“Their parents,” Verity said. “They were only little kids at the time, barely old enough to know what was going on, but their parents were once on opposite sides of a little small-scale war here in town.”
Disappointment curdled in Sorrow’s chest. Of course they were. March back through history to parents and grandparents and beyond, and all you would ever find were entire lifetimes of distrust and spite traded back and forth across the fence line.
But Verity was talking, and Ethan was listening, and if Sorrow interrupted or walked away now, she would be the one who tipped the moment from cautiously curious into more dangerous terrain.
“Devotion’s mother—her name was Joyful—she grew up during World War One.” Verity leaned against the tractor and hooked her thumbs into the pockets of her jeans. To Sorrow the motions seemed deliberate, a calculated picture of ease. “Before the war, there was a big family living here, a few generations all crammed in together. But then the influenza epidemic happened, and the war happened, and by the start of 1920 there was only Joyful and her grandmother Justice.”
Sorrow walked along the cemetery rows in her mind. Justice’s ash tree had been struck by lightning long ago, but it had survived; its trunk was split midway up by a thick black scar. At the base of Joyful’s she had once found a rusty skeleton key for her favor collection.
“It was a terrible winter that year,” Verity went on, “and not just for the Lovegoods. It was bad for the whole valley, although of course they blamed us, as usual.”
“Witch weather,” Sorrow said quietly. The words felt cold in her throat, like the first startled breath after stepping outside on a winter day. Ethan gave her a quick look, but Verity went on as though she hadn’t spoken.
“Joyful was only about twenty years old, but she wanted to find a way to support herself and her grandmother besides apples, so they wouldn’t have hard times like that again. It just so happened that was the winter Congress passed the Volstead Act. Prohibition,” Verity explained, before Sorrow could admit she didn’t pay nearly as much attention in history class as she should. “She became a bootlegger.”
“No way,” Sorrow said, surprised. “Really?”
Verity looked pleased. “She was very good at it. She and her husband—his name was Eugene Rosenthal. He was a musician more than a criminal, really. Trumpet player. Joyful was the brains behind the smuggling operation. For about ten years they had the fastest route for bringing Canadian liquor over Lake Champlain and down to Boston and New York. As you can imagine, not everybody around here was happy about that.”
“No, wait, don’t tell me,” Sorrow said. “It was the Abramses.”
“You don’t get any points for guessing that,” Ethan said, laughing.
“The Abramses—they were two brothers—they tried to shut her down, but nobody much listened, so they decided to take care of it themselves.” Verity paused and tapped her fingers on the tractor again; Sorrow didn’t think she knew she was doing it. “They knew Joyful stashed her goods up by Peddler’s Creek when she moved them through town, and that’s where they were going to hit her.”
“That’s in the preserve,” Sorrow pointed out.
“It is now,” Verity agreed. “It was Lovegood land then. There are those small caves up along the creek—where the trail forks to the lake?”
Crackling autumn leaves under her boots. Vibrant red and gold branches arching overhead. The cold bite of wind whistling along a steep granite face. She walked the path in her mind, and with every footstep the memory shimmered and rippled, as though the ground and trees and stones were made of water and she was moving through a reflection. There was a wooden sign at the trail junction. Left and up for Frenchman Peak, right and into the deeper, darker woods for Lily Lake. She stepped beneath the cool damp overhang of rock, where footprints scuffed the bare ground and the remains of a campfire had been carelessly scattered. She felt her sister at her back, a comforting presence, and remembered how Patience had grumbled about the litter, about the fire, about people ignoring the preserve rules. They had cleaned up the garbage, the two of them, and left it in a little pile to pick up on their way down from the lake. The day, in Sorrow’s mind, was gold and red. The last autumn they had together.
“They’re not very big caves,” Sorrow said faintly. Cool air breathed through the open barn door. “Barely caves at all.”
“Big enough to hide a few barrels of whisky,” Verity said. “And one day Joyful’s twins—they were nine years old—they were swimming up in the creek when the Abrams brothers found them. Naturally there’s some debate about what—”
In the cave Patience had taken off her gloves to press her hands to the overhanging granite, and Sorrow remembered how oddly her voice had echoed, not expansively but dully, as though the stone were swallowing her words, and she had said, Do you think the mountains remember when terrible things happen?
“They shot the little kids,” Sorrow said.
Verity stopped. “Well—yes. That’s what I was about to say.”
Sorrow hadn’t realized she’d interrupted. “Sorry. Yeah.”
“One of the twins, Charles, he was killed immediately. The girl, Cherish, was injured, but she managed to get off a shot that hit one of the Abrams brothers before she got away.” The look Verity gave her was considering. “Have I told you this before?”
Sorrow didn’t have an answer, so she only said, “I don’t remember. What happened?”
But she knew this story. Every word Verity spoke was a burr itching at the back of her mind. She didn’t know the names, nor the details, but she knew the shape of it. She knew the way her sister’s voice had risen and fallen when she stood in that slanting cave and told Sorrow to listen, listen, and she took Sorrow’s hand in her own, peeled off her mitten, and pressed her fingers to the cold stone. Listen. Abramses and Lovegoods, parents and children, Prohibitionists and smugglers. Smashing bottles and hijacking wagons, burning fields and barns, setting stock loose and stalking the hills with guns in hand. Bodies dragged down from Peddler’s Creek and hastily buried. Shots ringing in the woods all through the night.
Sorrow had never been able to hear what Patience wanted her to hear.
“The townspeople called it Bloody July,” Verity was saying. “Something like twelve or fifteen people died altogether. They finally convinced the sheriff to do something, and he sent one of his deputies to arrest Joyful. Only the deputy was stupid enough to wait until dark, so nobody could see who was coming up the drive. Not that it would have made any difference—at that point they were shooting at anybody who came close.”
“They killed him?” Ethan said.
Sorrow had almost forgotten he was there. She made a fist, released it. The sensation of Patience’s hand covering hers faded. She missed it as soon as it was gone.