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"This," Wednesday says, setting their picnic basket next to a nondescript headstone, "is where they buried Annabel Lee."
They've been driving down the East Coast over spring break, Enid choosing their roadside attraction one day, Wednesday the next. Enid got the Museum of Ice Cream and Myrtle Beach. Wednesday got Salem, the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast– and now this graveyard.
"Wait, like the girl in the poem?" Enid asks. She'd had to read Edgar Allan Poe for their poetry unit last year. "She’s real?"
"'In this kingdom by the sea', yes. She wasn't really named Annabel Lee," Wednesday explains. "But Annabel Lee was based on a real woman, and when she died of tuberculosis, Poe immortalized her in his writing. Wonderfully macabre, don't you think?"
"Whatever floats your boat," Enid says, laying out their picnic spread. Sandwiches from the farmer's market; fresh strawberries from a roadside stand they'd happened across near Columbia; glass bottles of lemonade, twinkling brightly in the sun. She doesn't always understand what gets Wednesday so excited about the grotesque, but she's happy to listen to hear more of the smooth peal of Wednesday's voice.
"This probably isn't the actual grave," Wednesday continues. "Her father purchased six different plots, so that her lover, who he despised, would never know which one was her final resting place. But this one most closely matches Poe's description."
"That's messed up," Enid says, unwrapping her sandwich from its foil covering and watching the set of Wednesday's lips.
"If you died, and they didn't tell me what grave you were in," Wednesday says, suddenly serious, "I'd dig them all up. I wouldn't rest until I found you."
Enid reaches a hand out and pulls her close, Wednesday falling against her side with an affronted yelp. "I know, silly. Eat your lunch."