From the Author
Sometimes there's a character in a book that isn't really even there. They don't say a word, but their presence is known. Felt. June Carlson DeLucca is one of those characters.
In the prequel to the Originally Pressed Mysteries, Tony comes back to Flat Rock on bereavement leave to help his father with funeral arrangements for his mother, who died of cancer. The woman doesn't even get to speak a line, but she's there, in all of the books. In the way Tony thinks. In the sorrow that his father carries. She even plays a small part after Tony's discharge from the Army in the reasoning behind him returning home, and how a part of him feels responsible for looking after his dad, now that his mother is gone.
There are five books written in the Originally Pressed Mystery series, and three more planned. You’ll get the chance to learn about all of the characters interlaced within those stories, but I thought that today, on Mother’s Day, I’d share with you some facts about a character that you won’t read about, but whose aura will also subtly be found within the pages.
-Kevin Zelenka
June Carlson DeLucca
June was the second oldest of four children, three girls and a boy. She was raised on a farm in a small town just north of Alexandria, Minnesota. Her father worked the land. Her mother kept the house. June learned early that things worth having were worth working for, and that nothing — not a crop, not a home, not a relationship — maintained itself.
She met Anthony DeLucca at a school dance. He was charming enough, and persistent, and she was smart enough to know the difference between the two. When Anthony took a job with the rural electric company, they were married and bought a small house on the northeast side of Flat Rock.
The house on Maple Ridge Lane was never fancy, and June preferred it that way. She kept it clean, kept it warm, and kept it full of music. There was always a student coming or going, always sheet music spread across the piano bench, and the sound of scales drifting down the hallway. Anthony used to joke that he married a woman and got a music school. June never found that particularly funny, but she let him think she did.
The Baldwin upright sat beneath the big bay window in the front room, where the light was best. She never wanted to upgrade it, even when she had the chance. It was hers. That was reason enough.
June taught piano for years, where she built something close to a small institution out of a front room and a well-worn upright. Half the town learned their scales under her watch. She kept handwritten notes on every student: their progress, their struggles, their tendencies. Slow the tempo here. Remind Jonah to play with both hands. Don't forget to breathe. She never threw a single note away.
She was a gentle teacher who didn't demand perfection so much as effort. Her gift was making students feel like they were already good and just needed a little coaxing to prove it. More than one crayon drawing made its way into her files over the years. She kept every one.
Tony was among her students, of course. There was always music in that house.
Out along the side of the house, Tony’s mother kept a garden that was as practical as it was beautiful. Tomatoes, Squash, green peas, snap peas, and of course sweet corn, although she admitted she liked Miller's sweet corn better. She did not like what happened to Miller's cornfield. She canned what she grew and wasted nothing, a habit inherited from her father and the rhythms of farm life. She never entered anything in the county fair, despite years of encouragement from Anthony and others. That wasn't what the garden was for. It wasn't for winning. It was just hers.
The front yard was a sea of flowers for all to enjoy. Morning glories, pansies, peony, and her favorite, marigolds. Come summer, you could spot June's yard from half a block away.
June was raised Lutheran, the default faith of the small Minnesota towns she came from. When she married Anthony, she made the switch to the Catholic church in town without drama or fanfare. She taught Sunday school when they needed a substitute, showed up every week without being asked twice, and was one of the first to stand when it was time to sing from the hymnals.
She was not the kind of woman who made noise, but rather, the kind who showed up. School board meetings, especially when education was on the agenda. Church functions, reliably. She had opinions, and she was not afraid to share them when the moment called for it. She had been known to hold her ground at a school board meeting when she felt strongly enough, but she listened more than she talked, and she knew more than she let on.
She loved tea, a quiet house in the morning before students arrived, the drive-in on County Road 15, the first shoots of green in the flower beds after a long Minnesota winter, Ray Charles, and her piano.
The cancer came in early April. At first, the words they used were careful ones — early-stage, caught in time, hopeful. The color came back to her cheeks. And then the next scan lit up like a Christmas tree. Liver. Lungs. Spine. The word her doctor used after that was aggressive, as if it were a personality trait.
She was gone before the marigolds came back.
At her service, the neighbors came. The church friends. Anthony's former coworkers in their work boots under their good pants. The parents of piano students, some of whom were grown now with children of their own. Each one had a memory. Each one was proof that her small life had touched others in ways that even Tony had forgotten or maybe never known.
Anthony still keeps the garden up. The flower beds. The marigolds. He doesn't make a thing of it.
He just does it.
June Carlson DeLucca does not appear in the Originally Pressed Mystery Series. She doesn't have to.
To my mom, and every other mother out there, Happy Mother's Day.