt Maggie taught your mom and me when we were kids.”
Junie scooted closer, sandwich forgotten. I showed her how to thread the stems, how to tuck the blooms so they wouldn’t flop. Her tongue poked out in concentration, the same way Violet’s used to.
Ten minutes later Junie had a lopsided halo of yellow and white; mine looked only marginally better.
“This is cool,” she declared, plopping hers on my head. “Did you know dandelions are one of the first things to grow back after a fire?”
The soft chuckle that left me felt real, and so, so good. I set my crown on Junie’s head, and she grinned back at me. “I didn’t.”
After we finished our sandwiches, I dusted off my overalls and grabbed the two terracotta pots I’d picked up from the hardware store last week. “Next project. Each summer, Aunt Maggie insisted we paint her a new flower pot, so let’s keep the tradition alive.”
Junie tilted her head. “We have paints inside that would work. Mom let me pick the colors when we painted pots last summer. I can go get them.”
I hesitated. Junie hadn’t stepped foot inside Violet’s house since I arrived. Every time we’d been outside, she seemed to ignore Violet’s house altogether. I’d respected the boundary—because boy, did I understand—tiptoeing around it the way you’d skirt a sleeping bear.
But she was already standing, brushing crumbs from her shorts. “They’re in the art cabinet in the living room.”
I scooped up Piggie Smalls and followed, pulse thudding in my ears.
The front door creaked the same as always, but inside, the house had changed.
It all still smelled like sawdust, but the water-damaged drywall had been replaced, the ancient wiring was fixed, and the remnants of the demolished kitchen cabinets were nowhere to be seen.
It didn’t look like Violet’s house anymore; it looked like a house in the middle of becoming something else.
Junie paused in the doorway, one hand on the frame. Her gaze swept the space, careful and quick—everywhere except the closed bedroom door to her right. Rowdy hovered right beside her, her constant companion.
“It looks good,” she said. Then she marched to the corner cabinet, yanked it open, and pulled out a plastic bin of paints. “The mildew smell is gone.”
I let out a slow breath.
We hauled the supplies back outside, then returned to our picnic blanket where Piggie sprawled out to bake in the sun. Junie unscrewed caps with surgical precision, lining brushes by size. I watched her squeeze paint onto a paper plate, the blue bright as the river.
“Mom and I painted the birdhouse this color,” she said, not looking up. “She said it matched the sky.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Tell me about the birdhouse.”
Junie’s brush moved in careful strokes. “It was three years ago, right after you moved to Chicago. We got up every morning to watch out the window, waiting for someone to move in. A chickadee showed up the next week, and Mom bought me a nature journal so I could mark which days we saw it.” She paused, then added softer, “Mom said chickadees are brave because they stay all winter. She stayed all winter too, even when the chemo made her throw up in the snow.”
My eyes stung. I focused on a wavy line of whatever color gold she said mine was, settling for perfectly imperfect.
Junie kept talking, words spilling easy as the river. “Last winter we made glow-in-the-dark slime, and when the house was too cold, she put it in the microwave. It exploded, and the microwave glowed for days.”
I snorted, picturing my sister in that chaos. Junie’s mouth curved—almost a smile.
“She snorted when she laughed too, just like you do.”
“Yes, she did.”
She tilted her head, studying me. “Does it make you sad when I talk about her?”
The question was clinical, the way she always sought facts, but the words themselves felt like a slap to the chest.
“No, cutie. I love it. I missed too many stories.” My voice wobbled, but I didn’t hide it. “Sometimes I get emotional because I’m happy you had her, and because I wish I’d been here for the slime explosion. Was it gross?”
Junie nodded. “It was everywhere. We didn’t make slime again after that.”
I chuckled, drawing another little wavy line in a pattern on my pot. “I can’t say I blame you.”
“Your mom died when you were my age too, right?”
I blinked back tears, then let them fall instead, showing Junie that sadness was okay too. “Yeah. I was really sad, but I had my sister to make it better.”
“Just like I have you.”
She said it like a simple truth, then leaned forward and wrapped her arms around my middle, cheek pressed against my overalls. I folded myself around her and held on.
“Mom said emotions are like weather. Sometimes sunny, sometimes stormy. Both can happen at the same time and change just as fast.”
“She was a smart woman.”
We went back to painting, the only sounds the river and the scratch of bristles.
Then I told her about the summer Violet and I built a fort in the backyard here.
How we’d draped sheets over lawn chairs, pretending it was a castle, and Violet had declared herself queen, demanding tribute in popsicles.
Junie giggled, the sound so real, I couldn’t help but laugh too.
She then launched into the time Violet taught her to whistle with an acorn cap, which ended with a mouth full of bark.
I countered with the road trip we took when I was sixteen, Violet navigating with a paper map she refused to fold correctly, getting us lost somewhere outside Denver but finding the best cheeseburgers along the way.
