hamburgers on a grill—that’s called ‘cooking out’ around here,” he explained with sudden enthusiasm. “And there are two types of North Carolina barbecue sauce—Lexington and Eastern North Carolina. Here, look.” He excitedly found a container of sauce and showed her, accidentally spilling some on the table. “Lexington-style is the sweet sugar-and-tomato-based sauce, some people call it the red sauce, that you put on chopped or pulled pork shoulder. Julia’s restaurant is Lexington-style. But there are plenty of Eastern North Carolina–style restaurants here. They use a thin, tart, vinegar-and-pepper-based sauce. And, generally, they use the whole hog. But no matter the style, there’s always hush puppies and coleslaw. And, if I’m not mistaken, those are slices of Milky Way cake. Julia makes the best Milky Way cakes.”
“Like the candy bar?”
“Yep. The candy bars are melted and poured into the batter. It means ‘Welcome.’”
Emily looked over to the cake Julia had brought yesterday morning, still on the counter. “I thought an apple stack cake meant ‘Welcome.’”
“Any kind of cake means ‘Welcome,’” he said. “Well, except for coconut cake. You give coconut cake and fried chicken when there’s a death.”
Emily looked at him strangely.
“And occasionally a broccoli casserole,” he added.
Emily watched as Vance picked up the container of barbecue and forked some chopped pork onto the bottom hamburger bun. He poured some sauce on it, then topped it with coleslaw. He capped it all with the top bun and handed it on a plate to Emily. “A barbecue sandwich, North Carolina–style.”
“Thank you,” Emily said, smiling as she took the strange sandwich. He really was a nice man. She liked being around him. And he made her feel so small, like there was so much more to the world than just her problems, her grief. “This was nice of Julia to do.”
“Julia is a wonderful person. Her father would have been very proud of her.”
“I was just talking to her about the Mullaby lights,” Emily said, hoping he’d be more interested in what she’d discovered than Julia had been. “I’ve been seeing them at night.”
Vance paused in the middle of handing her the container of hush puppies. “You have? Where?”
“In the woods behind the house,” she said as she reached over and took the container from him.
“I’ll only ask you to do one thing while you’re here, Emily,” he said seriously. “Just one. Stay away from them.”
“But I don’t think it’s a ghost,” she said. “I think someone is doing it on purpose.”
“No one is doing it on purpose. Trust me.”
She wasn’t usually an argumentative person, despite her mother’s love of passionate debates. But Emily had to bite her tongue to keep from pointing out that leaving her a box of Band-Aids last night seemed pretty intentional.
“Your mother would get that same look on her face when she was a little girl,” he said. “She was stubborn, my Dulcie.” He hastily looked away, as if he’d said too much. Suddenly that old awkward tension was back, joining them at the table with apologies for being so late.
Emily toyed with the hush puppies on her plate. “Why don’t you want to talk about her?”
Still not looking at her, he said, “I get all confused about it. I don’t know what to say.”
Emily nodded, though she didn’t really understand. Maybe, like everything else about him, his grief was larger than anyone’s, so big that no one could see around it. Vance’s relationship with his daughter must have been a complicated one. But then, her mother’s relationship with everyone had been complicated. She’d been a hard woman to know. High-spirited and mercurial, she’d been like the mist from perfume. You had to be content to let a little of it sprinkle over you. And then, eventually, it went away.
She wouldn’t push him. And she would try not to be hurt by his avoidance. He’d taken her in when she had no other place to go, after all, and she was grateful. So she would talk to other people in town about her mother, find out more from them. Maybe she could find other members of Sassafras. Maybe she’d even see Win Coffey again and ask him about the relationship his uncle had had with her mother. He’d said next time he saw her he’d tell her about their history.
She liked that thought. Seeing Win again.
They ate in silence. Afterward, Grandpa Vance again checked the clothes dryer, as if something might have appeared during dinner. But again he found nothing, so he went to his room. Emily went