They wanted bluegrass, the music of the mountains. Those high bright notes, the close harmony of strings plucked and sawed stirred memories in her, lit a light inside her. A kind of birth. Here were her beginnings, in the music and the mountains, in the green and the gatherings. Family, friends, neighbors swarmed the picnic tables. She watched her cousins dancing on the lawn, her mother in her yellow heels swinging little Jackson to the rhythm. And there, her father with Callie in his lap having what appeared to be a very serious conversation while they ate potato salad and barbecued ribs. Her grandmother’s laugh carried over the music as Viola sat cross-legged on the lawn, sipping champagne and grinning up at Gilly. Her mother’s younger sister Wynonna kept a hawk eye on her youngest girl, who seemed joined at the hip with a skinny guy in torn-up jeans her aunt referred to as “that Hallister boy.”
