The Winslow Incident

TUESDAY DAWN

Day Five of the Heat Wave





WHERE’S JINX?

By the time they headed out in the earliest light by which Hazel dared to navigate her dirt bike, there were twenty people assembled at The Winslow and they were running out of beds. Nobody was sleeping anyway. But Hazel was dead tired with a serious adrenaline hangover.

“Everything will be fine,” she told Jinx over the engine buzz.

Jinx sat precariously balanced on the motorcycle tank between her legs, leaning back into her chest. This was slow going because steering was awkward and the dirt road rough, but Doc Simmons lived out a ways and it would’ve taken them too long to walk.

And the dog was sick.

At first she’d thought he was bruised thanks to Honey’s kick in the ribs, but then she’d noticed the red in his weepy eyes and his incessant salivation—the yellow tank of the Yamaha was slick with dog spit—and realized he was suffering from something worse.

His front legs began to tremble and Hazel feared he’d slip off the bike. “Just hold on,” she told him.

He nuzzled her under her chin with his nose and then chuffed mistily. His red coat was dirty and matted but that was okay and she nuzzled him back, recalling how they had all called him “Red” until Patience renamed him Jinx. The dog earned the name when he caused Patience to wipe out on the gravel driveway of The Winslow by darting right in front of her pink Schwinn.

Now he twisted his head to look at Hazel with wet, inquiring eyes.

“I know, boy,” she murmured. “I know.”

Chuffing again, he sprayed her face with doggie goop.

“Don’t worry, Jinx.” She didn’t dare take a hand off the handlebars to wipe her face, even if what Jinx had really was contagious. “Doc Simmons will help us.”

But a few minutes down Loop-Loop Road, Hazel spotted a red truck pitched halfway in the ditch to the right side of the road. Pulling up beside the truck she realized it was Doc Simmons’ Ford. She peered through the cracked windshield into the cab, empty save for a few paper coffee cups and a worn leather case on the passenger’s seat. Then she noticed the drops of blood dotting the dirt that led from the driver’s-side door up and out of the ditch.

Dread clutched at Hazel and she wrapped a protective arm around the dog.

“Come on, boy.” She pulled away. “Let’s see if we can find him.”


Doc Simmons’ place was painted barn red; a low hedge framed his dying lawn.

Hazel pulled up the driveway, and Jinx leapt off the bike and scrambled onto the porch before she could even park. The dog had turned agitated, barking, looping around the porch.

She felt uneasy too, and she climbed the porch steps hesitantly, hugging her arms, suddenly less certain that she wanted him to be home.

“Doc Simmons?” she called out.

Jinx’s barking was the only response.

“We need your help,” she said, her apprehension growing.

There was no doorbell, so she knocked once on the door. Then she heard furtive movement inside the house, followed by incoherent muttering that told her Simmons was not only in there, but likely sick.

Had Jinx not needed help, she would have fled. Instead, she raised her hand to knock again.

Through the lace curtain covering the door’s window, she made out a man kicking aside a chair.

When he opened the door, her worst fears were confirmed.

Jinx growled.

The man barely looked like the Doc Simmons she knew. His face had transmogrified into a grotesque mask. And along with the rifle he held, he looked dangerous.

“Mad dog!” he screamed. “Mad dog!”

Hazel spun and ran back down the steps, Jinx on her heels, and jumped on her motorcycle.

She had never started her old YZ on one kick before and thanked her lucky stars that this time she had as she flipped it around in a spit of dirt and gravel and hauled ass down Doc Simmons’ driveway.

Just after she carved the corner of the driveway and turned back onto the road—her rear tire spinning out until she recovered and opened up full throttle—she heard a sound, like pfftt.

She had time to worry, Where’s Jinx? before he ran right in front of her.

She pulled up on the handlebars and jerked hard to the right, begging gravity to let up just this once.

Jinx never even yelped when the front tire of the bike came crashing back down.

Then she was down too, the full weight and force of her body plus the bike bearing down on her right elbow with a shatter and shock that blacked her out.





HOLLOWAY RANCH

Tanner knew something major must be going down when his uncle busted into his room and told him to get his ass up before the sun was even shining.

Ignoring the dull ache in his leg, Tanner scrambled into some shorts and his Sweet Leaf rolling papers t-shirt, the one that almost got him kicked out of the state fair until he promised to wear it inside out.

He hustled downstairs and outside. And what he saw out there next to the barn was pretty interesting.

Against the sun just coming over the mountaintop, the light still fuzzy across the ranch, fifteen cowboys sat on horseback. He was nervous and excited to see that they all carried rifles.

His uncle rode up and put a hand down to him. “Come on, kid, this’ll put hair on your chest.” When Tanner took his hand, Pard yanked him up onto Blackjack’s back behind him.

Tanner didn’t feel fully awake yet except for his nose smelling the horses as they rode behind the rest of the men in the direction of the south pasture, in silence until Pete Hammond reined back his horse and waited for Blackjack to catch up. Tanner noticed that his uncle’s right-hand man was looking a lot older and even more grizzled than he had just yesterday.

When they pulled alongside, Pard asked Pete, “Notify Sparks?”

“Yeah, told him what to expect. Nate Winslow, too.” Then more quietly Pete said, “It’s a waste.”

“Got any better ideas?” Pard asked.

“Find Simmons, run more tests, figure out for certain what it is. Could be lichen like in fifty-eight. Or arsenic leached into the creek.”

Tanner noticed that Pete pronounced creek as crick like an old fart out of a shitty western.

“You’re talking days,” Pard said, “weeks maybe. What if it is hoof-and-mouth?”

“You know it’s not.”

“I’ve got no choice but to nip this thing in the bud, Pete. Because if I don’t and it spreads to the rest of the herd—then word will spread and I’ll be out every which way there is.”

“Best to know for certain, is all,” Pete said.

Pard lowered his voice even further. “Half a herd can be replaced. Hell, even the whole herd. But once a reputation’s ruined, it stays ruined. I promise you it’ll be a stain that won’t come clean.”

“Your decision.” Pete rode back up to the rest of the men.

For once Tanner kept his mouth shut. Their demeanor told him that now was not the time to be a smartass. Seeing that huge bull Indigo at the rodeo—twisted and bleeding from the neck while being dragged behind the corral—had been enough to convince Tanner that once the ranch hands decided to get down to business, they didn’t screw around.

When they reached the south pasture Tanner was expecting to see something harsh, but not this. The cowboys were working a herd of fifty or so sick cattle into a trench that looked to have about the same dimensions as an Olympic-sized swimming pool. With dogs yipping at their hindquarters, some of the cattle could barely walk their legs shook so bad, and many gave out completely once they were in the trench and the dogs withdrew. Next to the backhoe, a bulldozer sat at the ready.

As soon as all the cattle were in, the bulldozer driver pushed a heap of dirt into the mouth of the trench. The cattle bellowed. There was no way out for the animals, and the whole scene was almost more than Tanner could stomach.

After they dismounted Blackjack, Pard handed Tanner the reins. “Walk him over and hitch him with the others. Tight. Understand? And come right back.”

