There was a protest lodged in Sorrow’s throat, but she couldn’t find the courage to say I’m trying. That’s why I’m asking. I’m trying to remember. It didn’t do any good. Everything she remembered, everything she asked, only led to more questions, and it was getting harder and harder to know what the good things were, when so much of her childhood had been a minefield of words they did not say, questions they did not voice, secrets they did not share.
“The rest of it doesn’t matter,” Julie said. “I have to go.”
She left without looking back.
18
THE DAY OF the 253rd anniversary of the Battle of Ebenezer Smith’s Stockade was hot and bright and clear. The air smelled of sunscreen and fried food, apple cider and cut grass, and the occasional whiff of a thru-hiker who had been too long without a shower. Along Main and Champlain Streets tourists and locals alike wandered among the farm stands and food tents, and everywhere there were kegs and bottles of Abrams Valley cider.
“Okay,” Kavita said. “You’re going to have to explain the significance of this day in a way that makes sense to somebody who didn’t grow up in this weird little town.”
Sorrow was standing near the edge of the park with Kavita, Mahesh, and Ethan. She hadn’t planned on coming into town for the festival, but when Kavita and Mahesh had shown up that morning to invite her, she hadn’t been able to think of a good reason to say no.
“It’s not that weird,” Ethan said.
“I hate to break it to you,” Kavita said, “but it is. This entire town is obsessed with the history of two families, to the point where I swear people are on the verge of asking me what side I’m on. It’s weird and creepy and kinda backward.”
“For what it’s worth, I think it’s weird too,” Sorrow offered. “And if you’re expecting real historical significance, you’re going to be disappointed.”
Eager parents were setting up folding chairs and spreading picnic blankets around the plywood stage while a couple of frazzled-looking women tried to wrangle excitable five-year-olds into formation. Sorrow kept looking around, casting uneasy glances over faces near and far, but she didn’t see Julie or Cassie Abrams anywhere. She didn’t even know what she would do if she did. Pretend she hadn’t? Look the other way? She didn’t particularly want to see Cassie again, but she didn’t like the way her conversation with Julie had ended the day before. She couldn’t stop thinking about what she could have said, how she could have been more honest, more open about wanting to know about the fire, yes, but also how desperately she just wanted to talk about Patience. To say her name and not flinch from it. To sit with somebody who had liked her. She could have said that. She thought Julie might have understood, if only Sorrow had tried.
But she hadn’t, and a day later she was left looking around the park, half hopeful and half anxious, eyes following every blond woman glimpsed from a distance.
“So what’s the deal?” Kavita asked.
“The deal,” Ethan said, “is that in 1763, after the end of the French and Indian War, there were some people around here who wanted to get rid of some unwanted neighbors, so they came up with this plan to stage a raid on an English farm and blame it on people they claimed were French sympathizers.”
“When he says ‘some people’ he means his ancestors,” Sorrow said, “and the unwanted neighbor was my ancestor Rejoice Lovegood—who was married to a French man, but he wasn’t even around when all this went down. He was off in the mountains somewhere.”
“You know that normal people don’t know the names of their ancestors back like ten generations, right?” Kavita said.
“Twelve,” Sorrow said.
When Kavita looked at her, she only shrugged. She had known it wasn’t normal ever since the day her third grade teacher in Florida had sat the class down with safety scissors and stacks of construction paper and asked them to make family trees. The teacher had been prepared for grandparents and stepparents, adoptions and mixed families, but she hadn’t known what to do with the quiet little girl who kept writing name after oddball name on branches of an ever-growing tree long after the rest of the class had lost interest.
“Sure, twelve, whatever,” Kavita said. “So his family wanted your family’s land, and they decided to start a fight and blame it on the French, which was somehow going to drive your ancestor away, even though the war was technically over?”
“That’s about it,” Ethan said.
“I’m not remotely surprised this whole thing comes down to white people fighting over land that wasn’t even theirs in the first place,” Kavita said. “I’m guessing it didn’t work.”
“Still here,” Sorrow said, giving a little wave.
“So what happened?” Mahesh asked.
“You have to watch to find out,” Ethan said. “Stop trying to spoil it.”
“It’s history, dude, not Game of Thrones. You can tell me the ending.”
“Those kids have worked really hard.”
“It is insane that you make children act it out every year,” Kavita said.
“It’s not always children,” Ethan said. “Last year it was the over-fifty community theater group.”
Kavita looked at him.
“And the year before that it was the kennel club. My ancestor was Mr. Timmons’s corgi and Sorrow’s was the Greens’s goldendoodle. That one.” He pointed across the park toward a large dog sniffing aggressively at an alarmed woman in a sun hat. “And a few years ago it was members of the organic farm co-op. But,” Ethan added thoughtfully, “the dogs were better actors. Looks like they’re about to start.”
On the plywood stage at the center of the park, the kindergarten teacher bounced on her toes and waved her arms to get the attention of her actors and their audience.
“You like this,” Sorrow said to Ethan. “All this celebration stuff.”
He shrugged unselfconsciously. “Yeah, I guess. It’s pretty ridiculous, but it’s ridiculous in a different way every year. People do it on purpose—try to top last year’s chaos. You never came when you were a kid?”
“No. Not that I remember.”
But she did remember, with perfect clarity, Patience asking their mother if they could go into town for the festival, just to see, and Verity refusing. They would not help celebrate the day the town turned against their family, Verity had said. They did not owe anybody that. Patience hadn’t argued, and at the time Sorrow had been relieved, but she wondered now what would have happened if Patience had pushed back. If she had convinced Verity to let them venture beyond the boundaries of their orchard without suspicion, without fear, if only for a single summer afternoon. If one small concession would have led to more, and Patience wouldn’t have had to be so secretive with her dreams of school, college, travel. If she would have ever been able to admit out loud how much she wanted a bigger life than the one their mother and grandmother had chosen.
A shout called the crowd’s attention to the stage. The teachers had divided the children into groups, all looking equally confused about what they were supposed to be doing. After a couple of squealing, unsuccessful attempts to use a microphone, one woman gave up and started speaking without it.
“Who are we supposed to be rooting for?” Mahesh asked.