The honeydew melons lay rotting in the summer heat, their sickly-sweet perfume drawing clouds of flies that buzzed lazily through the thick air. Mama had always grown them in abundance, said they were Daddy’s favorite. Now they festered, forgotten, much like everything else since she’d been gone.
“You best come away from there, Caroline,” Aunt Ruthie’s voice carried across the overgrown garden, sharp as a whip crack. “Ain’t nothing good coming from dwelling on what’s past.”
But Caroline couldn’t tear her eyes from the decaying fruit, remembering how Mama’s hands would lovingly tend each vine, whispering secrets to the growing melons like they were her confidants. Those same hands that later clutched desperately at her throat that sultry August evening, eyes wild with terror at something only she could see.
“The sweetness,” Mama had gasped between rattling breaths. “It’s too much, too much…” Those were her last words before they took her away to Whitfield Asylum.
“I said come away, child.” Aunt Ruthie’s bony fingers dug into Caroline’s shoulder. “You’re getting that look again, just like your mama used to get.”
Caroline turned slowly, meeting her aunt’s worried gaze. “Did you know, Aunt Ruthie? About the melons?”
“Lord have mercy, what nonsense are you speaking now?”
“About how Daddy made her plant them. How he’d stand over her while she ate slice after slice, until she was sick with it. ‘Sweet things for my sweet girl,’ he’d say.” Caroline’s voice had taken on a sing-song quality that made Aunt Ruthie’s weathered face go pale.
“Hush now. Your daddy was a good man—”
“Was he? Then why did he make her eat until she cried? Why did he plant honeydew seeds in her mind until they grew into vines that strangled her sanity?”
Thunder rumbled in the distance as Aunt Ruthie crossed herself. “You stop this foolishness right now, Caroline Anne!”
But Caroline was already moving toward the garden shed where Daddy had spent so many hours “preparing the soil.” She knew what she’d find buried beneath those warped floorboards - the truth about why Mama had finally broken, why the melons had to grow in such abundance.
Behind her, Aunt Ruthie’s protests dissolved into a horrified gasp as Caroline emerged holding a small leather diary, its pages sticky with decades-old melon juice and darker stains.
“Sometimes,” Caroline said softly, “the sweetest things hide the most bitter truths.”
She looked up at the gathering storm clouds, a strange smile playing across her lips. Tomorrow, she would burn the melon patch and salt the earth. But tonight, she would read every terrible word, finally understanding why Mama had chosen madness over memories.
Thunder cracked again, closer now, and Caroline laughed - a sound caught between joy and grief, relief and horror. The truth was out, like a melon split open to reveal its rotting core. And somehow, that felt like both an ending and a beginning.