Rollie Kruse was there. Of course he was. He stood at the edge of the crowd near his big white trailer with his arms crossed, watching. Shelby wasn't with him. Shelby was behind Dot's counter, with her hair in a ponytail and a lemon-yellow apron on over her pink shirt, squeezing lemons beside Linh, because at noon she had walked across the concourse and asked June's mother if she could help, and June's mother had looked at her for a long moment and handed her a reamer.
"Mrs. Lindgren," said Lorraine Pettit, coming around the counter and crouching in front of the wheelchair. Her voice was gentle. "It's good to see you, Dot. It's very good. Now. You know the rule. I'm sorry. I have to ask you to show me you can operate the stand. That's all. Anything. And then you sign."
Dot looked up at the yellow sign. Then at the striped awning. Then at June.
June's hands were already moving. She'd strung the line that morning before the gates, fresh, with the keel line and the penny cup, and the ring was in her apron pocket. She took it out. Then she knelt down beside the wheelchair, and slid the ring onto her grandmother's left thumb, the good hand, and closed her own hand around her grandmother's, so that they were holding it together.
Dot's hand was cold and thin and shaking a little. June's wasn't, anymore.
"Together," June whispered. "Okay? I'll do the lifting. You do the rest."
Dot's gray eyes were very bright.
They rolled her up to the counter. Somebody had set the trick cup at the near end of the runway, with two inches of lemonade in the bottom, the sun catching it. The crowd went still. Hundreds of people, and you could hear the generators, and the Sky Glider creaking overhead, and a baby fussing somewhere far back.
Dot lifted her chin. Her lips moved. Nothing came. June felt her grandmother's hand clench around the ring. Felt her take a breath down into the bottom of her lungs. Saw her look out at the crowd, at all of them, the whole sweating, hoping, sticky, sunburned State of Iowa, and then, as if she'd found what she was looking for, saw her eyes settle on one face.
Shelby. Standing at the end of the counter in her yellow apron.
"Come," Dot said.
The word fell into the silence like a stone into a well.
"Take," Dot said. Her face was straining. Her hand shook. June held it.