“That’s the problem,” Patience said. “Why does Mom get to decide that for us?”
“Because she’s our mom.” Sorrow’s heart was beating quickly. She wished she hadn’t said anything. She wanted to jump the fence and run into the orchard. Patience knew better. She knew not to ask about school, or to bring up what Dad said about how they lived, or to ask about anything that would upset Mom. She knew not to push and push until Mom fled the kitchen and closed herself in her room.
But that was exactly what she had done yesterday. Patience had broken all of her own rules.
“She says it’s safer this way,” Sorrow said.
“Safer than what?” Patience asked. “Safer than never doing anything? Never going anywhere? Maybe Mom and Grandma are happy to stay here forever doing the same things over and over again, but I feel like—” She made a frustrated noise and slapped at the trunk of an ash tree. “I feel like every time I want to do anything different this stupid orchard is reaching out to pull me back. Like I’ve got the roots all tangled up here”—she tapped her chest, right over her heart—“and I can’t get away. Don’t you ever feel that? How hard it is to breathe?”
Sorrow stared at her sister, too afraid to answer. She had never heard Patience talk like this before. She didn’t sound like Patience at all, but Mom. If Sorrow closed her eyes, she wouldn’t have known the difference, and that scared her as much as the sheriff in the kitchen, as much as the gaping darkness of the cider house, the dull echo of a door slamming closed, and the aching cold winter nights that made it feel like spring would never come.
Patience let out a frustrated sigh. “Never mind. You’re too little to understand anything.”
“I understand,” Sorrow protested, although she didn’t know what Patience meant.
“Don’t you ever get tired of it? Being stuck here where we can’t even talk to anybody?”
She was looking at Sorrow for an answer, but when Sorrow tried to imagine talking to strangers in town, or kids her own age, taunting words echoed in her ears and a door slammed shut in her mind. She squirmed under the weight of Patience’s earnest gaze. She didn’t know what Patience wanted her to say.
“They would be mean to me,” she said finally, her voice small.
Patience’s eyebrows lifted. “Is that what you’re worried about?”
All the things Sorrow was worried about buzzed around her mind like bees. She couldn’t even begin to name them all, so she didn’t try, and only nodded.
“Well, I wouldn’t let them,” Patience said. “You would just tell me who was being mean, and I would stop them.” Her voice softened with concern. “Is somebody being mean to you?”
Sorrow pressed her lips together and shook her head.
Patience’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Sorrow mumbled, kicking at the base of Devotion’s ash tree.
“Okay. But you know that if somebody is bothering you, you can tell me, right? I won’t tell Mom. Are you sure there’s nothing?”
“I’m sure,” Sorrow said, letting the word drag out. “You don’t have to keep bothering—oh!”
“What is it?” Patience asked.
Something glinted in the dormant brown grass at the base of the tree.
Sorrow bent to pick it up. It was a pair of wire-framed eyeglasses. One of the round lenses was missing, and the other was split down the middle by a crack.
“Look,” she said.
She held the glasses out to Patience, who looked at them for a moment, then glanced at the base of the tree where Sorrow had found them. “Did you just find those right there?”
“Yeah,” Sorrow said. “In the grass.”
Patience took the glasses from her gingerly, turned them in her hands, then hooked the arms over her ears and looked down her nose at Sorrow. “I say! I can see clearly now!” she exclaimed, her voice warbling with a fake accent. “Fetch me the mail, butler. I must know if the queen is inviting us for tea today.”
Sorrow giggled. “The queen doesn’t want to have tea with you.”
“Here, you try.” Patience took the glasses off and settled them gently onto Sorrow’s nose. “Be careful. If that glass breaks it’ll stab you in the eye.”
“Ew, gross.”
The glasses were too big for Sorrow; she tilted her head back to keep them from slipping down her face. “I say!” she said, mimicking Patience’s accent. The one lens distorted the cemetery grove around them, making everything big and blurry. She took the glasses off. “I don’t like them. Everything looks funny.”
“That’s because you don’t need them to see, silly,” Patience said. “Aren’t you glad you came out here today? You found the first favor of the spring.”
“No, it’s—” Sorrow stopped herself. “Yeah. The first.”
She unzipped her coat to tuck the glasses safely into the inside pocket, and as she did she pressed briefly, quickly, on the small lump of the favor she had found yesterday. The one she could feel tucked against her ribs like an ember. The one she was keeping secret. The puff of air she let in made her shiver before she got her coat zipped up again.
“Are you cold?” Patience asked.
“No.” Sorrow’s cheeks stung and her nose was running, but she wasn’t ready to go back to the house, where Mom would still be in her room and the day would stretch long and quiet. “Can we go see the witch’s grave?”
“You shouldn’t call her that,” Patience said.
“That’s what everybody calls her.”
“Everybody who? You don’t even know that many people.”
Sorrow shrugged and pretended Patience’s words didn’t sting. “I want to go to her grave.”
Patience relented. “Fine, but only for a little bit. It’s colder than I thought out here.”
13
THE NEXT AFTERNOON Sorrow took her phone down to the end of the driveway. It was half past noon in California, which meant Andi would likely be in the middle of her lunch hour, and that meant the conversation would have a natural time limit.
She sat on the top rail of the fence and scrolled down to Andi’s number. Then she stared at her phone until the screen went dark. She wished she had a way of knowing before she called what the problem was, and what Andi’s mood would be, so she could prepare herself.