Tanner dragged the resistant horse through the grass toward several others tethered to the railing of the wood bridge. “You messed up my leg, gluebag,” Tanner told Blackjack. But he couldn’t muster any energy to curse the animal further because he wasn’t sure he was up for whatever was about to happen. He didn’t like that I’ve made up my mind to hell with all of you look on his uncle’s face, didn’t like the reeking fear of those cows.

By the time he rejoined his uncle at the trench, a dozen men had gathered at the edge and were staring down at the confused animals.

Kenny Clark stood tensely in position where the opening had been filled, rifle pressed to his cheek.

Pard yelled over to him, “Hey, Ken, take it easy. Hold up a minute.”

“Okay,” Kenny said, eager as hell. “But I’m ready whenever you say go, boss.”

Tanner moved close to Pard. “Simmons said he thinks it might be something they ate. What if that’s all it is?”

When his uncle swung his head to frown at him, Tanner instantly regretted saying anything. What did he care anyway? He wished he could leave.

“Drastic situations call for drastic measures,” Pard replied, all business, no bullshit.

I don’t want any hair on my chest, Tanner decided.

Watching the last of the cowboys assemble at the edge, Pard shouted, “Looks like we’re ready, men.” Then a look came into his uncle’s eyes—uncertainty maybe but Tanner couldn’t be sure—before he commanded, “Fire away!”

With pained expressions, the men shot down into the mass grave. Quickly cocking their rifles, they shot again while the cattle made horrible sounds. A stampede ensued, but there was nowhere to go and the big animals tried to clamber over each other and up the sides of the trench, necks outstretched, hooves scrambling to find purchase in the soft dirt.

The men cocked and shot faster.

Tanner wanted to turn away but felt pinned to the spot, paralyzed by what he was witnessing. There was a lot of blood.

After what felt like a long time, the shooting slowed. When at last it stopped, Old Pete and a few others scattered around the trench and leaned out and doused the dead animals in gasoline.

Before Tanner grasped what was happening, his uncle handed him a length of board, the tip of which had been dipped in the fuel. Pard lit the makeshift torch and shoved him by the shoulder toward the trench. Tanner didn’t know if he could do it, he didn’t want to do it, but then all the cowboys were looking at him and his uncle gestured with eyes that said, Get the hell over there!

So Tanner walked to the edge—hoping his knees didn’t give out and he didn’t puke from the putrid smell the dead cattle gave off—and tossed the torch into the trench.

Nothing . . . until whroosh followed by a fast-growing plume that smeared the dawn sky black. And soon the ghost cries of the animals hanging in the air were drowned out by the obscene crackle of the fire.

When they returned to the house, he grabbed a few things and then jumped on the Kawasaki and tore out of there. Before he hit Loop-Loop Road, he looked back the way he’d come. It was the last time Tanner ever saw Holloway Ranch.





MATHERS MANSION

Patience sat on the mission-style bench on the wide front porch of her grandparents’ house, talking to the ghost of her Gram Lottie.

She preferred spending time here rather than at her own house because her grandparents paid her a lot more attention than did her parents, who always treated her as an afterthought. Once on vacation they’d stranded her at a gas station when they assumed she was asleep among a jumble of jackets and blankets in the back seat of the car when in fact she’d gone in to use the restroom. They were completely unaware until a highway patrol officer pulled them over and informed them they’d left their child behind a hundred and forty miles ago.

Now Patience gazed down at the sidewalk. Her Gramps Ben had gone over to Clemshaw Mercantile for what seemed to be the tenth time that morning.

“Gotta get stocked up,” he’d said. “Never hurts to be prepared.”

That made movies play through her mind of earthquakes shaking the wood frame stores until they collapsed and their windows exploded into the street, of fires racing down Park Street and all the houses ablaze with flames shooting out their rooftops, and floods uprooting the big trees in the park before swallowing the town whole.

And although the porch was swaying somehow, she was frightened to leave it—it seemed more dangerous out there. Too hot, and too many people around, talking loud, looking at her.

Of course, she’d been happy when Gram Lottie came out from the house to keep her company. She always made Patience feel safe. Plus it had been so long since they were together, so long since that awful night when Patience and Hazel tempted fate at The Winslow and Gram Lottie died and was taken away forever. At least, Patience had thought it would be forever.

But now Gram Lottie was telling Patience things that made her feel anxious. How much she looked like her Great-Great Aunt Sadie, and how Sadie had died too young.

Patience touched the charms on her bracelet while bits and pieces of the Prospector’s Day picnic photograph in Hazel’s foyer flashed through her mind: dark hair, white skin, spectral eyes.

“Everyone knows Evan Winslow drowned Sadie Mathers when she refused his affections,” Lottie Mathers told her granddaughter. “He lured her to The Winslow, he suggested they take a walk . . .”

Patience wished her grandmother would talk about something else, something nice. This was giving Patience a very bad feeling in her belly. Like when Hazel slapped her. Why did she do that? Patience put a hand to her cheek to stop the stinging she still felt.

“Obviously his workers covered for him, he paid them well,” Lottie continued. “So he got away with it. And went on to marry Ruby Waring. Had to bring his bride all the way from San Francisco so she wouldn’t know what a monster he was—and nobody dared to tell her.”

Lottie paused and Patience hoped she was finished.

She wasn’t. “After that everyone forgot about poor Sadie Mathers, except her faithful brother Sterling, who had suffered to discover her in that pond, with a look frozen on her face not of peace but eternal torment.”

Patience’s thoughts swirled around . . . whirling colors. Her brain one of those gigantic, sticky, multicolored suckers you buy at the fair. She wanted so much just to close her eyes and see nothing, think nothing. But doing so only made it worse because then images of dead cats and hanging men and people screwing flared in her brain like lightning strikes.

So she opened her eyes again and looked at Gram Lottie, who didn’t look quite right either. In fact, she scared Patience a little. No, a lot, she shivered.

“They buried Sadie in Winslow family ground,” Lottie told her. “Right above that deep pond, atop the rise that overlooks the whole mountainside, because it’s such a beautiful spot.”

The word mountainside went spinning through Patience’s mind on a brown ribbon. Beautiful was turquoise. She scratched at the ants crawling beneath her skin. The scratches burned. Her silver bracelet felt cold against her wrist.

“And that felt so wrong to her brother Sterling, that she should be interred everlasting to the land of her murderer, that he went back and dug her up and reburied her behind the church next to a little oak sapling—young and tender, like her.”

Gram Lottie would not stop. Patience didn’t even bother to try and make her stop. Patience couldn’t stop shivering either.

“Sterling Mathers never let Evan Winslow forget that he knew what Evan had done to his sister. So when Evan thought enough time had passed that he could get away with it again, he killed Sterling too, in the very same spot, and left your grandfather Ben to be raised fatherless.

Patience’s mind spun so fast now that her grandmother’s words became a blur.

“And they tried and they tried to fill in that pond, but it just kept coming back up wet with the blood and the tears of the Mathers family.”

