Annie looked up, her forehead wrinkled and the corners of her mouth drooping. “If Mama gets married, I won’t be a Parker anymore?”
Ida left the album in her lap and turned, gathering Annie into her arms. “You’re a Parker now, and you’ll always be.” She smiled and touched a finger to Annie’s chest. “Being a Parker starts here, inside your heart, and it stays there for as long as you want it to.”
Annie’s lips curled into a smile. “I’m gonna stay it forever, ’cause I like being a Parker.”
They went back to looking at the pictures in the album, and as Ida explained the relationship of this aunt or that cousin a thought settled in her mind. She was never going to lose touch with Darla Jean again. Never. She would try to get her to remain here in Cousins, but if that failed she would sell the house lock, stock, and barrel, and follow them to New Jersey. They were family, and what Bill couldn’t do in his lifetime he’d done afterward. He’d brought Darla Jean back home where she belonged.
That afternoon, Ida went through the album twice. She explained the Parker ties to distant cousins, long-dead aunts and uncles, and showed pictures of Bill from the day he was christened up until the year he’d been diagnosed with cancer. That year they’d stopped taking pictures, and the joy of life disappeared from the house.
When Suzanna returned, Ida and Annie were still sitting on the sofa with Scout squeezed between them and piles of photos scattered about.
“Mama, look!” Annie grabbed a picture and waved it in the air. “This is when you was a tiny baby!”
A look of apprehension flitted across Suzanna’s face. “How nice.” She set the battered suitcase beside the staircase, then crossed the room and peered over Ida’s shoulder.
“This was taken on the day of your christening.” Pointing to the face of each member of the group, she said, “This is your grandpa, and that’s me standing next to him. Your mama’s the one holding you, and this here’s your daddy, on the end.”
The picture was a grainy black-and-white snapshot, taken from too far away to see the faces clearly, so Suzanna squatted to get a better look.
“Daddy looks mad in this picture, almost like…”
“He was always like that,” Ida said cynically. “Mad at the world, griping about one thing or another.”
Annie grabbed another photo. “This is great-granddaddy when he was little as me!”
Suzanna leaned in, squinting to see the faded photo.
Ida turned and looked up. “You shouldn’t be squatting down like that, it will give you bad knees. Come around here and sit next to me.” She scooted closer to Annie then patted the empty spot on the sofa.
“I thought maybe I ought to get busy with the cleaning. You said there was a lot—”
“There is, but it’s nothing that won’t keep until tomorrow.”
“Still, the sooner I get started, the sooner I’ll finish and—”
“Darla Jean, don’t you start acting like your daddy. Life is too short to always be thinking about what has to be done. Relax. Take time to enjoy every minute, because once that minute’s gone, it’s gone forever.”
Such a thought apparently weakened Suzanna’s determination to get the job started. She came from behind the sofa and sat beside Ida.
One by one they turned the pages of the photograph album, with Ida telling stories of thrice-removed cousins, great aunts, and generations that were long gone before she arrived.
“Your granddaddy used to claim his mama said her great-great Uncle Harold was rumored to have come over on the Mayflower.”
“Really?”
Ida nodded. She pointed to a photograph so faded Suzanna could barely see the figure standing in front of a cornfield. “This here was his boy, Fredrick. He never married and never had any children. Supposedly his sister, Helen, did, but I don’t have any pictures of her.”
“Are you still in touch with anyone in that family?”
“Heavens, no. There’re gone. Every last one of them. As far as I know, Tommy was the last of the line. That’s why Bill was so devastated when the boy left without a word about where he was going. It was a terrible thing to do.”
With a flat-faced expression that gave away nothing, Suzanna nodded her agreement.
For a long moment Ida sat there looking at that photograph as if there was more to the story; then she gave a sorrowful sounding sigh and turned the page.
Annie tugged at her sleeve. “Are you sad, Grandma?”
Ida smiled, wrapped her arm around the tiny shoulders, and gave Annie a squeeze. “No, I’m not. I used to be sad about not having any family, but now that I’ve got you and your mama, I’m not sad anymore.”
By the time they finished going through the albums and photographs, it was almost suppertime, and then after supper Ida said it was far too late to start cleaning now. Besides, it was Wednesday, which she insisted had the best lineup on television.
Once the dishes were washed, dried and put away, the three of them settled on the sofa to watch The Price is Right. Without a word passing between them, Ida patted her lap and Annie climbed up onto it. That’s how they spent the evening. Annie fell asleep shortly after the Kraft Music Hall came on, but Ida never moved. She just sat there tracing her fingers along Annie’s shoulder and cheek.
Later on, after everyone had gone to bed, when the house was silent and the only sounds to be heard were a night breeze rustling the trees and the faraway tinkling of a wind chime, Ida lay awake. She thought back on the evening and how good it had felt to have Annie snuggled up against her chest.
“Thank you,
