The Winslow Incident

4:30 AM

KILLING SEAN ADAIR

Killing Sean Adair was the only thing Zachary Rhone allowed himself to think about.

When the flash of images lit through him—splashes against the white sheets hanging on the line, that blue eye staring unblinking into the sun—he forced himself to refocus.

“I’ll hunt you down,” he repeated, “and make you pay.”

Melanie, my Melanie. Why had he married a woman so pretty, so sweet? The boy had tried to steal her right out from under him.

“Focus!” Zachary was desperate to clear his head. “It’s so hard to think anymore.”

Pard Holloway had paid him a visit earlier. Today? No, yesterday. He’d made accusations.

Zachary had protested, “How do you know it’s not your beef that’s making people sick?”

“So what if it is? Six of one, half dozen of the other, wouldn’t you say?”

Zachary had nodded, having no idea what Holloway meant.

“Don’t you worry, Rhone,” Holloway had assured him, “the one responsible will get his due before this is through.”

Again Zachary had nodded, this time with understanding. And fear of being found out.

But Holloway wanted to keep it quiet. He’d told him, “Let’s keep it between us.”

Or else, Holloway didn’t say, but Zachary had heard it loud and clear all the same.

After Holloway left, Zachary felt as though he’d bought a pig in a poke. Like he hadn’t been quick enough on his feet and Holloway got what he came for but left nothing in return.

The blue eye flashed; red splashed. Don’t think about it.

Zachary never expected it to turn out like this. When he’d finally taken a good look—after the baking, after the delivery, after everyone had already eaten the bread—the flour looked off. Only slightly, but what a difference that made. So he’d cleaned it all up and pretended it never happened because by then it was too late.

And now I’ll be shunned like my father. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Eyes searching the black orchard, he realized, But apples don’t fall from these trees. Did they ever? Not since his father was sent away.

“Shut up! Shut up and focus!”

It’s that boy’s fault, he reminded himself. Zachary loved his family, would never hurt his family the way his father had hurt them. My sister, poor Missy.

So it was the boy’s fault then. Why didn’t Sean tell me the flour was off? It had to be his fault.

Zachary should’ve never hired him, should’ve never given that rotten apple a chance. But he’d felt sorry for Sean when he came looking for work, pitied him because his old man was a drunk. I know what it’s like to be ashamed of your father.

Then Zachary wondered where his daughters were.

The eye stared; the sheets stained.

“Are you hiding from Daddy?” he spoke to the orchard. “Are you ashamed of me? Because of what happened to Mommy?”

Think about Sean, don’t think about that. Think about hunting him down and making him pay for the loss of your family and your mind. Zachary’s rage against Sean flared anew. “I’m going to find you, and when I do, you are not going to like it. No sirree.”





DAISY

Hafta stay hidden, hafta mind Violet, no getcha gotcha. What daddy do to mommy why daddy do to mommy? Dark can’t see, but oh Hawkin Rhone’s gonna getcha, he’s gonna getcha! Don’t be ascaredy-cat . . .





THREE FOOLS CREEK

Sean found himself lying next to Three Fools Creek, not sleeping really. Just resting, he thought, waiting out the dark.

The sounds of water streaming over rocks and hemlocks shedding their needles to the forest floor kept him company. He gazed up through a break in the tree canopy: still dark, still night.

He rolled over and sat up. Taking in the woods, the creek, the moon, he suddenly felt as if he were living a fairy tale. That at any moment an ogre or witch or talking wolf would emerge from between the trees and take him on a journey beyond his imagination—one he hoped would end with a kiss from a princess instead of his head in an oven.

In the moon shine, the surface of the water undulated like quicksilver. He got down on all fours before a small pool and drank and drank like a dog, and when he got up his belly sloshed. He’d been doing a lot of that: drinking and pissing, his body trying to flush out the poison.

It was coming and going enough now for him to realize it comes and goes.

He stood up on the bank and moved forward a few steps to plunge his bare feet into the cold water. The shock succeeded in bringing him to full alert.

Okay—think now while it’s gone. Think back to before any of this started.