Patience could not listen to another word and although the steps were undulating and difficult to navigate, she dared to leave the porch.





POISON

It was tough to make out what Tanner Holloway was saying to him. Sean could see words sliding out of Tanner’s mouth but they were so slippery he couldn’t grab hold of them.

Hand outstretched, Sean finally caught the word ranch . . . then fire.

But he didn’t want to think about that. Really, he didn’t want to think about anything. Not even Hazel. Because they’d had that fight.

Was that today? he marveled.

No, yesterday.

It’d been a long two days.

Freakishly long. And freakishly hot.

Where have I been? he wondered. He’d taken off his shirt somewhere and lost it, but managed to hold onto the shades he’d swiped from Clemshaw Mercantile.

Now he could hear the sun beating down on their heads where they stood on the sidewalk in front of the Mercantile. And Tanner was saying something about a bucket full of bull guts in the barn and cows eating marigolds and jimsonweed.

Sean couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. It didn’t matter—he wasn’t hungry. Maybe he’d never eat again. That’d be interesting.

He tried to focus back on Tanner but the picture kept shifting. Hold still, he thought.

Then Sean heard himself talking: “I tried to tell him. I tried and Melanie knew I was trying, not making time with her—even if she is pretty—while he was on the pot and I was already late with deliveries. But he wouldn’t listen. You are way behind schedule, mister! Violet and Daisy eat your eggs! Screw. Him!” He felt as though his brain had just barfed.

“Tell him what?” Tanner’s mouth seemed gigantic, like he could swallow Sean’s head whole if he wanted to.

So Sean stepped back from him.

The mouth opened wide again. “Tell him what?”

Sean searched his mind for what that question could possibly mean. “What?”

“What, you dumbf*ck?”

“It smelled good.”

“What did?”

“The bacon.”

Tanner gave him a strange look.

“Don’t say anything to anybody he said.”

Tanner looked even more perplexed.

“I should’ve tried harder?” Sean didn’t actually want the answer.

“Let’s split, man.”

“Can’t.”

“Why the hell not?”

“People are sick.”

“So?”

“It’s worse than food poisoning.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Worse than mayo got left out too long in the sun.”

“All the more reason to split.”

“Gonna get sicker.”

“What’s it to you?”

“Gray and sticky. Tasted okay but it wasn’t okay. Don’t say anything to anybody.”

“You are completely f*cked up, Adair. What about you, juicy fruit? Wanna go for a ride?”

Suddenly Patience was right there. Has she been here the whole time? Sean had no idea. Her hair was piled up on top of her head and she was wearing practically nothing; her collarbone looked exposed and fragile. Like little bird bones, he thought.

She stared at him with dark eyes, stared at him as though she knew what he was thinking.

You are beautiful, Sean thought. Or maybe he said it out loud; he wasn’t sure.

He leaned closer to Patience, to get a better look because the picture of her kept shifting too. But then Tanner’s sudden laughter was so high pitched and loud in Sean’s ear that he became annoyed and pulled back.

“I’m going ghost hunting,” he informed Patience. “See you at the merry-go-round.” And above the calamitous sound he created pounding away from them down the wood plank sidewalk, he called back to her, “Don’t eat all the candy!”

What seemed like a lot later (but who really knew?) he sat against a wrought iron fence inside the church cemetery. His head hung down to his chest like a man defeated. He couldn’t remember whose headstone he was looking for. And if he couldn’t remember, he would lose the ghost hunt. And if he lost the ghost hunt, then he could never go back to the park. And then he’d never see Hazel again.

But something else was bothering him.

There are a lot of things bothering me, he thought.

Deciding it best to concentrate on one thing at a time, he rose and trudged back up the hill to look over the grave markers once more. He started with the oldest headstone first: Sadie Mathers’ grave, shaded beneath the canopy of an enormous oak.

Not her, Sean thought and moved to the next granite marker.

STERLING MATHERS ~ 1892

TEARS GATHER UPON THE GRAVE

OF ONE SENT YOUNG TO SLUMBER

Not him.

Sean stood for a moment, hanging onto a low, scraggly oak branch. Who am I looking for?

At last it came to him.

Hawkin Rhone.

So this wasn’t the right place at all. Where was that?

Sean probed his memory but it was slow going because his head still felt thick. It would come to him. It had to.

Hustling out of the church cemetery, he tried to remember all the places in Winslow that were good for ghost hunting.

Because he needed to talk to Hawkin Rhone right away.

About poison.





THE OLD APPLE ORCHARD

Zachary Rhone wandered between rows of trees, realizing that their branches had grown skinny and mean. Nobody wanted to tend the orchard. Look at it. Zachary swallowed in disgust. Deep down, he knew he shouldn’t be hanging around out here.

The orchard makes people do things. A shudder snaked along his spine.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement down by his house. Tendrils of dread wrapped around his heart. The wolf is back, he decided, and the tendrils tightened their grip.

He needed to get down there. He needed to protect his wife.

But leaving the orchard proved difficult; the trees were lonely and loath to let him go.

When at last he broke free, he sprinted downhill, half-blinded by sunlight, wholly mad he had begun to suspect, running and tripping and falling his way to her.

In the backyard next to the clothesline, Melanie writhed and thrashed in dandelion-infested grass. Zachary raced toward his wife only to skid to a dead stop five feet away.

She wore her favorite sundress, the blue one that matched her eyes.

Snakes slithered in and out of her mouth.

Revulsion poured through Zachary. “Melanie—don’t look at them,” was all he could manage, as if the godless creatures would leave his sight if only she would close her eyes.

Yet he couldn’t tear his eyes away either and he watched as she convulsed, bluest eyes rolling back into her head, red hair drenched in sweat, soft hands clutching her throat.

Then he understood: She can’t breathe.

On the heels of horror arrived panic. They’re choking her!

He dashed to the chopping block next to the bakery, hesitating only a moment before he wrested the ax from the stump and rushed back to where his sweet Melanie lay.

She reached up toward him, pale fingers splayed. “Help me,” he thought he heard her say.

Panting hard, he stood spellbound while his lungs constricted until he felt as though he were suffocating too. He wanted to look away, the snakes were that obscene, but he could not—he had to save his wife.

When he raised the ax above his head, her eyes went wide, favoring him with oceans of blue.





SHATTERED

If she hadn’t had to walk back into town, Hazel would have never found her father. But her right elbow was shattered and the Yamaha’s front forks were bent, so riding the bike was no longer an option. Had it been, she wouldn’t have taken this shortcut and run into her dad’s Jeep parked in the middle of the fire road. Nowhere to be seen, she figured he must be in the forest.

Usually the woods were inviting this time of morning, the sun lighting the pines on high, leaving the trails in shade. Only now things felt spooky and she was hesitant to leave the bright, open fire road for the dark of the trees. After all, there’d been those snapping sounds in the woods around Three Fools Creek Sunday afternoon. Loud snapping sounds.

Stop being so stupid. She forced herself to plunge into the woods.

