It was 1928 the spring that Buddy came home. He stepped off the bus at the Roe station with a canvas bag slung over his shoulder and a tall, blonde-headed young man right behind him.

Adele stood under the awning, twisting her lace hanky in her hands and fighting the urge to run to him full-speed. She had enough trouble walking in the new dove-gray heels Mother bought her, and it made no sense to scuff them up in the gravel. If her brother would keep his promise, she wanted her shoes to be good as new for the dancing and parties he’d take her to in Shreveport later in the week.

“Adele!” Buddy’s face lit like sunshine when he saw her standing alone, and Adele forgot all about her shoes and ran to meet him, flinging her arms around him and his bag, too.

“Oh, Buddy! It’s so good to have you home!”

His brown eyes flashed with excitement and surprise as he looked his sister over. She was nineteen when he last saw her, barely more than a child. But she was a lady now, full, auburn hair lying thick on her shoulders, her Irish features strengthened by time. She was no longer wan and lanky. She carried her head high on her fleshy shoulders, and her stance was firm and graceful, not fidgety and flitting as it was four years ago.

She was the image of their mother, only more beautiful. That was the way of the Rosalind women: fairer with each new generation.

“Look at you, Dell,” he said, pride set on his beaming face. “I woulda thought you was Mother standing there waitin’ for me.”

“Oh, shut up, Buddy. I hadn’t grown up that much.” Adele passed a hand over Buddy’s jaw and caught the gaze of the young man she’d seen get off the bus. He lingered nearby, close enough to hear the conversation, but a few steps away to afford them some privacy.

Buddy saw that Adele was distracted, and he turned and caught the sleeve of the young man, tugging him near. “C’mere, Matthew. Let me introduce you.”

The young man straightened himself and nodded.

“Adele, this is Matthew Eaton, from Washington. He’s a friend o’ mine I met through my adventures--and damned good at billiards.”

Matthew Eaton from Washington stuck out a broad, flat hand, and as Adele pressed her palm against his, a tingle ignited in the pit of her stomach and spread through her body like stout liquor.

He was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. He reminded her of the pictures of the athletes and scholars at Harvard and Yale, of the Olympic photographs she’d seen in the paper every few years. His blonde hair hung down from his crown into his clear blue eyes, and the line over his ears and along his neck was clean and shaven.

He must’ve been some kind of athlete. His skin saw the sun often, and a splash of faint freckles peppered his nose. Under his crisp white shirt, Adele could see he was strong and toned. He was at least a head taller than she was, so he looked all the more impressive.

“Matthew--my baby sister, Adele.”

“I know well, Thomas. She’s all you’ve talked about for the last six days.” His warm smile revealed shining white teeth.

Adele touched her cheek as she felt roses begin to bloom there. “Thomas?” she asked. “How odd. I haven’t heard anyone call you by your proper name since Reverend Wells dragged you home by your ears--"

“Some things are best left in the past where they belong,” he laughed, tugging at his earlobe. “Where’s the car, Dellie? Let’s get home. I could eat a horse.”

Stepping carefully over the gravel and doing her best to be graceful, Adele led the men to the sable Ford parked in the grass, and she smiled to herself as she realized Matthew Eaton hadn’t taken his eyes off her since he stepped off the bus.

#

Mother was exactly as Adele and Buddy anticipated. She choked back sobs and coddled her son and scolded him all at the same time. “Buddy Cavanaugh! You rascal! Why on Earth would you go off and leave your mother missing you for so long? Oh, look at you, you’re such a fine, fine young man! Look just like your father. Oh, look at me, bawlin’ like a baby. Are you hungry? Rascal! What would your grandmother say if she knew I let you traipse off to God-knows-where the way you do. She’s probably rollin’ in her grave as we speak. But you look so fine, Buddy! Who’s been feedin’ you? You don’t look like you’re starvin’, so thank the Lord for that.

“What about you, young man? Where’s your mother? I sure hope you visit her more than this devil visits me! What’d you say your name was?”

“Matthew Eaton, ma’am. Of Washington State.”

“Oh, a Yankee. Oh--pardon me, Matthew. I certainly don’t mean to make you feel like a stranger. We’re just not used to havin’ folks from up North visit us out here. In Roe maybe, but town is a lot different from out here in Baskin.”

“Not at all, Mrs. Cavanaugh. I feel very welcome, thank you. You have a lovely home,” he said, glancing at Adele.

“Such a polite young man,” Mother said to no one in particular. “Your mother musta raised you right, such good manners.”

“Indeed she did,” Matthew said. “If I just had more of an opportunity to use them.”

“Adele, set the table, please.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“You two boys go wash up, now. Supper’ll be on the table by the time you’re through.”

Buddy and Matthew disappeared to the back of the house.

“Such a nice young man,” Mother said.

Adele mumbled in agreement as she lay cloth napkins at each place setting. She grabbed a handful of silverware and frowned they were scuffed and slightly tarnished on the handles. If she’d have known Buddy was bringing company with him, she would’ve taken the time to polish the silver to a mirror-gleam. If she’d have known Buddy was bringing Matthew Eaton of Washington State, she would’ve done more than that.

Kitchen silences were always comfortable when it was just Adele and Mother, but with her brother and a visitor in the house, a humming electricity hung in the air, and Adele felt as if she were unraveling like a sweater.

Her feet hurt in her new shoes, but the heels made her feel glamorous and womanly, a far cry from how she usually felt. At home, it was just the two of them, and Adele passed the days in cotton day-dresses and soft leather slippers. She usually kept her thick rope of hair tucked together at the back of her head to keep it out of the way while she cleaned or sewed or helped Mother with the tailoring and alterations for the ladies of Roe.