The water rushed strong against his calves. He watched a school of tiny silver fish swarm around his right ankle, trying to take bites out of him with their miniature mouths. No fools bobbed along the creek, but a two-foot section of branch journeyed past, knocking into rocks, becoming wedged before popping back out to continue downstream. It reminded him of chopping firewood on the stump behind the hotel and then loading the logs into a linen sack and delivering them to the ballroom fireplace like a bundle of severed arms.

Sean wondered if he was starting to come out of it or if he was just getting used to feeling this way and learning how to function in it. He stared into the water at the fish. His focus seemed less swimmy than it had been, and his legs felt less noodley.

Maybe I’m getting better, he thought and his spirits lifted. He raised his eyes to the crooked cabin across the creek, where on the porch Hawkin Rhone was busy skinning a raccoon.

His focus sharp now, Sean smiled to himself. Yeah, I’m definitely getting better.

Feeling relieved, he shook his head, tried once more to concentrate.

Okay. I was in the bakery Saturday morning, he remembered, when Hazel came in with Jinx. But what was I doing before that? He rubbed his temples hard as if the gesture would gather his thoughts. I tried to tell Zachary about the flour, that the bread didn’t turn out right.

“He wouldn’t listen to me,” Sean called across the water to Hawkin Rhone. “Told me to taste it. Told me to get in that delivery van. And later accused me of making time with Melanie.”

Sean kneaded the sore muscles of his arms and felt thirsty again already. Why did Zachary think he was after Melanie, anyway? She was the one always ogling him. I don’t go for rodeo queens.

Leaning down, he cupped his hand and scooped more water into his mouth. He remembered being here with Hazel Sunday afternoon, back when Hawkin Rhone was still in his grave. And he remembered hugging her, jokingly begging her to protect him. And she’d been scared of Bigfoot in the woods. Sean couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t love Hazel Winslow, and he wondered why she was always so scared of that too.

Then when he’d been hunting for Hawkin Rhone that afternoon, Sean saw Hazel climb on the back of Tanner Holloway’s motorcycle on Park Street. He’d watched as they rode out of downtown together toward the bridge, thinking, She won’t come back. Why would she?

He missed her already, felt as though he’d been missing her his whole life.

Somehow the creek bed shifted direction beneath his feet and he swayed to keep upright. Then he sank back down to the ferns and dirt, curled up into a ball, and buried his face in his arms. The loneliness felt spiky. Are we the last ones here? he wondered with sure dread. He wished he had his shirt.

“Them bones, them bones gonna walk around,” Hawkin Rhone sang across the creek, “disconnect them bones, them dry bones.”

Sean knew the headstones for Hazel and Aaron in the Winslow family graveyard weren’t real, that it was just his mind playing tricks on him. But these tricks were punishing. Not that he didn’t deserve them. Hazel might be sick by now. Aaron and his mom definitely were. Patience Mathers, Melanie Rhone and the little girls, and everybody else in Winslow for all he knew.

I deserve to be punished.

Sean sat up again—it wouldn’t let him rest—and looked back at the cabin. Maybe he’d just stay here forever, thinking about what he’d done. He only hoped the animals wouldn’t get at him like they’d gotten Hawkin Rhone. Then he realized he’d probably starve to death before that happened.

The old man kept singing while he scraped meat off Bandit’s carcass. “Head bone connected to the neck bone . . .”

Except for his creek-numbed feet, Sean hurt all over and wondered if he’d been beat up or hit by a car. I’d remember that, wouldn’t I?

Staring into the dark driving water, he smelled trout. Try to concentrate.

He remembered being completely pissed at Zachary Saturday morning. Remembered the smell of bacon frying when Zachary slammed the door in his face. Saw himself removing the hotdog bun bags from the large drawer where they store the pink bakery boxes, saw himself standing and staring at a loaf of bread and thinking, So what? The flour was a little sticky and gray. Sean didn’t know what that meant. How could he have possibly known?

Then when I rolled in there on Monday, Zachary was in the bakery and he barked at me to go home and it was clean and nothing was baking. So it was that morning that Sean had realized the bakery was responsible for the food poisoning going around town.

