around a single little table near the back.
A man with a goatee played banjo on a small stage, a familiar but jazzed-up tune. Adam leaned over toward me. “Not bad.” Sarah wiggled off my lap and returned to the hall to trace the colored swirls. Keith, obviously deciding that servility would be the best approach to the situation, brought us each a cup of coffee. I thanked him with pointed warmth. Lil, who had recently learned to wink, gave him one. He stood uncertainly for a moment, then sat down beside us. Rosie and Gracie ignored everything but the banjo onstage.
Then the girls were on.
Gracie leaned over the mic. “We’re the Hope Sisters.” After the pale banjo player, they were exotic flowers. A few people waved and nodded from the audience. I realized, with a shock, they had been there before. They knew these people, this place. Adam took my hand. To my ears, they did Bob Dylan better than Bob Dylan. A woman in a long skirt brought cookies for Lil and Sarah, who stopped fidgeting long enough to thank her.
After the next song, Gracie covered her mic and said something to Rosie, who first shook her head then nodded. Gracie peered past the lights into the audience and pointed, “Those are our parents in the back.”
“Obviously!” someone shouted from near the stage. Gracie smiled, pulled her hair out to her shoulders, and dipped her head in a little curtsey.
“They hitched a ride with us tonight. They don’t get out much,” Rosie dead-panned.
Adam pulled me to my feet for the quick splatter of applause. Everyone turned to look. It was my turn to be mortified. I blushed.
“And our two little sisters.” Gracie motioned them to the stage.
Sarah bolted from behind us. Lil hung back. “Go on, Lil, go to your sisters.” Adam pushed her gently. Sarah and Lil blinked at the lights as they stepped up to the stage. Their sisters, who whispered away from the mics, positioned them. Then the four of them sang “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”
I stood behind Adam’s chair to get a better view. He leaned his head back against me. The last time I’d heard them all sing together in public had been at Momma’s funeral. I recalled how, when they held some notes, there seemed to be an extra voice, five rather than four daughters. I listened now, sure that I heard a fifth voice entwined. I closed my eyes and slid my hand down Adam’s chest to feel the barely perceptible hum of his breastbone under my palm. When I opened my eyes, Adam gazed up at me. We were submerged in our daughters’ voices. Then their harmony seemed to expand, then unravel and move closer, rising from behind me and on each side. With a small jolt, I realized there were, in fact, many extra voices. At the table near us, several women sang along with the girls. Scanning the crowd, I saw others singing. A song I did not know, sung by a room full of people who did not look or think like the people of Clarion, people my daughters might know for many years to come. This place—the house and the town we were in—were not what I had expected for our future. But here the girls would have more options. If there was ever a knock on the door, if anyone came for their father again or for them, they would have options and multiple paths. My world may have contracted, but our daughters’ had expanded.
They finished the song. Warm applause erupted. A few people whistled and called for more. Our daughters bowed. Beautiful, innocent, harmonious daughters.
We’d never grounded them before, but we did the next weekend. They also had to muck the stable every day and do the dishes each night for the next two weeks. But we moved their curfew to one A.M. on the nights they played at the Bent Card. Adam stayed up reading until he heard them return.
That fall, Gracie started college at the University of Florida but continued to live at home. On the weekends, the house filled up with young people. They were polite and respectful but they did not call us ma’am and sir, as the Clarion kids would have. They dressed differently, too, and they smelled sweet, like flowers or incense, and, eventually I realized, like marijuana. The boys, at first, wore Beatles haircuts, but soon it seemed they all had shoulder-length hair. All of them,