Adele saw her contorted reflection on the surface of a spoon as she inspected a handful of them. She wouldn’t recognize herself, with her eyes darkly lined and her lips pomegranate-red, like the women in the fashion catalogs Mother kept at the boutique. Adele rarely made her face so dramatic. Roe wasn’t a dramatic town, and so beauty need not be dramatic either.

A squeal escaped from Adele’s mouth as Buddy tickled her sides. The spoons fell from her hands and clattered onto the table.

“Still jumpy as a hare, are ya?” he teased.

“Mother’s right--you are a rascal, Buddy Cavanaugh,” she laughed.

“To my dyin’ day,” he said as he pulled out a chair and plopped down.

Mother nudged past him with a dish of pot roast and placed it in the center of the table. She pointed to the seat across the table. “You can sit here next to Adele, Matthew.”

Adele refrained from reaction as she gathered the spoons again and distributed them to the place settings. She returned to the kitchen counter to retrieve the tall glasses of sun tea she prepared. She felt a little dizzy as the familiar scent of soap lingered with the unfamiliar scents of the men in the room.

Buddy had only been home for an hour or two, and the exhilaration of his return and the introduction of this Matthew Eaton into her life was overwhelming. Adele wondered with delicious anxiety what it would be like that evening, sleeping in her quiet country home with a beautiful Yankee in the next room.

#

The cotton fields surrounding the Cavanaugh property glowed in the moonlight like Southern snow, and the brush was alive with the metallic clicking of crickets and the low rolling of bullfrogs. Lightening bugs dotted and flickered like swirling embers by the butterfly bushes, and the porch swing creaked and groaned as Adele and Buddy swung arm in arm after the evening’s meal.

Matthew sat on the top stair with one leg folded up to his chest. He stared out into the dark, his head tilted lazily toward his shoulder.

Buddy dozed next to Adele, and with no one studying her, Adele took liberty to savor every detail of the Eaton boy.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard it so quiet,” Matthew said.

“It can drive a person crazy sometimes,” Adele said.

“Not me. It’s nice. We’ve been everywhere, probably heard every noise there is to hear. That can drive a person crazy. In the city, never a quiet moment.”

Adele thought of Roe, of how loud the train was as it thundered by the boutique every morning, rattling the glass in the display cases and shaking the windows. When she was a little girl, the train terrified Adele, and she nearly wet her pants every time she heard the whistle blow long before it got to the south side of town. She was sure the train would barrel right into the shop and run her over.

But after ten years of that sound, Adele had grown used to it. Often, she locked up the boutique at the end of the day and realized she hadn’t even noticed the train come through. If a person can get used to that, she thought, I suppose she can get used to anything.

“Have you ever been to an airport?” Matthew asked, turning over his shoulder to peer at her. His face was lost in shadow, but Adele could sense the genuine interest in his voice. She shook her head.

“That’s probably the loudest noise you could ever hear, those enormous engines firing up. Hurts your ears.”

“We have crop-dusters fly over the fields here all the time,” she said. “They scare the cows.”

Matthew laughed.

Adele suddenly felt profoundly foolish. Here she was speaking of crop-dusters, when Matthew had probably seen silver-winged jets and big-bellied bombers and glistening passenger planes that carried movie stars back and forth from California to New York.

Matthew did seem genuinely interested in what Adele had to say, but this family was probably something of a novelty to him, like what one might see in a country museum.

She turned to her brother. At twenty-six, Buddy had changed so much. There was very little of the boyish Cavanaugh left in his features. He looked so much like Daddy, his wiry red hair and his sharp Irish jaw. He was a different person now, and not just because he’d grown up.

With Matthew, he’d probably seen more of life than Adele would ever see in her lifetime. It was four years ago when Buddy withdrew the 500 dollars he saved baling cotton with Wilson and Jerry Howard. He packed his clothes and shaving kit in a small suitcase and announced he was off to make something of himself.

Mother about died. She’d always counted on Buddy to be the man of the house after Daddy died of pneumonia ten years before, and now that Buddy declared his intentions, Mother was forced to face life without a Cavanaugh man at all. She couldn’t very well tell Buddy he couldn’t go. He was twenty-two at the time, and it would be most unfair to make him stay in Baskin where the most he might accomplish was going into business with the Howard’s someday.

Naturally, a part of her panicked, afraid the world outside Baskin might swallow up her son, and she’d never see him again.

But Mrs. Cavanaugh was a strong woman, and she’d thus far raised both her children on her own income, tailoring at the boutique in Roe. She was a good woman and respected by the good women in town, and her children were clothed, fed, schooled, and happy. She couldn’t have asked for more, except to have her husband back.

The day Buddy left, Mother saved her tears for her bedroom, but Adele clung to him, overcome with grief until he pried himself away and boarded the bus for Dallas.

The first year was excruciating. The holidays were empty, and Mother and Adele could never extinguish the overhanging spirit of absence in order to enjoy the spirit of celebration. There were letters and telegraphs, but for the most part, Buddy was no longer a part of their lives. Mother and Adele came to accept they were all that was left of the Cavanaugh family, and they lived as such, paying all mind and effort to the boutique in Roe.

Then, one April day, a letter from Buddy arrived, announcing he’d be at the Roe bus station on Tuesday afternoon. Adele had no idea how his return would mark an eternal shift in her quiet Baskin life.