Zachary had then told him, “Don’t say anything to anybody.”

And Sean thought that sounded like a pretty good idea at the time.

Only that was before things got worse . . .

Then it hit Sean like a ton of bricks. He gasped, held it, slowly exhaled.

It was clean.

Abruptly he stood.

The bakery was clean like I’ve never seen it before and he wasn’t baking any bread.

And finally Sean understood: Zachary knew.

Zachary knew even then that it was worse than food poisoning. He knew even then that things were about to get so much worse than mayo left out too long in the sun.

Sean shoved his wet feet into his tennis shoes and left Three Fools Creek, heading down the dark trail toward town, back to the bakery to find Zachary Rhone.





HAWKIN RHONE VAMPIRE

Finding Sean was the only thing Hazel allowed herself to think about.

Leaving her father and uncle and the carnage at the Rhone house behind, she forced herself to focus on just one thing: finding Sean before Zachary Rhone did.

Her stomach was in turmoil at the thought of him sick and alone. Does he even know he’s in danger? She remembered him driving the bakery delivery van Saturday morning, the sunlight pouring through the windshield lighting his eyes and kissing his hair.

She would not let herself cry. She would not fail him again.

With nothing to go on except what Patience had told her in the park, Hazel decided to follow the path of the ghost hunt and was resigned to sweep the whole mountainside with her flashlight if that’s what it took.

First stop: church cemetery. The cow was gone, Hazel noted with odd disappointment. The wrought iron fences looked shiny in the beam of her flashlight, the headstones dull and cold. She turned in a slow circle, cutting swaths of light through the area surrounding the cemetery, and recalled Rose Peabody saying in a sermon on tolerance that at one time those deemed not respectable weren’t allowed to be buried here. Instead, their bodies were taken to the woods and buried in graves with no markers.

There was still activity up at the church—she could hear the organ and see figures moving in the light of the candles—but she had no intention of going in there again and knew Sean wouldn’t either. He never went to church even if Honey begged. When he was little she’d bribe him with the promise of ice cream afterward but that hadn’t worked for a long time.

He’s not here, Hazel determined and moved on.

She hurried up Civic Street—barely registering the wreckage of dented trucks and downed street lamps along the way—and turned onto Ruby Road. Near the end of the street she passed beneath the glare of The Winslow. All four floors of the hotel blazed with yellow light. Don’t even look, she told herself. I am not going back there—I am never going back.

She ducked into the woods and found the trail that would take her away from the hotel and east to the Winslow family graveyard, a path so familiar she could easily navigate it under the light of the moon. Don’t be scared. Don’t think about things in the woods. There’s nothing here. But even if there is, you’ll brain it with your flashlight. Don’t be scared . . .

Yet she couldn’t help but think about the Sasquatch bigfooting it around the woods at Three Fools Creek Sunday afternoon. There had always been a lot of talk about the creature lumbering through the forests of the Pacific Northwest. And a lot of replay of the Patterson film showing the half man/half ape strolling—sorta casually, in Hazel’s opinion—between the trees. Though she had never thought he looked particularly threatening, right now she was scared as hell because whatever had been in the woods with her both Sunday and yesterday afternoon was not shy—reputedly Bigfoot’s most endearing quality.

Fortunately, she reached the Winslow family plot with nary a rustle from beside the trail. Exhaling relief, she aimed the flashlight across the rise and saw familiar headstones and crosses: Ruby Winslow, Jim Adair, a smooth log resting near the pond like an unburied bone, but no Sean.

She walked forward a few feet—her tennis shoes tangling momentarily in the blackberry brambles—to the edge of the pond where Sadie Mathers had drowned. Poor Sadie . . .

The flashlight beam penetrated the water and for a horrified instant she thought she saw Sean submerged in the pond. The flashlight hit the water and sank out of reach before Hazel realized she’d let it slip from her hand. “Damn, damn, dammit!”

The flashlight came to rest upright in the muck at the bottom of the pond, casting pale light upward through the water. What she’d mistaken for Sean turned out to be blackened tree roots.

