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Martin’s–in-the-Mountains tomorrow,” she said. “Even the name is wonderful,
     isn’t it? Looks just like a storybook church.”
    “Careful,” I said. “You’re turning into Mother. ’Mark my words.‘”
    “Mark my words,” Mother had predicted during every family road trip, “the sweetest-looking church in any town always turns
     out to be the Episcopal church.” And though I’d sat picking at the backseat upholstery, perversely hoping the church would
     be something awful and prove my mother finally wrong—contemporary hacienda or a low-slung, pink-bricked monstrosity—it was
     invariably charming, nestled beneath swaying pines or sweetly white and ivy covered behind wrought-iron gates.
    Inside the cavernous shed of the farmer’s market, giant fans spun lazily from a ceiling still draped with crimped Independence
     Day bunting. Makeshift wooden counters were heaped with shucked corn, yellow squash, and tomatoes in varying stages of ripening.
     Fingers of carrots, dusty beets, and string beans competed for space with shelled peas—dun crowders, speckled pintos, pale
     limas—bagged in clear plastic. I touched leafy vegetables meant for day-long simmering with the fatty scraps of country ham
     one vendor hawked. Aproned women in a far corner sold crocheted toilet paper hats and calico lid toppers.
    Ceel headed for the flower aisle while I browsed, buying new potatoes no bigger than grapes, Big Boys and German Johnsons,
     baby cukes for sandwiches and salads.
    Ceel appeared beside me, her face half-hidden by sunflowers and zinnias, loosestrife and bachelor buttons. “What army are
     you feeding?” she asked at the sight of my bulging bags.
    My sister had no conception of feeding a family. “I got carried away with the atmosphere,” I said; Ceel’s childlessness resurrected
     itself when I least suspected it. “Look.” I displayed my prize find: two quarts of wild blackberries, dark nubbed jewels mounded
     in paper cartons, a roadside treasure not available in any Durham grocery store. “Still warm from the sun. What a treat. Another
     plus to add to my list of reasons for moving. There’s enough here for two cobblers. Remember picking blackberries?”
    “Huh,” Ceel said. “I remember the chiggers.”
    “Maybe I should get some more,” I debated. “To make jam.”
    Ceel rolled her eyes, sneezed into the weedy musk of a Queen Anne’s lace. “Let’s go. Five more minutes and you’ll be buying
     a sunbonnet and butter churn.”
    An architect’s sleight of hand, Ceel and Ben’s house seemed nothing but roof and windows, a lit lantern in the dusk. Their
     home was as sleek as ours was rustic, and I admired its minimal spareness, consisting of only three rooms: kitchen, living
     area, and bedroom. Distinctively contemporary, the house boasted a two-storied ceiling checkerboarded with skylights. Honey-stained
     wood floors were enclosed by sliding glass doors giving on to a wraparound porch.
    “Hello, boss,” Hal said, shaking his brother-in-law’s hand.
    “I locked up the Academy to make sure Hal made it tonight,” Ben said to me. “Classes haven’t begun, but the professor here
     is already working overtime. Come on in. Ceel’s making sure the lemon slices are precisely a quarter inch thick.”
    We followed Ben through the open room to a planked table Ceel had covered with bright bandannas to serve as a bar. Frosted
     green and amber longneck beer bottles poked from an ice-filled wheelbarrow.
    “Martini on the rocks, please,” I said to the young man behind the table.
    “That’s a tall order for a moonlighting teacher’s aide,” he said with a rueful expression. “I’ll need some instructions.”
    “Watch this highly technical process,” I said, and dribbled vermouth over an ice-packed glass, then quickly upended it over
     my palm. The clear liquid dripped through my fingers to a dish towel. “Now, gin and three olives, minimum. Perfect every time.”
     He bowed with