The sun shifted west, shadows stretching long across the porch. Our pots gleamed—Junie’s a precise galaxy of blues and golds, mine a chaotic riot of every color in the bin. We set them in a row on the railing to dry.
Junie stood back, hands on hips. “Mom would approve.”
I slung an arm around her shoulders. “She really would.”
For the first time in weeks, the house didn’t feel like a museum of ghosts. It felt like a place where new stories could still bloom alongside our memories—on the porch steps, in the paint under our fingernails, in the flower crowns in our hair.
Junie slipped her hand into mine. “Can we plant strawberries next spring? The seed catalog says they like full sun and well-drained soil.”
“Deal,” I said. “We’ll start a whole patch. Two hundred seeds per berry, right?”
She squeezed my fingers. “At least.”
We left the pots to cure in the sun and walked back to the blanket; the mountains glowing pink in the afternoon light. The day had healed nothing, but it had stitched something bright and living into the holes grief had left behind.
Junie plopped onto the blanket and reached for her lemonade again. Before she took a sip, Rowdy barked, alerting us just before we heard the crunch of gravel under tires.
A white county SUV rounded the bend, dust rising behind it.
Junie’s shoulders tightened. Mine did too.
Sandra Diaz stepped out, smoothing her blouse against the July heat, her tablet tucked under one tan arm. She gave us a gentle wave as she crossed the yard, careful not to trample the flowers.
“Afternoon, ladies,” she said, her voice warm but threaded with that official calm she always carried. “I was in the area finishing another home visit and thought I’d stop by for a quick check-in, if that’s alright.”
Junie leaned into my side, Rowdy between her legs, and I squeezed her hand. “Of course,” I said. “We were just painting.”
Sandra’s eyes flicked to the porch railing, the pots lined up like a mismatched art show. She smiled, then crouched to Junie’s eye level. “They’re gorgeous! Which one is yours?”
“The one with the stars,” Junie said.
Sandra missed the importance of stars, but I didn’t. She and Ty talked about them every night, pointing out which one she thought her mom was.
“Did you have fun at the carnival this weekend, Juniper?”
Junie shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Good,” Sandra said gently. She rose, tapping something into her tablet. “Since we’re here, I’d love to see the progress on the house. Would you like to come inside with us? Only if you want to.”
To my surprise, Junie nodded and took the lead, ushering Sandra through the front door and narrating each improvement like a tiny professor while Rowdy and Piggie trailed her every step. When we stepped back out onto the porch, Sandra wore a warm, approving smile.
“Everything looks great,” she said. “I can’t wait to see what color you paint the living room.”
Then she turned to me. “Do you mind if we talk for a moment?”
Junie stiffened. “Are you taking me away?”
The question landed hard and fast, like she’d been holding it for weeks.
My heart dropped. “Not in a million years. She just needs to ask me something.”
Junie sank back onto the blanket with her animal entourage, and I refilled her lemonade, then followed Sandra just far enough away to give us a sliver of privacy.
“She’s doing so well,” Sandra murmured. “I can see it.”
“She’s trying,” I said quietly. “We all are.”
Sandra nodded toward the house, then looked back at me. “Have you given any more thought to whether you plan to stay in Linwood? Or if you’re returning to Chicago at the end of the six weeks?”
My breath caught, having avoided this thought for weeks. “I… I don’t know yet.”
Sandra nodded. “If you decide to return to Chicago, the courts would support full guardianship in your favor once probate clears. You’re her next of kin, and the will names you. It wouldn’t be a fight to get you primary custody.”
My chest tightened at the idea of taking her from Ty. Of leaving this place.
“But they’ll also consider her adjustment here,” she added. “How she’s healing. How bonded she is to Ty. Stability matters as much as biology.”
I looked back at Junie, at the house behind her, at the lopsided flower crowns sitting in the grass.
“I don’t want to uproot her again,” I whispered.
Sandra’s eyes softened. “Then you’re thinking about the right things.”
She gave my arm a gentle squeeze and walked back toward her SUV. Junie scrambled up the moment the driver door shut.
“Is everything okay?” she asked, worry wrinkling her forehead.
I knelt and pulled her in for a hug. “Everything’s okay, cutie. Promise.”
Sandra backed down the drive, giving us one last wave through the window. When the dust settled again, Junie tugged my hand.
“Should we paint the front door too?”
“Yeah,” I said, my throat thick. “Let’s do it.”
She grabbed a can of purple paint from inside, and we settled on the porch. The sun was warm on our backs, the river humming next to us, the pots gleaming bright on the porch—a little imperfect, a little new, just like everything else still trying to find a place in this new reality.
I watched Junie drag the brush in careful, perfect stripes, and I knew that this valley, this ranch, this life was where Junie belonged.
I also knew we were standing in the calm, and that the day grief pulled us both under was still waiting its turn.