“I am such an idiot!” She angrily stomped her feet on the ground, which made her elbow and ribs explode in pain. “Ouch,” she whimpered. “Damn.”

Hazel could not afford to let herself get bogged down like this. He’s not here, keep going.

She noticed that the sky was lightening at last—the long night finally nearing an end. Her heartbeat hadn’t slowed since she’d come upon Tiny Clemshaw guarding his Mercantile, the shotgun targeting the rainbow across her chest. Not when she’d run to Rhone Bakery to find her father, or laid eyes on the remains of Melanie, or fought with her Uncle Pard.

And certainly not now. Because I have to hurry.

In the gray light of predawn Hazel looked up at the opening to the Second Chance mineshaft: a black mouth that had long ago spit out the mounds of wrung earth still littering Silver Hill. The perfect hiding spot.

She gazed longingly at the flashlight nestled deep underwater before she left the pond and goose-stepped through high brambles, heading uphill toward the mine.

When Sean was seven and got fed up with his dad Samuel, he ran away from home carrying a hobo sack (fashioned out of a potato bag and croquet mallet) that he’d filled with three Milky Way bars, his slingshot, and five bologna and cheese sandwiches.

Hazel knew this because he’d stopped by her house on the way out of town to try and persuade her to come with him. “I can’t,” she’d refused him. “Buffy is on tonight.”

And she remembered how small he looked as she watched him disappear, alone, down the sidewalk on Park Street.

It was after dark by the time Samuel and Honey Adair realized Sean was missing, and they searched every floor of The Winslow before ending up at her house. Then Sean’s parents tricked it out of her by saying Hawkin Rhone was sure to get Sean unless Hazel gave up his secret spot. But Sean forgave her the betrayal because by then he was lonely hiding up in that mine all by himself. He’s lonely now too, she speculated.

Trudging up Silver Hill, Hazel tried to imagine the cacophony of hard rock blasting and drilling when the mines were active in the late 1800s . . . and how quiet it must have seemed once it all stopped. A dry hush, like now.

She skirted past signs reading DANGER and NO TRESPASSING, then paused beneath the square set timbers at the entrance to the mine. It had long been boarded up tight, and reinforced each summer to keep the kids out. Now a good-sized section was pried away as if someone had recently entered.

“Sean?” she called into the hole.

Silence.

“Please answer me, Sean—I really don’t want to go in there.”

No answer. So she forced herself to crawl between the wood slats.

Only a dozen yards into the mine, she rounded a corner and found herself immersed in complete darkness. It was cool in there too—she’d expected it to be hot like a furnace. Her neck started creeping and crawling and she clasped her left hand together with the right in the sling, holding them close to her body lest something nip at her fingertips.

Sally forth, she ordered herself. In school, Gus Bolinger told them he’d made a mantra of those two words, repeating them to himself and his comrades when things got gnarly during the Battle of Bloody Ridge. Hazel sallied bravely forth.

“Sean?” she called again. Completely blind in the cave, she wished like mad she’d held onto that flashlight.

Don’t lose your bearings, she thought as she continued deeper.

It was something her dad always warned her against. “Don’t ever lose your bearings in the woods, Hazel, or you’ll get lost.”

What are bearings, anyway? she wondered. Don’t know, but don’t lose ’em—

“Who’s there?” a man’s voice cleaved the silence.

Hazel jumped and jerked all in one motion. She peered in the direction from whence the voice had come, but all was black.

“Who’s there!” Deeper, more insistent now.

Her heart pounded out hard, fitful beats. “Hazel Winslow?” She hoped that was the right answer.

“I’m here . . .” The man sounded distressed now—as if he’d wanted to be found but nobody had bothered to look. “The little ones ran me out with sticks and rocks,” he whined.

“Who are you?” Hazel couldn’t help but think Hawkin Rhone, and her heart thumped even harder.

“They hurt me!” The anger returned to the voice and she took a step back.

Or was it to the side? She was turned around; it was that dark. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, I’ll leave you be.”

Which way is out? She darted blind eyes all directions. Help me—which way is out?

