Before We Were Yours

Rill tries to adapt to her new life with the Seviers, who are kind to her and Fern. She and her sister are “to call them Papa and Mommy” (235). Since Fern and Rill always called their parents Briny and Queenie, this they can do. As Rill says, “The words don’t have a place in me one way or the other. They’re just words. That’s all” (235). She uses them to try and keep the peace.

Rill can see that Mrs. Sevier is battling depression. Rill knows, though Fern does not, that there is a small cemetery outback in the garden “where two babies born dead the three that were never born at all have graves” (236). Rill knows the meaning of “the old scars around her wrists” (236) and feels bad for Mrs. Sevier. However, Rill knows that it is Fern that the couple wants, that she is only here because “Fern wouldn’t stop crying and bed-wetting” (236) if away from her sister.

Rill tries her best to adjust, always looking for the moment when she can leave the house and try and get her and Fern both back to Briny and Queenie. She expects that the Seviers will tire of them. Rill watches Mrs. Sevier run a hand along her stomach and knows that even if she “doesn’t say the words […] she’s hoping there’s a baby” (243), at which point she and Fern will be sent away. She has no intention of going back to the home but instead will make a clear break for the river, her sister in tow.

One particular morning, she is sitting with Fern, now known as Beth, and Mr. and Mrs. Sevier, when Mrs. Sevier announces that she wants to take Fern to see a doctor, to get her a brace to correct her foot that turns inward. Rill is silently seething, as she remembers that “Briny says it marks us as part of the royal line of the Kingdom Arcadia” (242), but she says nothing.

While Fern and Mrs. Sevier are out for the day, Rill ends up playing the piano with Mr. Sevier, taking a first, introductory lesson. Mr. Sevier is complimentary, telling her she has talent. He also tells her, “Those are the hands of a piano player” (247). This rankles Rill, as “they’re Briny’s hand but Mr. Sevier doesn’t know that” (247). While they sit together on the piano bench, Mr. Sevier tries to connect more with Rill, saying he hopes they can be friends. Rill is awash in memories all the sudden, of Riggs, grabbing her with his whiskey breath and takes off running, hiding in the closet for safety.

Avery realizes it is time for her to return to her regularly scheduled life when her fiancé Elliot surprises her with an unannounced visit. Amorous thoughts of Trent disappear in the face of her current partner. Despite the excitement of his visit, the couple can’t quite seem to make themselves sit down and finalize wedding details. Avery tells herself that it’s just that he’s in a rush. They just need a quieter, saner moment to talk.

Avery decides to pay Grandma Judy another visit. While she’s there, she gets a strange request from her grandmother. Grandma Judy tells Avery to get rid of her past, quite literally. She wants her day journals, all her boxes of newspaper writings, all of it burned: “Don’t open the boxes. Just burn them” (258). Avery is astonished and tries to talk her grandmother out of the decision. She reminds her, “You didn’t say anything that wasn’t true” (258), but her grandmother is insistent. Avery is surprised but before she can press her more, Grandma Judy’s faulty memory takes her away to another time and place. Grandma Judy gives her “a conspiratorial wink” and says, “Don’t worry, Beth” (258). Avery leaves the nursing home feeling “sad and hollow” (259). Then she heads to her grandmother’s house to do the job assigned to her.

When she arrives at her grandmother’s old house, she is surprised to see a taxi sitting in the driveway. The driver behind the wheel is young, but he explains that it was a standing appointment, that a cab came for Grandma Judy on a designed day and time for “maybe a couple years” (264). The taxi driver says he took her to “a place on the water there” (264). The cab driver would snooze in the car or fish while Grandma Judy went off on the river for hours. Avery asks if the cab driver will take her there now and he agrees.

Rill knows something is amiss one day when suddenly Fern wets herself in the middle of the living room. The sisters hear a terrible and familiar voice echo from the foyer: Miss Tann. Mrs. Sevier’s voice quakes in a muffed protest as Miss Tann informs her “the grandmother of these children has petitioned to gain custody of them” (270). Rill recognizes this as an immediate lie because “Briny’s folks are dead and Queenie has seen her people since she ran off with Briny” (270). Still, Mrs. Sevier believes it and is shaken and sobbing. Miss Tann informs her that maybe they can fight this appeal for custody, provided that the Seviers are able to pay her three or four thousand dollars in the next day or so.

Mr. Sevier is informed of the news when he returns home and sees the visit from Miss Tann for what it is. He tells his wife: “I will not be blackmailed by this woman!” (272). Mrs. Sevier begs him to pay, anything to keep the girls. He keeps her “no more tears. It’ll be taken care of” (273). Rill isn’t quite sure what that means. It seems to her that this is the moment for her to get away with Fern, just in case Miss Tann reappears and the Seviers don’t have the money ready.

Rill creeps out of the house and talks with a boy on the lake that she’s gotten to know, a “river rat” named Arney with a drunken father and several brothers that all live together on a small shanty. Arney promises Rill use of the family boat to get away from the Seviers and back to Briny and Queen’s shanty. Rill tries to talk Arney into going with them. Zede will take him in, Rill says, as Zede has with other boys, like Silas. Rill is insistent enough to Arney that he unbuttons “his neck shirt” and reveals “a strip of dirty old sack muslin wrapped like a doctor’s bandage” (277). Entrusting the secret with Rill, Arney confides, “Arney’s for Arnelle but Daddy don’t want nobody knowin’ it” (277).

After Fern and Rill go to bed, Rill sneaks out of the house with Fern asleep in her arms. They find Arney and board her boat. Arney decides to come with them when Rill professes, “We’ll be your people now. Me and Fern and Briny and Queenie and Old Zede” (281). Soon enough they find the Arcadia, but the boat is not how Rill remembered it. It is in disrepair, no longer as tidy as Queenie kept it. Silas appears “running down the bank” (285) to them. Rill asks what’s going on as asks where Queenie and Briny are, to which Silas responds that she died three weeks ago. As for Briny, “he took to the bottle” (286).