Page 2 of Lightning in a Mason Jar

How fitting.

Bailey Rae leaped onto the tailgate of her eighteen-year-old truck parked behind her stall. She grabbed a can of bug repellent from her backpack and showered herself in an aloe-scented haze. Pitiful protection against Southern mosquitoes hatching from swamps in an endless horde.

Aunt Winnie had been gone for sixty-seven days.

Tears still welled up without warning at the least reminder of the person Bailey Rae loved more than any individual on the planet. But there wasn’t time to grieve. The estate wasn’t going to settle itself.

As she hefted a crate of canned tomatoes—five dollars a jar—she could hear Winnie’s voice insisting that estate was a hoity-toity word for a barn full of clutter.

“Aunt” had been an honorary title, since Winnie had been more of a mother than the woman who only came around when she didn’t have a better offer from a man. Bailey Rae never quite understood why Aunt Winnie had kept her or why child services never intervened. But thank heaven for unexplained blessings. Time to move forward, to leave behind all those painful memories plastered all over Bent Oak like out-of-date wallpaper.

The weight of gossipy stares beat down on her shoulders, fierce as the Southern sun. Heavy. Unrelenting. Weightier than ever on market day, with the field packed full of vendors and early shoppers, even a police cruiser on duty to monitor the expected crowd. She’d long ago learned to pretend indifference, a survival mechanism to withstand the whispers about her mom and Aunt Winnie, not to mention being a reject kid. Still, for some reason, today the small-town, judgy vibe really put her on edge when she needed to focus on unloading the first batch of loot from Winnie’s farm.

Her farm now. She blinked away the tears and got back to work.

One box after another. So. Much. Stuff.

How could a person possibly have expected to consume hundreds of jars of home-canned goods? Who needed seven microwaves, twenty-two quilts, and three crates of the same cookbook?

Yep. Buy three jars, get a cookbook for free. With any luck, she would only have a kajillion of them left at the end of the next four weeks.

A muggy breeze drifted through the open-air market at the end of Main Street, which wasn’t much more than two blocks with old storefronts. At least a quarter of them sportedSpace for Rentsigns in the front window. The library perched on the other end of the road, a redbrick building that had once been a schoolhouse. And one street back, along the river, the paper mill loomed, a stark steel building. Even with upgrades, it still looked like a relic from a bygone era, and somehow, Aunt Winnie had survived working there for thirty years.

No doubt about it, the town was dying. Well, for six days a week, anyway. On market day, though? Bent Oak came alive.

Farmers and artisans set up their booths. Livestock bleated, watched over by the 4-H kids ready to educate. The scent of hay bales and grilled hot dogs filled the air. A local pickup band tuned their instruments and performed a sound check before warming up with a beach tune, the heartbeat of South Carolina no matter how far from the sandy shores.

Pausing for a water break, Bailey Rae chugged half the bottle, then used the rest to refill Skeeter’s metal bucket. The old hound mix peered up at her from under the truck, his leash hooked to a leg of her chair. Skeeter’s eyes were two different colors. When he looked up with the brown one, like now, he was all soul. The day promised to be a long one, and she hadn’t wanted him to be lonely, so she’d brought him along. He’d been extra clingy since losing Aunt Winnie.

“Hang in there, pup. Before you know it, we’ll be living in Myrtle Beach, proud owners of a food truck by the ocean, just like Aunt Winnie always talked about.”

It wasn’t a big dream. But it was hers now, along with one of those cookbooks for inspiration.

As she scooted along the truck bed to grab another crate, a honking horn drew her attention. A familiar minivan careened across the field on shock absorbers long past their expiration date.

She should have known Winnie’s three best friends would show up, even though she hadn’t asked. And yes, while it was only one vehicle, they always traveled in a flock.

Of course they had come today. They would want to honor Winnie every bit as much as Bailey Rae did.

The minivan kicked up a cloud of dust as they drove past the 4-H booth and a slushy stand before pulling up alongside her truck.

“Yoo-hoo.” Waving, Libby Farrell leaned out of a back window, her thick braid swinging free. “Never fear, the reinforcements are here.”

The driver’s side door creaked open, with June Evans behind the wheel. It wasn’t her van, but she chauffeured whenever Libby’s son, Keith, was unavailable to help his widowed mom.

June grabbed the doorframe and hopped out. “Bailey Rae, honey, dry your eyes. The party has arrived.”

Barely five feet tall, June sported a neon-pink streak through her bobbed graying hair today. Blue last month. Highlights, lowlights, she changed her hair color on a regular basis. June once said hair was her way of appearing relevant to the students at the community college where she taught women’s lit. She still hadn’t recovered from the rejection of her submission for a class based on an Ivy League college course called “Feminist Perspectives, Politicizing Taylor Swift.”

Bailey Rae lifted her ponytail off her sweaty neck. “Love the rosy stripe. I see you’re the designated driver.”

Nodding, June hip-bumped the door closed. “Keith had a job interview, but he’ll be along shortly.”

Keith always had another job interview.

The passenger-side door opened, and a disdainful snort sounded ahead of the woman who’d never thought much of Keith Farrell. Thea Tyler was overdressed as usual in a Chanel-style suit that had been around for at least two decades. Some said she took her role as a councilman’s wife a bit too seriously.

Judgmental gossips.

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