As she plodded along the trail, the pain in her arm forced her to relive the impossible things that had happened at Doc Simmons’ place. After she had come to on Loop-Loop Road, the first thing she wondered was how long she’d been unconscious. The second was whether Simmons would come over and shoot her as she lay in the dirt watching the sun finally rise above the ridgeline.

Now she was frightened to even consider how severely she might be injured. Nothing had ever hurt this much. Her face was wet so she knew she was crying, her nose running, though she was barely aware. For it was all she could do to keep moving forward rather than curl up into a tight little ball and surrender to a bed of cool ferns.

She came upon her dad patrolling beside Ruby Creek. He didn’t look surprised to see her, nor did he seem concerned about the blood on the shredded elbow she cradled against her side. Instead, he asked her, “Can you smell that smoke?”

“You can see it.” She turned and pointed west to where a black cloud diffused into the clear sky.

“Coming from Holloway Ranch. That’s what I thought.”

Hazel’s heart leapt with sudden hope. During the summer months, Sparks Brady manned the forest service fire lookout deep in the woods south of Winslow. Her dad took her once to see the seventy-foot tall wooden tower with its 360-degree view of the forest and its brass Osborne Firefinder instrument in the center of the cab. “Do you think Sparks will respond?” she asked.

“Pard’s men gave me a heads-up.” He peered southward. “So I’m sure they notified Sparks as well. You know your uncle—no loose ends.”

Of course not, Hazel thought, while her heart sank in disappointment.

When her father looked back at her, he frowned. “Were you out all night, young lady?”

“Dad!” She shook her head at him as if to say, Let’s start over, here. “We need to figure out what’s going on. The phones are dead and so the Internet’s down too. And Rose and Owen and Honey and a whole bunch of others are acting sick and weird at The Winslow and they asked after you and when I went to get Simmons he—”

“I haven’t seen them for some time now.” He looked over first one shoulder toward Dead Horse Point, then the other in the direction of the bridge. “All night in fact.”

“Dad. What’s wrong with you?”

“But they’re here, Hazel.” His eyes searched a stand of bristlecone pine across the creek. “Waiting for me to let my guard down.”

“Dad,” she whimpered, “I’m hurt.”

He stared at her with a blank expression, not seeming to comprehend. “Doc Simmons can fix you up.”

“No he can’t!” Cold panic stabbed her. “I think he’s hurt because he wrecked his truck. He has a dark crusty bandage on his forehead and he’s acting totally insane.”

Her father grimaced as if he found that image distasteful. “A head injury is nothing to fool around with.”

“I know, Dad! Now listen to me, we need to get help up here.”

“Can’t do that now,” despair suffused his voice. “Isn’t any way to do that now.”

“Why not?”

“We need to take care of our own.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Can’t let anybody in. They’ll only stir up trouble for us.”

“Then let’s get in the Jeep and go!” She’d never been more frustrated or in greater pain.

“I can’t leave.” Confusion washed over his face. “What will happen if I leave?”

“Then I’ll go,” she told him, and suddenly felt very alone.

“You’re just like your mother.”

She felt as if she’d been gut punched. “How can you say that to me?” She would have rather been gut punched. “She left me too, Dad.”

He placed his hand on her shoulder, sending bright new spikes of pain up and down her arm. “You won’t leave me, will you?” He sounded so afraid.

She looked at her father standing in his rumpled uniform, shaking head to toe in the early morning sunshine, and promised, “No, Dad, I won’t leave you.”


Hazel followed Ruby Creek up toward The Winslow, the scent of pinesap growing with the warmth of the day, the ache in her elbow deepening with the exertion of hiking, the strength of the promise she just made to her dad weakening in the face of her nagging desire to flee and never look back.

But one-armed, she couldn’t drive the Jeep, and she couldn’t think of any vehicle around town she could manage. She racked her brain, Who has an automatic?

The creek beside her answered with a useless roar, telling her all it knew about high water after the wet spring, but nothing about transmissions.

Then she realized that even if she found an automatic to borrow, it was unlikely she could handle the sharp curves of the pass using only one hand to steer. Defeated, before she’d even turned the key.

She glanced up at the towering pines, their branches like the spokes of enormous wheels, and wished she could fly away instead, skip the pass altogether. Because everyone’s in a bad way so we need help and Simmons is worse than no help.

“He’s a f*cking lunatic,” she told the trees.

She crunched down the trail and thought about Old Pete saying that they have to assume it’s contagious, and figured if she was going to get it, she would’ve gotten it by now. From what little she’d gleaned out of the lessons Gus Bolinger had taught on European and early American history, it seemed to her that when contagious disease sweeps through a town, not every citizen falls to the fever—some are spared to change soiled sheets and swab sweating brows.

Hazel swabbed her own sweating brow with the hem of her tank top.

If it isn’t food poisoning, she wondered, what is it? What’s making everybody climb out of their skulls? She looked to the blank sky, hoping a few answers might fall from it.

Only it wasn’t everybody. Not her, at least not yet. And Samuel Adair wasn’t sick, or her grandmother. Certainly Kenny Clark seemed in fine form yesterday, almost running over Jinx and telling her the dog wouldn’t be so lucky next time. And he wasn’t, she thought with renewed anguish.

There was no question Jinx was injured; now she could only pray that his injuries weren’t fatal. After the crash, she’d scraped herself up off Loop-Loop Road and gone to him. “It’s only a bad dream, boy,” she’d sobbed to the unconscious dog—the same soothing words she always whispered whenever he twitched in his sleep. Unable to carry him, she’d had no choice but to leave him there, but not before promising to come back with help, not before begging her dog to please, please wake up from this really, really bad dream.

The creek was rushing in the opposite direction Hazel walked. It would’ve been nice to get in, rinse her bloodied arm, cool off . . . but she felt that she needed to keep moving.

She wondered if Tanner had it. She hadn’t seen him since he broke the mirror in the Mother Lode Saloon Saturday night. Her Uncle Pard wasn’t sick either, or at least he hadn’t sounded like it when he was yelling at her dad last night.

Something skittered in the ferns beside the trail and Hazel jumped half a foot off the ground.

Just a bird. A bird. A stupid little bird.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm her thudding heart. Get a grip.

She hurried down the path, her mind racing ahead of her feet. Had any of the tourists who visited over the weekend come down sick? If it’s worse than food poisoning, then people will go to the doctor, right? Maybe somebody would figure out that they’d gotten it in Winslow. Maybe somebody was on their way up right now.

I can’t count on it, she conceded. Then she’d have to find someone who seemed okay and get them to drive down to the valley. Samuel Adair, maybe.

If only she could just pick up a cell phone like everyone else in the civilized world. Wouldn’t that be nice? she thought bitterly, glancing at the mountaintops that surrounded them on each side.

Leaving the creek, she took the path that led to the backyard of The Winslow, her elbow throbbing mercilessly to the beat of her heart. When she reached the gazebo and heard a car turning around in the driveway, she dashed around front. Somebody’s driving, she thought. That’s good.

