"Who is Mary June?" I repeated. My voice came thick and slow.

"That's the wrong question, honey," said the woman. "The question should be, who was Mary June."

"And what's the answer?"

"A pretty girl who died of shame."

"Women don't die of shame. That's crazy."

"It sure is," John agreed. "It's crazy and wrong. Mary June never felt a moment of shame in her life."

"Did she have long hair? Blond?"

"Blond and shiny, like grain piled up in the sun. All the way down to her waist. Sounds like you've seen her."

"I couldn't have seen her if she's dead."

"Why not?" John shrugged, as if the dead had as much right to make themselves seen as anyone else.

"I don't believe in ghosts."

"I didn't say you saw a ghost. Maybe Mary June just left a piece of herself for someone to find."

I made a scoffing noise, a snort that made me sound bolder than I felt. A cold awareness was spreading across my skin. My body knew Mary June's story before I had even heard it. My body had experienced her climax on the rope in the barn. My body did not care if the girl who did that rope dance was a flesh-and-blood mortal, a hallucination, or a phantom.

As I was absorbing what John had said, one of his hard hands came to rest on my thigh. His fingers slipped under the fuzzy hem of my cutoffs and tugged at the edge of my panties, which were still sticky from the memories of that bewildering vision in the barn…

"Come for a ride with me, and I'll tell you who Mary June was." John stood up, his hand gliding along my leg. Mesmerized, I stood up, too.

The woman swayed in drunken clairvoyance. "Careful, honey," she cooed. "You don't even know who he is."

"Who are you?" I asked, my caution blurred by desire.

John grabbed my waist with both hands and pressed the length of his body against mine. The interweaving of his muscles reminded me of the strands of a leather whip. He bent his head to whisper in my ear, and his smooth lips grazed the lobe.