As she turned what she bargained was the right way, a hand popped out of the blackness and grabbed her arm, ripping the sling, and she screamed from the terror and pain of it. He yanked her down to him—he was so strong.

Maybe he’s a vampire, she horrified herself, and any second she’d feel long, fat teeth sinking into her neck, followed by the weak, warm feeling of blood draining from her body.

“I beg you,” he whispered in her face with breath that smelled of something dying inside.

And her mind shrieked, It is him! F*cking Hawkin Rhone vampire!

He pulled her even closer, biting distance now. “Please kill me,” he said. “It’s unbearable.”

Hazel screamed and kicked and batted at him with her left hand for what seemed like minutes before he finally released her tortured right arm, and she kept screaming as she ran, her cries echoing back to her so that it sounded like a madhouse full of girls screaming, and she could no more outrun that smell than she could her screams. It was on her now, in her hair: his morbid exhalation.

“Beware the pest house,” he bellowed.

She careened off the dirt walls, bouncing her way out of the pitch-dark mine like a pinball, and fought through the hole in the timbers that had somehow shrunk while she was inside so that now she barely fit back out, terrified the whole time that she’d feel the vampire’s bony fingers wrap around her ankle so he could drag her deep inside his tomb.

When she did finally emerge from the mouth of the mine, the day’s first light sliced into her pupils before they had a chance to contract.

She veered blindly—a white blindness now—her hand shielding her eyes, and then sprinted across Silver Hill through dry yellow weeds that scratched her calves mercilessly, racing for the tall water tower with its enormous W painted on one side of the rusty tank, desperate to reach it and hide before the Hawkin Rhone vampire caught her and sank his teeth into her neck.

At the ladder, she didn’t look back or hesitate. Instead, she started up fast. I won’t come back down. Ever.

She climbed carelessly, hysterically. If I stay up here, I’ll see as soon as help comes. Somebody must’ve made it out before they blocked the bridge. Or come up and now they’re missed. Maybe Tanner will send help after all. His parents will wonder what he’s doing back, won’t they? They won’t buy his story. They’ll want to talk to Uncle Pard.

When she reached the platform, she leaned out to glance down the ladder, half expecting to see the vampire scrambling up right behind her, like a spider closing in on its prey.

But he wasn’t there. Panting furiously, she crawled across the metal platform and then defensively tucked her back against the tank like a wounded animal.

We’re just a bit out of sorts is all, she thought, aware that she’d finally been driven to hysteria. Anything that had begun to heal in her elbow was now ripped asunder and raw nerves all along her battered body screamed their distress.

We’ll just stay put until help gets here. It has to, right? It has to—

The vampire’s death smell retouched her nose, and forced her to ask the question she’d so desperately been avoiding: Is this fatal?

The image of a duck flashed in her mind, the dead duck that ate ergot-infested piecrust.

Hazel hung her head and began to sob.

Is everybody going to die?





WEDNESDAY SUNUP

THE OLD APPLE ORCHARD

“It’s not a good idea,” Aaron whispered to Violet.

Maybe he was right, but she caved in to Daisy anyway. They’d been cramped in their hiding spot for hours and hours and they couldn’t sleep ’cause it was too uncomfortable and they couldn’t cry ’cause it makes too much noise and Daisy would not stop poking her that it was time to get out!

Besides, nobody was around.

Violet peeked again through the gap in the boards and could see that nobody was around. Plus the sun was coming up so everything wasn’t scary like before when it was so dark. Hawkin Rhone only comes out at night (I think maybe.)

So she pushed open the big lid and raised her head and still didn’t see anybody. Her legs were sleeping and pins and needles tried to wake them up.

Aaron tugged on her dress, trying to pull her back in. “Hazel said to stay hiding.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” Violet told him and stepped out of the fruit storage bin and into the very first sunbeam to hit the apple orchard Wednesday morning.





ZACHARY

I’m lost.