Halfway down the stone steps, she realized it was Kenny Clark, who must’ve noticed her in his rearview mirror because he slammed on the brakes and the El Camino went sliding in the gravel for a few feet. Then he backed up to where she now stood at the base of the staircase.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she yelled at the back of his head through the open rear window. Kenny’s hair was light and curly tight and reminded her of cheap carpet. “This is private property—didn’t you see the sign?”

He leaned his head out the side window and gestured with his thumb toward the hotel. “You’d better get up there with the rest of the sickos.”

“Screw you, Kenneth.”

“Whoa!” He opened his car door. “Those are awful big words for a gal whose big boyfriend doesn’t seem to be anywhere around for once.”

Glancing down, she spied a nice-sized rock a couple of feet away. She picked it up with her good arm and hoped that he made her use it.

“But then Sean Adair is really just a big p-ssy.” He stepped out of the El Camino.

Kenny and Sean had gone at it before, back when Sean was still scrawny and Kenny beat the crap out of him in front of Cal’s Fish ’n Bait. Suddenly Hazel hated Kenny Clark more than she’d ever hated anybody or anything in her entire life. She took three rage-filled strides toward him, holding the rock behind her, ready to swing at his head. C’mon . . .

“Or should I say, Sean Adair is p-ssy-whipped?” He was only four feet away now.

She didn’t care that he could come over and flatten her with one punch or worse, tweak her wounded arm. All she cared about was wiping that smirk off his face. “If you say one more word about him, if you even say his name, I’ll smash this rock into your ugly mouth.”

And Kenny must have believed her because he backed off. That or he was scared she had the sickness and didn’t want to get too close. Whichever, he couldn’t seem to come up with anything else to say to her and he got back into his El Camino and gunned it down the driveway.

She threw the rock after him but her arm was tired from the weight of it so it just landed in the gravel with a thud as she watched him tear down the drive and whip right onto Ruby Road.

Then she sank down to the driveway and cried.

Cried because her elbow hurt like hell and she was scared bone chips would travel her veins and lodge in her heart. She cried for Jinx, her sweet dog who never deserved to be shot at or have a motorcycle crash into his furry little body. She cried for her dad, who she feared was losing his mind and his nerve and who knew if he’d ever find them again. And she cried for Sean, who was sick and missing and she missed him and had only herself to blame for that.

After a while she had nothing left in her so she let out a shaky sigh, got to her feet, and headed for The Winslow. Crossing the yard, she went around to the side kitchen door, the way Sean always entered the hotel. Maybe she’d find him sitting at the kitchen table, happy to see her, as though nothing had ever happened . . .

Instead, Sean’s father Samuel Adair sat at the table drinking from a bottle of bourbon. Honey Adair had been busy cooking; every pot and pan in the kitchen was in use. What looked to be pancake batter coated the countertops, the floor, the copper hood above the stove.

“Has Sean come home?” Hazel asked Honey.

Honey was concentrating on something inside the kitchen sink. “Why won’t you cook?” she said, oblivious to Hazel.

But Samuel was looking at Hazel bleary-eyed. “If you see Sean, tell him to hightail it back here. His brother’s been asking for him.”

Hazel suddenly felt afraid for the small boy. “Where is Aaron?”

Samuel made a noise, “Blaah,” and took back to his bottle.

“Whoops-a-daisy,” Honey said.

Hazel turned to see that she had started a fire in the sink. Hazel dashed over and cranked on the tap, running cold water over flaming newspaper, burnt bread, and melted butter. Gaping at Honey, Hazel struggled to keep exasperation out of her voice. “What are you doing?”

Blank-faced, Honey blinked at Hazel. “Making toast.”

“Stop cooking, Honey, before you burn the whole place down.” She took the matchbook from Honey’s hand and glanced at the cover. Beneath a pig in a bib eating ribs, it read, STEPSTONE BBQ GRILL.

Hazel shoved the matchbook into her pocket and turned back to Samuel. “Now where’s Aaron?”

“Upstairs,” Samuel said.

“Upstairs? Alone?” Hazel longed to smack Samuel upside his soggy head but instead shoved past him to the servants’ staircase.

She found Aaron in the Adairs’ quarters. She could sense his fear as soon as she entered his bedroom. “It’s Hazel, Aaron.”

He peeked out at her from beneath his Seattle Seahawks bedspread. The bed was lumpy. When she pulled up the spread on one side, she found Spiderman and X-Men action figures crowded in with him. She sat on the edge of the bed and tugged down the covers enough to see his face. Those expressive eyes, that soft brown hair—he looked so much like his big brother that the mere sight of him made her heart ache miserably.

She could barely make out his amber irises because his pupils were so dilated. “You all right?” she asked.

He shook his head, uh uh.

“A lot of people are sick.” She touched his cheek: burning hot. “Sean too.”

“I can’t keep inside,” he whispered.

“You can’t keep inside what?”

“My body.”

Hazel gasped. Then she tried her best not to sound spooked. “Where are you now?”

“Above my bed.”

She glanced up as if she might see his spirit hovering there. “Well, okay, that’s not so bad,” she said as though this were an ordinary occurrence.

“Before, I was outside,” he said.

“Outside your room?”

“Outside the hotel. All over the place. I don’t want to go back—it scared me.”

“Did you see Sean out there?” she asked and immediately questioned why she had.

“I can’t find him.” He looked as sad as she felt. “I looked everywhere.”

“Me too.” After she struggled to give Aaron a soothing smile, they shared a sigh.

“Should I go look again?” he asked, his fever-flushed face screwed up in frustration.

She could tell he didn’t want to go anywhere and suddenly she was terrified that if he went too far, he’d be unable to find his way back. Whenever Sean finally returned, he’d ask, Where’s my little brother? And she’d have to confess that she let Aaron float up and over the mountaintop and now he’s lost to them forever . . . all they’re left with is a shell of the boy.

“Listen to me, Aaron.” She shook him harder than she meant to. “You have to get back in your body. Right now!”

“I’m so tired,” he said and looked it, so she figured he wouldn’t stray far for a while.

Shoving aside Wolverine and Cyclops, she eased onto the bed beside him.

It was then that Hazel realized she’d never known what tired truly is. Positioned on her side so they’d both fit on the twin bed, she laid her injured arm lightly across the boy’s chest to keep in his soul while they both slept.


Hazel woke to music coming from the ground floor of the hotel. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep but it must have been a while because the light in the room was different. It’s late morning now, she figured, maybe noon.

She couldn’t bend her arm. At all. And damn, did it hurt.

After she half-climbed, half-fell out of the bed, she went down the hallway and into the Adairs’ pink tiled bathroom, praying for something strong in the medicine cabinet. All she found was orange baby aspirin. She chewed five and took two more back to Aaron’s room where she roused him and made him take the tablets. Then she dragged a bean bag chair over next to his bed, plopped down in a crunch of pellets, and tried to come up with some sort of a plan.

Not a single thing came to her.

Nothing.

Aaron appeared to have fallen back asleep, but his breathing was rapid and shallow.

