“Is this where she killed them?” Sorrow asked.
Patience knelt beside Silence Lovegood’s grave to move the white stones back into tidy lines and pick away stray leaves and twigs. “You’ve heard this story a million times.”
“I like it.”
“Because you’re a morbid kid,” Patience said.
Sorrow didn’t know what morbid meant. “Am not.”
“You are too. You already know how it goes.”
“This is where she killed them,” Sorrow declared. “Her very own children, six of them. All but the littlest girl, Grace.”
“She ran away and hid in a fox burrow until she heard the townspeople calling for her,” Patience said.
“You just made that up,” Sorrow said, laughing. “That’s not part of the story.”
But Patience didn’t laugh. “It doesn’t have to be part of the story to be true. Close your eyes. Try to imagine it.”
Patience looked so serious and so earnest that Sorrow did as she said. With her eyes closed she wobbled on the tree root, put a hand out to steady herself.
“She had to hide somewhere,” Patience said. “She was so scared. She ran and ran and ran until she was lost in the forest. She couldn’t hear her mother shouting for her anymore. She found a little burrow and she crawled into it. It was quiet and dark and there were roots and dirt crumbling all around her.”
Sorrow opened one eye to look at Patience. “How did she fit?”
Patience tossed a handful of matted leaf debris at Sorrow’s shoes. “It was cozy,” she said. She looked around, then lowered her voice. “You know, if you dig down deep enough, this dirt is still red and sticky. That’s why nothing grows in this clearing.”
A shiver chased down Sorrow’s spine. “Nothing ever?”
“Nothing except this oak, because it drinks up the blood.”
Sorrow plucked off her glove to touch the tree with her bare hand. She thought it might be warmer than it ought to be. She might feel red sap gulping through the wood. She snatched her hand away.
Silence Lovegood had been left alone when her husband, John Derry, died in 1816, during the coldest summer anybody could remember. It was so cold Enoch Abrams and his brothers Gideon and Zadock convinced the town Silence was using witchcraft to curse the whole valley. Only the Lovegoods, they claimed, had the power to manipulate the seasons with their unnatural command over life and death. The story was one of Sorrow’s favorites. She especially liked to whack at the scarecrow in Grandma’s garden, pretending to be little Grace Lovegood chasing the Abrams men away with a rake, shouting, “Za-dock, Za-dock!” with a thwack on the second syllable, over and over again.
Silence Lovegood had denied she was a witch, but the cold summer, the failed crops, the unseasonal frosts that crackled through the forests in June and July, it all scared the townspeople too much and nothing could change their minds.
“I think it’s stupid,” Sorrow said.
“What is?”
“She didn’t have to kill them. She could have moved away.”
Patience gave her a look that said she was deciding if what she had to say was too grown-up for her little sister. Sorrow hated that look.
“It wasn’t that simple,” Patience said. “As awful as it is, I think she thought she was protecting them.”
“Yeah, but”—Sorrow made another loop around the tree, hopping faster this time—“she wasn’t. That’s stupid. You can’t protect somebody by hurting them. She could have taken them to live somewhere else.” Sorrow tried balancing and jumping to the next root on one leg. It was harder than using both, but she was sure she could do it. “Why didn’t she just go somewhere?”
“Sorrow.”
The warning in Patience’s voice made her heart skip. When Sorrow rounded the tree again, Patience was on her feet, and there was somebody else in the clearing.
“Julie,” Patience said.
A teenage girl stood between two ash trees. Julie was the older Abrams daughter. With her blond hair dyed in pink streaks, a puffy purple down coat, and red tights, she was a vibrant rainbow of color in the gray orchard. Julie was the same age as Patience, and until December she had been away at boarding school. Mrs. Abrams had told everybody Julie was taking a break because she had been working so hard. Mom said Julie had been kicked out.
Julie stepped out from between the ash trees. The wind curling through the clearing tugged at her pale hair. “Hey,” she said.
“What are you doing here?” Patience asked.
Sorrow looked at her sister in surprise: she wasn’t used to hearing such a sharp tone from her.
“Nothing,” Julie said. She kicked at a clump of ice. “Walking. I saw you come up here.”
“You’re trespassing. You can’t be here.”
Julie rolled her eyes. “Seriously? You’re going to be like that?”
“I’m not being like anything.” Patience shifted her weight from one foot to the other and passed a small white rock quickly from hand to hand. “You can’t be here. This is private property.”
“Why do you care?” Julie snapped. “Are you gonna call the cops on me?”
“I might,” Patience said. “You know they were already here.”
“Yeah, our place too, looking for the dumbass who tried to burn our barn down. My parents are freaking out like they’re going to find an arsonist lurking in the woods or something. It’s so stupid.”
“You need to leave,” Patience said. She closed her fist around the white rock, and for a second Sorrow thought she was going to throw it at Julie.
Julie’s face went through a complicated change, flashing from surprise to hurt to something harder. “You’re serious.”
“Yes. You have to go.” There was a tremor in Patience’s voice. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I can’t believe you. Do you treat all your friends like this?” Julie asked, then laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. “Oh, right, I forgot. You don’t have any other friends.”
Patience’s face was pale, her lips pinched, and her voice tight when she said, “We’re not friends.”
Sorrow knew at once, with the certainty of a thunderclap, that Patience was lying. Julie was telling the truth. They were friends. They weren’t even supposed to talk to each other. Mom didn’t have many rules for Patience and Sorrow, but that one was absolute: they could not be friends with the Abrams girls. And Patience had broken it.
“That is so dumb.” Julie rubbed at her nose; the tip was pink. “You want to let our stupid families dictate every fucking aspect of your life, you go right ahead.”
“It’s not like that,” Patience said.
“It’s exactly like that. You didn’t care before. Why do you care now?”
“The police came to our house this morning.” Patience was speaking quickly, her voice trembling. “The police came to our house because of your family and your problems. It doesn’t have anything to do with us but now my mom is upset and—”
“Oh my god, so what? Your mom freaks out about everything.”
“Why did the sheriff have to talk to us?” Patience was shaking with anger now, the white stone still clutched in one hand. “Did your parents tell him to? Did they tell him to bother us?”