How am I supposed to find the boy when I can’t even find my way out of this place? This place made my father do what he did. Now it’s making me. Don’t look at that eye. Blueberry. Maybe it was my father who did it. Again. Missy, we missed you after you were gone. So maybe it wasn’t me after all. Wait! Remember? It’s the boy’s fault. Sean Adair. I’m lost. My bones hurt—will they ever stop hurting me? It’s daybreak. Maybe I’ll find my way out now. Getting light fast. The eye will burn under the big sun. I ought to go down and close the eyelid. Already lighter and I can see him there. There—my father. Hawkin Rhone. Has he ever left? The apple doesn’t rot far from the tree. I am he; he wants me to be. He needs me to tend the orchard.

And now the children have come to me.

They’re here, waiting for me to let my guard down . . . waiting to pluck apples with small hands.





MISSY RHONE

“Bluebells, cockle shells, easy ivy over!”

From where Aaron floated above the orchard, he watched Violet and Daisy jumping rope in their long colorful dresses. He tried to yell, “Stop singing!” but no sound came out because his voice was down there with his body, which was slumped in the dirt next to that ugly dead apple tree.

Violet and Daisy’s red hair bounced and waved, calling even more attention to them.

“Stop! Hide!” he tried again but still his body only laid there.

The girls’ daddy was moving fast though: sneaky and slithery around the trees like an eel, his face stuck on mean. Meaner than Aaron ever saw his own dad’s face, meaner even than the worst bad guys in the video games his mom didn’t like him to play.

Get back in! Aaron ordered himself. Get back in! The closer Zachary Rhone got, the surer Aaron was that he’d better get back into his body. What if Mr. Rhone hurt his body when he wasn’t in it? What if he hurt it really bad? Panic seized Aaron: Where would I go after that?

Then he saw the other kid: a girl with a long dark ponytail, the little girl named Missy that Hawkin Rhone poisoned to death.

“Apples, pears, peaches and plums,” Violet and Daisy chanted, “tell me when your birthday comes.”

“Be quiet!” Aaron tried to warn them. “He’s close!”

Mr. Rhone continued to creep through the orchard, slower now, trying not to scare them off.

“January February March . . .”

The ghost girl skittered around Mr. Rhone. Aaron could tell that she was trying to distract him, to keep him from finding his daughters.

“April May June.”

But he’s so close now, Aaron saw.

Though the ghost girl skipped in front of him, trying to change his direction, she couldn’t stop him from heading straight for the other girls, the ones who were still alive.

“July August . . .”

And then Aaron saw Sean. His big brother was down by the bakery.

“Sean!” Aaron tried to call to him and saw his own body convulse. “Help us,” he was finally able to whisper from the inside out.





THE BAKERY

Darting here, darting there—children children everywhere. Stealing apples. Taunting. How can I tend the orchard when they won’t behave? wondered Zachary Rhone.

All the while, the morning grew hotter. Am I in hell? He looked straight at the sun and marveled at its enormity.

But that didn’t explain the heat, not all of it. He placed one hand against a tree—its bark warm and rough against his palm—and bowed his head, trying to collect his thoughts.

When he swiveled his head to one side, he discovered something extraordinary: The bakery’s on fire.

Bright orange flames shot out the back window; smoke poured through the screen door.

Fire! He swung the ax he’d been lugging around against an apple tree, sinking the blade into soft rotted bark clear through the trunk. After the treetop spilled to the dirt in a cacophony of cracking branches, he managed to wrench himself free from the orchard’s grasp. “Let. Me. Go!”

Leaving the ax to the tree, Zachary ran. On the way downhill he fell twice and scraped his chin in the dirt once. “Put it out,” he panted. “Save it. My father left it to me—the only good thing he left to me.”

When Zachary rounded the corner to the front of the bakery, he found him.

Finally, he found him.

Funny thing was, Sean Adair stood to one side of the entrance as if he’d been waiting for him.

Zachary peered through the glass door. Inside, flames curled in waves from the rear oven area, over the prep counter, to the shelves in the storefront. The donuts and pastries on fire in the display case reminded him of pinwheels.

He turned his back on the bakery to face Sean. Incredibly, the boy said nothing about the fire, just stood on the sidewalk with his legs apart and his arms crossed, as if Zachary had to mind him, as if Zachary weren’t the boss anymore.