She grabbed a small t-shirt slung over the desk chair and held it up: lime green with a caped and toothy vampire climbing out of his purple Chevy van. A single word was emblazoned beneath his pointy-booted feet: VANPIRE.

Pulling the collar over her head, she eased her damaged arm through one sleeve and pulled the rest of the shirt around her arm to create a sling. It would help, she hoped, but for the moment she longed to scream from the tender agony of having jarred her miserable elbow. To keep herself from crying out and waking Aaron, she squeezed her eyes and mouth shut, digging her fingernails into the palm of her left hand and curling her toes inside her tennis shoes.

After a painful while she realized that as much as she wanted to stay with Aaron in the safety of his little boy room, she needed to get moving. She extracted herself from the beanbag and stood beside his bed.

“Aaron,” she whispered so quietly it would be a wonder if he woke up. She supposed she didn’t want him to. “Stay here, just stay put.”

“Don’t go, Hazel,” he said in a thick voice. “I’m scared.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” she lied.

“Is so. Ruby Winslow and Uncle Jim are here, and the lady with blood gurgling out of her throat.” His mouth turned down. “And more are coming too. New ones. They told me so.”

That gave Hazel chills and her hand shook a little when she touched his forearm. “Listen to me: they’re friendly ghosts. Like Casper, you know? He’s nice, right?” Hazel had never taken The Winslow’s ghosts seriously before; she was beginning to now.

“Don’t go,” he said.

“Don’t worry, Aaron, I’ll be back. I swear.”

Then she left him there, alone with his ghosts, when she shut the door behind her.

On her way out to the hallway, she glanced into Sean’s bedroom. His bed was unmade, one corner of the sheet flipped over where he’d gotten up. He always slept calmly, the sheets and blankets hardly messed up. Whereas she slept restlessly, her bedding twisted and falling off to one side in the morning as if she’d done battle with it during the night. Every time she’d been in this bed with Sean, she’d managed to make a jumble out of it too. I miss you, she thought as she turned away, feeling horribly homesick even though her house was just around the corner.

The music drifting up from the first floor grew louder as she approached the stairway landing; a lone guitar playing a lonely tune. Loud voices also carried up from the ballroom. The long room was the largest single space in the hotel—in the entire town—so it was little wonder people had congregated there. That or the cowhands are sequestering the ‘sickos.’

She shivered when she reached the top of the red-carpeted staircase.

Since Winslow had never built a town hall or courthouse, every town-wide meeting, frontier justice trial, and resolution of neighborly dispute over the past hundred plus years had taken place in the ballroom. It was tradition. And it was here that in 1889, after less than fifteen minutes of jury deliberation, Judge Evan Winslow sentenced Dinky Dowd to hang for the murder of George Bolinger.

The last town meeting convened had been to discuss water tank maintenance. The tank was an old rust bucket and her dad worried the water was poisoning Winslow’s children with dangerous levels of lead. Of course nothing had been resolved because the town had no funds, which made Hazel think that Owen might be right after all.

Humming along to the music, she cautiously descended the wide staircase. She felt crusted-over tired and unprepared for any more surprises. She didn’t want to see more skeletons jump out of their graves; this ride was already getting scarier the longer she rode.

“Aiii!” someone screamed from deep inside the ballroom. “It’s a hundred and fifty degrees in here!”

As Hazel walked across the black and white tiled lobby, her heart picked up the beat of the song Marlene Spainhower’s brother, Caleb, played on his guitar from the sofa upon which Hazel had slept last night. Ivy Hotchkiss danced around the black tile star located dead center in the lobby. His playing was smooth; her dancing was not—an aimless flailing about.

When Hazel reached the ballroom, she hesitated beneath the arched entryway while her mouth went dry and her heartbeat lost the tempo and turned erratic.

It was hot in there. But that wasn’t all.

Jay Marsh stood in the middle of the room beneath a chandelier, ripping at his shirt and gasping, “Too hot! It’s too hot!” Julie Marsh sat at her husband’s feet examining her left hand. Not moving, just staring at that hand as if she’d never seen it before, as if it revealed the very mysteries of the universe. Laura Dudley and Marlene Spainhower huddled together on a velvet couch near the fireplace, giggling at each other like little girls sharing a delicious secret. Rose and Owen Peabody were curled together on the opposite sofa, neither moving now.

Hazel blinked, and blinked again, yet still he stood in front of the fireplace: Kohl Thacker, buck-naked but covered from bald head to bare toe in a cruel-looking rash.

“I’m telling you, it’s typhoid fever,” Gus Bolinger insisted from the green wing chair he occupied next to the bay window facing the front yard.

“I’m telling you it’s the beef,” Kohl hollered at him. “Why else would Holloway burn down his ranch?”

“You don’t know that’s what happened.”

“And you don’t know it’s typhoid fever.”

Nobody’s taking care of them, Hazel realized.

Suddenly Kohl bolted to the far side of the rectangular ballroom and ran back and forth in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the woods. “Trapped!” His voice rang shrill. “Trapped like rats and left to die!”

Gus Bolinger stood up from his chair. “For the last time, Thacker, shut up!”

“It’s just too hot!” Jay grabbed Julie up by the precious hand and marched her out of the ballroom. Passing Hazel in the doorway, Jay whispered, “Don’t stay.”

Hazel realized that sweat was running off her forehead and down her jawbone. The fans whirring in each corner of the room did nothing to relieve the stuffiness. Rather, the fan blades wafted about unpleasant odors. She wished Rose or Owen would move—even a little.

Gus started as if to beat a path to the doorway after Julie and Jay, but then his legs buckled and he collapsed to the wood floor with a pitiful sound reminiscent of the red cow at Holloway Ranch Friday night. An old man, Hazel hoped he hadn’t broken anything. She wondered where James Bolinger was right then, if he knew his Grandfather Gus was here. The two had always been close. But the last time she’d seen James, at the Crock Sunday evening, he hadn’t looked so good himself.

Hazel moved toward Gus, intending to help him up.

Kohl had his nose pressed against the window now, watching Jay lead Julie through the backyard and into the woods. “They’re gonna get them.” Kohl turned to face the occupants of the ballroom. “Holloway’s gonna get them for sure.”

That was when Laura Dudley started convulsing.

I can’t stay here! Hazel stopped. Spun around. I can’t look at these people anymore!

She raced out of the ballroom and tripped past Caleb and Ivy in the lobby. When she reached the main entry, she heaved open a heavy walnut door, burst across the porch and yard, and ran down the stone steps and onto the gravel driveway.

Several yards down the drive, she cut off into the trees and made her way back to the trail leading to Ruby Creek—running away from the hotel, away from the sickness, and away from the certainty that she was about to lose control of her body or mind at any moment too.

Pounding the trail, a plume of dust rising and a bolt of pain shooting through her arm with each thwack of her tennis shoes, it occurred to her that she hadn’t run this hard since that day five years ago when she and Sean ran away from Hawkin Rhone’s cabin.

