Chapter 2

His name was Calvin Averill.

Tessa and I stayed up half the night searching digitized newspapers.

The Averills had once owned the orchard adjoining ours. Their family and ours shared equipment, workers, storage buildings—almost everything.

Then came a fire in 1985.

The Averill operation collapsed.

A year later, Grandpa Amos bought their land at a bankruptcy auction.

And buried in a small-town society column from before the fire was one line:

Congratulations to Calvin Averill and Delia Hoy on their engagement.

Delia Hoy was my mother.

There was no wedding.

Instead, months later, she married my father, Hal Brandt.

Wade was born six and a half months afterward.

We had always been told he was premature.

Suddenly, I didn’t believe much of anything.

The following evening I went to Wade’s house.

He was in his garage working on a commercial refrigeration unit. I put the 1978 photograph on his workbench.

He looked at it.

Then he gave me a tired little smile.

“The packing shed?”

“You knew.”

“Since I was sixteen.”

A letter had arrived from Oregon.

Calvin Averill was dying.

He told Wade the truth.

Cal had loved our mother. She became pregnant. Then the fire destroyed his family’s livelihood, and everything fell apart.

My father, Hal, had always loved her.

He offered to marry her and raise her baby.

Cal left.

In his letter, he told Wade that Hal was his father in every way that mattered.

Then he added one detail.

I wanted you to know where the white stripe comes from, in case someday you have a child who carries it.

Wade had gone upstairs, parted his hair, and found the pale patch Mom had always called a cowlick.

Then he shaved his head.

He’d been shaving it ever since.

“I thought Dad didn’t know,” he told me.

“So you hid it?”

“You know Grandpa.”

I remembered being a kid and finding an old Averill produce crate. Grandpa took it from us and burned it.

“That name doesn’t get said on this land,” he’d told us.

Wade believed being an Averill by blood could cost him his father, his grandfather, maybe even his place in the family.

Then June was born.

“I saw that stripe,” he said, “and I thought everybody would know.”

I stared at him.

“She was a baby.”

“I know.”

“You waited ten years for her.”

“I know.”

“You made her wear hats for five years.”

His eyes filled.

“I know.”

“The paternity test?”

His mouth twisted.

“I wanted it negative.”

I must have looked disgusted, because he said quickly, “I know how that sounds.”

“No. I don’t think you do.”

“If Lena had cheated, then the stripe wasn’t mine. It didn’t come through me.”

“But it did.”

“Yes.”

He stared at his hands.

“And I hated myself for it.”

I thought about June in that purple strawberry hat.

“She can’t hear properly out of her left ear.”

Wade looked up.

“What?”

“She has moderate hearing loss. Probably since birth.”

“No.”

“You knew they wanted her tested.”

“I didn’t know about the hearing—”

“It was on the referral.”

His face emptied.

“You wrote ‘not in writing’ on the letter.”

He sat there silently.

Then I told him what June had said.

“My stripe makes Daddy sad.”

Wade folded forward and covered his face.

Behind me, a car door closed.

Lena stood at the end of the driveway holding a sleeping June.

She had heard enough.

“Fifteen years,” she said.

Wade stood.

She stepped backward.

He sat down again.

“For five years,” Lena continued, “I’ve wondered what was wrong with me. I thought you blamed me for the miscarriages. I thought maybe when June finally lived, something in you had already died.”

“Lena—”

“I asked you.”

“I know.”

“I begged you.”

“I know.”

“And the whole time it was this?”

“It wasn’t just hair.”

“No. It was fear.”

She shifted June against her shoulder.

“And you handed it to a five-year-old.”

Then she left.

For three weeks, she stayed with her mother.

Wade started therapy.

June started wearing her hearing aid.

Purple, naturally.

And one morning at her grandmother’s house, she came downstairs without a hat.

Her grandmother looked up from the stove.

“Morning, sunshine. Pancakes or waffles?”

June stood there waiting.

Nothing happened.

Nobody covered her head.

“Pancakes,” she said.

Two days later, she went to kindergarten hatless.

One boy asked why she had “old-lady hair.”

My seven-year-old son Beck immediately told him, “It’s a lightning stripe. She got hit by lightning and survived.”

By lunchtime, half the kindergarten wanted one.

June charged them one sticker apiece to touch hers.

She came home with eleven.

Meanwhile, I confronted my parents.

Dad listened while I explained everything.

When I told him Wade believed he wasn’t his real son, Dad stared at me.

“What?”

“He thinks you don’t know.”

Dad covered his mouth.

Mom whispered, “He knows?”

“Since sixteen.”

That was when another secret fell apart.

Dad had always known.

Calvin had come to him before leaving town. He told him Delia was pregnant and asked him to look after her.

Dad had married Mom with his eyes open.

“I didn’t need to be her first choice,” he said. “I just wanted to be the man who stayed.”

For thirty-eight years, Mom had hidden the truth from Wade.

Wade had hidden it from Dad.

Dad had hidden the fact that there was nothing to hide.

Three adults carrying the same secret in three different directions.

And June had paid for it.

Eventually Wade let his hair grow.

Six weeks later, he saw his daughter again in her therapist’s office.

I was there because June asked me to be.

Wade entered with nearly two inches of brown hair.

At the front was a small white patch.

June stared.

“You have one.”

“I do.”

“Yours is little.”

Wade laughed nervously.

“Yeah. Yours is better.”

She considered that.

“Why did you hide yours?”

He sat on the floor in front of her.

“Because I was scared.”

“Of what?”

“That people wouldn’t want me anymore if they knew where it came from.”

June hugged her stuffed otter.

“So you made me hide mine?”

“Yes.”

“That wasn’t nice.”

“No.”

“Didn’t you like my face?”

Wade’s voice cracked.

“I loved your face. I was afraid of what I saw in myself when I looked at you, and I made that your problem.”

She didn’t completely understand.

She understood enough.

“Are you sorry?”

“More than I can tell you.”

“You have to say sorry more than one time.”

He laughed through tears.

“That’s fair.”

“And no hats.”

“Deal.”

She reached out and touched the white patch in his hair.

“It’s soft.”

Then she sat back.

“I’m done now.”

Twenty-two minutes.

No hug.

No miraculous forgiveness.

Just twenty-two minutes and an agreement to try again.

As Wade and I sat in his truck afterward, Dad called.

Grandpa Amos had suffered a heart attack.

He was at County Hospital.

And he was asking for Wade.

Then Dad said something neither of us expected.

“He wants June too.”

Wade went completely still.

Dad continued.