“The children are misbehaving,” Zachary explained. “Anybody can see that.” He wished he’d held onto that ax.

“Not them.” Sean stared straight at him. “They didn’t do anything wrong.”

He’s staring into my head, Zachary realized. Stop it! Can’t let him see in here. Hotter and hotter he felt.

“You knew,” Sean said.

Unbelievable! Zachary thought. Insolent boy. And to think Zachary had felt sorry for him because his old man had no control over himself. Only Zachary felt out of control of himself too. “The bakery’s burning,” he told Sean. “What should we do?”

“Did you know before I delivered bread to my mom at The Winslow? To the Mercantile? The Crock?”

Zachary was shaking his head rapidly back and forth.

“Did you know,” Sean leaned within inches of Zachary’s face, “before I gave my little brother a f*cking poison apple fritter!”

“After that! I swear on my father’s grave!” He shot a look over his shoulder. It was his father’s establishment burning behind them. Rhone Family Bakery since 1924, said the door. Suddenly suspicious, he pointed at Sean. “Did you start this fire?”

“Why didn’t you warn anybody?” Sean ignored the question.

“We have a reputation to uphold,” Zachary sputtered.

“Don’t you get it?” The boy put his hands to his head as if his brains might leak out his ears. “Everybody in the whole town is sick!”

“I couldn’t think straight,” Zachary explained. “It’s impossible to think straight anymore.”

“If you’d warned people, things wouldn’t’ve totally spun out like this.”

“This is your fault!” Zachary screamed. “You delivered the bread. Not me!”

“I tried to tell you.”

“Tried to tell me? How do you try to tell somebody something, Adair? You either tell them or you don’t—no try about it.”

“If you’d listened to me, none of this would’ve happened.”

“I knew why you were sniffing around.”

“Dammit, Zachary!” Sean put his hands to his head again as if it hurt, then went quiet.

The bakery continued to burn behind them. Hotter and hotter. Zachary turned and looked through the glass door. Flames licked pine floorboards; paint boiled on the walls.

Finally, Sean asked, “Where’s Melanie?”

Zachary ground his teeth hard before responding in a low growl, “Don’t ask me that.”

With a look of disgust, Sean shook his head. “You didn’t help anybody. Why didn’t you do something? Nobody but you knew what was happening.”

“It was too late.”

“No! It wasn’t too late then.” He gestured toward Fortune Way. “Do you know what’s happening out there now?”

“The bakery’s on fire,” Zachary whined. “Do something.”

But Sean only continued to stare inside his head; Zachary could feel him rooting around in there. Get the hell out!

When Zachary heard the glass door behind him cracking, he finally felt it needed to be said, “My father didn’t mean to poison those children.”

Looking confused, Sean cocked his head. “What?”

“I know what it’s like to be ashamed of your father. Nobody’d go fishing with me after that, nobody even saw me anymore. A ghost. Until Melanie—” Zachary felt his heart coming apart. “Oh, Melanie, my sweet Melanie.”

“Zachary, that’s got nothing to do with what’s going on now.”

“It’s got everything to do with it!” he screamed in Sean’s face and the boy took a step back. “My father never meant to hurt anybody except those camp robber jays. They kept pecking at the apples. They’d knock ’em off the trees then leave ’em to rot in the dirt. ‘A damn waste,’ Daddy said. What else could he do? He told Missy and me not to pick any more apples, explaining that he’d sprayed the trees but good to teach those little bastards a lesson and we were to stay out until next spring. ‘Do you understand me?’ he said. Wasn’t his fault Missy didn’t understand anything well enough to mind him. Especially because it was her share day at school so she went into the bakery and asked him for a dozen donuts to take for the class because she knew everybody liked donuts and nobody liked her because she was slow. But Daddy said, ‘If they want donuts they can come in here and pay for ’em like everybody else.’ And I saw she looked hysterical when she said, ‘I need them! It’s my share day!’ But he refused, saying, ‘A man’s gotta make a living and he sure as hell doesn’t do that by giving donuts away.’ ”

Zachary was weeping, choking on fat tears. “Missy must’ve gone to the orchard after that because the next day she snuck out for school with her basket full of apples. Then when her classmates were hurting like the poisoned birds I was scared to tell anyone and get her into trouble. I should’ve anyhow, because after it was over nobody wanted to hear that my father had meant no harm to anything except those robber jays. Not even our mother.”