Halfway to the creek she heard a noise in the woods. She slowed to a jog. Most likely a raccoon or deer. Or maybe—

She stopped to listen.

“Jinx?” she asked hopefully. “That you, boy?”

Nothing.

Deer, she told herself, harmless fawns with downy tails. She listened for another minute while her heartbeat slowed and there was only silence in the woods.

Until a rustle . . . followed by the distinct crunch crunch of dry pine needles being crushed against the forest floor.

She bolted.

More snapping and crackling—louder now so that she could hear the sounds even over her panting and footfalls.

She ran faster, thinking, F*cking Bigfoot! I’ve got enough problems here!

Nearing the creek now, legs aching and lungs burning, she looked over her shoulder.

Nothing there.

But then she rounded a curve and found two small figures directly in her path. She slammed on the brakes and skidded through the dirt, trying to keep her balance with one good arm. To avoid plowing the girls over, she leapt off the trail and smashed through ferns and pinecones for several more steps before finally stopping herself with a hard slap of her left palm against a tree. Please don’t let that wrist snap again, she prayed.

Violet and Daisy Rhone looked raggedy and unkempt. Hazel couldn’t ask what they were doing out here, all she could do was lean against the tree trunk and wheeze.

Trying desperately to keep hold of her squirming gray cat, Violet hissed, “Stay still, Boo!”

Daisy stared at her feet, wringing her hands. When the little girl glanced up, Hazel saw that she was flushed and feverish like Aaron. Acting shy, Daisy asked, “Can you babysit us?”

It was then Hazel realized the girls’ dresses weren’t just dirty: they were spattered in blood. She flashed on Patience a few days ago at Holloway Ranch saying, This is bad.

We had no idea, Hazel thought now.

“We’ll be good,” Daisy added and then gave Hazel a small scared smile.

Hazel’s heart broke a little more. Unless things got better soon, she doubted she’d ever be able to put all the pieces back together again.

“Of course I can babysit you.” She tried to sound less freaked out than she felt. “I’ll take care of you.” But immediately she worried, Where can we go? Her grandmother could look after them, couldn’t she? Things were creepy at the hotel but it was confined to the ballroom. So far, Hazel thought, then out of necessity pushed it from her mind.

Hazel’s sense they were being watched was extreme—her scalp tingled with it. Though the only sounds she made out now were the buzzing of insects in the midday heat of the damp woods and her own ragged breathing. She looked first at Daisy sucking her dirty thumb, next at Violet struggling to keep Boo on board, and decided to steer them back toward The Winslow.

They all hurried up the path; Hazel had no trouble rushing them along. Maybe the girls also sensed they weren’t alone. Or Hazel’s fear was contagious. Both sisters’ hair had come loose from braids, tousled red curls framing dirt-smudged faces. And the blood on their yellow sundresses had dried dark and crusty. So whatever happened, happened a while ago.

“Are you hurt?” Hazel asked despite her reluctance to find out. What would she do if they were?

No, the girls shook their heads while Hazel exhaled in relief.

But then whose blood was that? Maybe it’s animal blood, Hazel tried to convince herself. A pig’s. Then, What’s the matter with me? Why would I even think that? Hazel felt her loose ends unraveling even further.

“Look at the porcupine!” Daisy squealed, pointing into the woods.

“Where?” Hazel saw no porcupine. She’d never seen a porcupine.

“By that rock, silly-willy. It’s the hugest porcupine ever!” Daisy laughed in delight. “It’s bigger than our house!”

But there was no gigantic spiky creature in the woods, for which Hazel was grateful.

“Knock it off, Daisy,” said Violet. “There’s nothing there. I told you a zillion times.”

Daisy shrugged as if to say, It’s not my fault you’re too stupid to see it.

Violet seemed healthy and fine, Hazel noticed, if scared, which made Hazel wonder how one sister could be affected by this illness but not the other. And why were the girls running around in the woods by themselves? Where were Melanie and Zachary?

“Violet, are your parents all right?” Hazel asked.

“Daddy’s not well.” Violet’s tone was grave.

“Is that what he told you?” It didn’t sound like something Violet would say, and it gave Hazel the creeps.

Violet balled her small hands into tight fists against the poor cat’s belly. “That’s what Hawkin Rhone told him.”


Hazel had hoped to find her grandmother when they reached her quarters down the hall from the Adairs’ rooms on the second floor, but Sarah Winslow was nowhere to be seen.

With some difficulty, Hazel used her good arm to strip the girls and stick them in her grandmother’s bathtub—in hot water, despite the heat. Then she wadded up the filthy dresses and threw them down the seldom-used laundry chute.

Wiping her hand on her dirty shorts, she studied the plump gray cat hunched on the hearth. Boo looked belligerent. “Good kitty,” Hazel said with zero conviction.

The cat cast a baleful glare at her before he darted beneath the bed.

Rummaging through her grandmother’s armoire, all Hazel came up with for the girls to wear were Sarah’s formal gowns from long ago, when she’d been on the petite side. With an uncharacteristic pang of nostalgia, Hazel recognized them as the same dresses she and Patience used to play in. Patience had always loved to play dress-up. Perhaps because Hazel had no mother to emulate, it didn’t interest her as much. Sometimes she’d play along as a bribe to get Patience to go with her to explore the ponds or the mines afterward. But once everyone started making a fuss over how beautiful little Patience is, dress-up stopped being any fun at all for the freckled and weedy Hazel. After that, no matter how much Patience begged, Hazel refused to play it anymore.

Maybe I should look for Patience, crossed Hazel’s mind. Maybe I was too hard on her.

It would have to wait. She needed to sort things out. Her impulse was to lay low until everything died down. Only things weren’t dying down; things were ramping up. The clamor rising out of the ballroom below reminded Hazel of the crashing sounds in the dining room the night Lottie Mathers died. The din also made her think of the shrieks she’d heard coming from riders in the cars ahead of hers the first time she rode through the House of Horrors, warning her that surprisingly scary things lay just around the bend. Suddenly her stomach felt slippery and loose . . . an upset feeling she hoped was due to disagreeable memories and not the sudden onset of the mystery sickness.

Shaking off her anxiety-induced stupor, she tossed the dresses onto the bed and returned to the bathroom to help the sisters wash their hair.

When she saw their narrow shoulders and skinny arms, Hazel thought, Nothing bad can happen to you. Nothing. Their biggest worries should be over losing at hopscotch or their Otter Pops melting too fast—not getting sick, not getting soaked in blood.

While the girls splashed each other and sang a silly song, Hazel rinsed their hair and again wondered where Melanie and Zachary could possibly be without their young daughters.

Realizing she was not too clean herself, Hazel wiped her face and then her armpits with the wet washcloth. Thus freshened, she pulled the girls out of the tub and toweled them off, their red curls drying quickly in the warm air pushing through the bathroom window.

After ushering them into the bedroom, Hazel held up first one then another sleeveless dress. “Green or blue.”

“Blue,” said Violet. Patience’s favorite too.

“Blue!” said Daisy.

“I’ve only got one blue.”

“Daisy can have it.” Violet placed a protective arm around her sister’s shoulders.

Hazel smiled at Violet. “You’ll look better in green anyway.”

She helped the girls into the gowns, which hung long and loose on their tiny frames. Standing back to assess her work, she declared, “Lovely.”

“What about jewels?” Violet asked.

“Why not?” Hazel retrieved a rosewood box from the top shelf of the armoire and decked them out in her grandmother’s rhinestones.

Leaving the girls to admire their reflections in the mirror, Hazel went into the bathroom and searched through the vanity cupboards. “Thank you, Grandma,” she said when she spied the bottle of Percocet. Her grandmother always kept something around for pain because Winslow had neither doctor nor pharmacist. Once Sarah had frowned at Hazel and told her that you just never know what you might need until you need it, now do you?

Hazel popped a Percocet into her mouth and stuck her head under the running faucet. After the pill and water splashed into her hollow belly, she thought, I need to eat something soon.

Then she realized how unbelievably stupid she was. Unbelievably. Stupid.

The water. Owen. That rusty old tank on top of Silver Hill.

Too exhausted to contemplate it further, she collapsed onto the pink chaise lounge beneath the window and willed the drug to kick in. Please stop the throbbing long enough so I can think . . .

The painkiller quickly worked its way through her empty stomach and into her bloodstream, and she finally felt some relief when the insistent throb became a less demanding ache. All she wanted was to pop another and sleep for a while. But she knew she must disengage herself from that cozy chair and try to figure out why and what next.

Hadn’t her grandmother started to explain something last night? Before Honey went after Jinx?

She pocketed a few pills before dragging herself back into the bedroom and telling the girls, “I have to go find my grandma. You stay up here and lock this door behind me—don’t let anyone in except me or my grandma. Okay?”

They didn’t answer. Daisy wasn’t even paying attention, dazzled instead by the sparkling red of the garnet pinky ring she wore on her thumb.

“I’ll bring back something to eat,” Hazel said, having no idea what that could safely be.

Violet wagged her small finger at Hazel in a scold. “Daddy says don’t eat any bread.”

“Why not?”

“It’s moldy.”

Daisy made a face. “We don’t like moldy bread.”

“Nobody does,” Hazel agreed. “I’ll find some cookies and we’ll have a tea party, okay? You’re safe up here.”

It sounded reassuring and she hoped like hell it were true, especially with the way Violet was looking at her, unconvinced. Even Boo looked skeptical.


“Benjamin Mathers came round again,” her grandmother informed her.

“Ignore him,” Hazel said. They sat alone at the small oak table in the nook off the kitchen, but she could hear Honey Adair making a racket at the stove to the accompaniment of Samuel’s incoherent grumbling. The smell of broiling meat made Hazel’s stomach growl. “Ben Mathers is the least of our problems,” she added.

“Perhaps.” Sarah sighed. “We’ll see.” She leaned closer to Hazel. “Did I ever tell you about the afternoon Sadie Mathers drowned in the deep pond?”

“No,” Hazel said, though she could picture the pond Sarah meant. There were three ponds on The Winslow’s grounds and she’d been warned to stay away from all of them ever since she could remember, especially the deep pool next to the family plot. Now she understood why, as she imagined the puffy body and pasty white face of poor Sadie Mathers floating below the surface of the still water. “You never told me but I’m not sure now is the time, Grandma.”

“It was July the eleventh.” Sarah began in that slow, formal way she began every story. “The first Prospector’s Day, 1889. Your great-great-grandfather, Evan Winslow, was in love with Sadie Mathers.”

What does this have to do with anything? Hazel thought. “This isn’t the best time—”

“Of course that was before Ruby was in the picture.”

Hazel gave up. There was no stopping her grandmother once she got started. “Did Sadie love Evan?” She couldn’t imagine it: a Winslow and a Mathers. Impossible.

“That’s something people disagree on. But on this particular day Sadie accompanied Evan here while the celebration was ongoing in the park. The house was still under construction and he wanted to show her the frescoes newly arrived from Europe.”

“The dining room ceiling?” Hazel asked.

“Yes, now stop your interrupting.”

Hazel sat back and just listened. She was surprised she’d never heard this story before and wondered if Patience knew it.

“By several accounts,” her grandmother went on, “they were standing in this very room when one of the workmen, a stonemason from Norway, confronted Evan over plans the architect had revised, whereupon the furious architect stormed in and an argument erupted. Naturally wanting no part of it, Sadie whispered to Evan that she was going back to the party in Prospect Park. ‘Wait, I’ll escort you,’ he told her. Before he could, he was again distracted by the hysterical Norwegian and Sadie slipped away from him.”

Sarah paused, looking pensive, and Hazel wanted to scream, Then what?

Finally, Sarah said, “It wasn’t long after they realized she’d gone missing before her brother Sterling found her drowned in the pond.”

Hazel briefly wondered if her grandmother was losing her mind too—why else tell this terrible tale? Of course now she had to know the ending. “What happened to Sadie?”

“Nobody knows. Aside from being drowned, of course, her body was unscathed. No signs of violence or a struggle. Speculation ran wild: accident to suicide to witchcraft even. But Sterling maintained that Evan murdered Sadie in a rage born of unrequited love. And the more Sterling persisted, the more certain Evan became that Sterling had killed his beautiful sister for quite the same reason. Evan’s name was cleared as soon as his workmen attested to the fact that he’d been with them the entire afternoon. Sterling refused to believe it, would never let it go. And several years later, out of unrelenting grief or implacable guilt, Sterling Mathers took his own life with a Colt forty-four to the temple at the edge of that same damned pond.”

Hazel cringed. How many people had died out there? Were there other bodies hanging around in the deep pond, hair tangled in tree roots? And besides that, how much decomposing bodily fluid had seeped into the pond over the years from the overgrown family plot above, the unofficial—and likely illegal—graveyard that had held the bones of every dead Winslow since the late 1800s?

Shaking her head to try and dispel the images, she remembered Patience’s nightmare where Sadie invites her to come into the pond. “I don’t know how to swim,” Patience tells her. “Neither do I,” Sadie says. So Hazel realized that Patience must know the story. “Why are you telling me this, Grandma?”

Sarah tucked back into place a lock of silver hair shaken loose during her animated yarn. Then her expression turned even graver, bright eyes darkening. “Bad blood is flowing again.”

Hazel felt dread moving in for a long stay now—thick and deep. “What do you mean?”

“Blame will be placed.”

“But nobody even knows what’s wrong.”

“That never stopped them before.”

Hazel didn’t want to hear anymore.

Sarah folded her hand over Hazel’s. “Worst part is, once placed, right or wrong, blame is hard to shake.”

Unease chilled Hazel to the bone when, for the first time in her life, she saw fear in her grandmother’s eyes. Suddenly Hazel felt as though the world were washing out from under her. That if she made a move to get out of the chair she’d be swallowed whole because she had no leg left to stand on.

“You must leave,” Sarah said.

“How can I?” Hazel indicated her arm in the t-shirt sling.

“Find a way.”