He paused, wiping his wet face with his hands. “Only by believing he’d meant to punish the children for stealing apples out of his orchard could townsfolk make sense of the tragedy. And it helped everybody cope to see him pay for it.”

He noticed that Sean’s face was twisted up as if he were in some sort of pain. “What’s the matter with you?” Zachary sniffed hard and hawked spit to the sidewalk. He’d expected no sympathy from Sean Adair, desired none, only wanted the truth out in order to set things right.

“I killed him,” Sean said.

“What?” So hard to think a straight thought anymore.

“I had no choice.” Sean passed a shaking hand across his mouth.

From the heat and confusion, Zachary swayed on his feet. “What are you saying?”

“We were across Three Fools Creek from his cabin, and we dared each other to go over there. It looked quiet, like he wasn’t around. Otherwise we never would’ve done it.”

“Done what? What did you do?” Without glancing over his shoulder, Zachary knew the fire was growing larger, felt it reach the front of the bakery.

The boy trembled all over now. “He had Hazel by the wrist so hard I heard her bone snap and she’s screaming and he looks crazy as shit so I picked up a log and hit him on the head to make him let go of her.”

Zachary retched, his stomach corkscrewing and trying to make its way up through his throat, only there was nothing left in him but the horror.

“We couldn’t tell if he was dead or not,” Sean said quietly.

Zachary could barely hear him over the fire.

“We didn’t wait around to find out. After he let go of Hazel we ran back to town and told Sheriff Winslow and he got Dr. Foster and when they came back from checking on him they wouldn’t tell us anything.”

Feeling as bewildered and betrayed as when his father had first been forced across the creek, Zachary hung his head. “They led me to think he was done in by a bear.” Zachary had known there were bear out in those woods; his father told him so during one of his rare and uncomfortable visits to the old cabin.

“I had no choice,” Sean insisted again.

“This is all your fault.”

“That was. This isn’t.”

“You need to make it right.”

“How am I supposed to make this right?”

“You’ll take your share of the blame. That’s how.”

They were silent for a moment, listening to the fire consume the bakery behind them with a disinterest more befitting a wienie roast.

Then the insolent boy said, “Look at your hands.”

“Why did you have to say that?” The force of it rocked Zachary on his heels. I won’t look, he can’t make me look. He tried to wipe his hands clean on his t-shirt and saw the blood there too, encrusted dark in white cotton. Help me—whose blood is it? Whose?

Zachary backed away from Sean. “They’ll hang this on somebody. And it won’t be a Rhone this time, no sirree.”

“Don’t get so close to the fire,” Sean warned.

“Never again!”

“Stay back, Zachary.”

“I’ve lost everything and I won’t cross that creek too. No Rhone’s taking the fall this time.”

“You’re too close!” Sean yelled.

But it was too late—always too late—and Zachary watched as his skin reddened and blistered. I never expected it to turn out like this. He lunged for Sean.

“Don’t!” the boy cried as Zachary latched onto his forearm and pulled. The impact of Sean’s blow against his right temple left him momentarily stunned and he did let go. Then he grabbed him again with both hands and this time didn’t let go even when Sean slammed him in the eye and he was blinded on that side, nor when his teeth collapsed into his mouth beneath the boy’s fist. The force of it hurled him back against the door of the bakery, which imploded on impact, and Zachary fell inside in a shower of frosted glass. Still, even then, he held on.

No air in the bakery, nothing to breath but smoke, and Zachary felt himself burning alive in a fire fueled by his own rage and remorse.

But Sean was there with him, at least, so the anger quickly subsided and Zachary let himself think about red curls and pink apple blossoms and porch swings and fresh laundry pinned to the line . . . clean sheets and bright eyes dancing in a blue breeze.