Sorrow frowned at the dismissive note in Verity’s voice. She didn’t even want to talk about the festival. It was just such a stupid thing, so pointless, to have been built up so huge in Verity’s mind as an attack on their family, when it was clear nobody else took it seriously anymore.
She took a swig of cider, slouched down in the chair, pressed her toes to the porch to set it rocking. The night was still hot, the heat of the day slow to fade. Sorrow’s mind rattled with things she could say—wanted to say, didn’t want to say—and there was a low nervous itch building in her chest as the light failed and the darkness deepened. She shifted in her chair, jeans sliding over a seat polished smooth by decades of use.
She was so tired of swallowing the things she wanted to say because Verity didn’t want to hear them. She was so tired of feeling like her only option was to sew her mouth shut and slink away. She had come back to the orchard because she wanted answers, but all she had found were more questions, and if she kept waiting for the right moment to ask them she would never say anything at all.
“Did you used to be friends with Mrs. Abrams?”
Verity stopped knitting; her eyes remained fixed on the needles. “Where did you hear that?”
Her voice was flat, and her hands were still in her lap, knitting needles crossed and unmoving. Sorrow’s skin prickled with discomfort. It wasn’t the firecracker response she’d expected, but still her instinct was to change the subject. Retreat, backtrack. Apologize for asking. She was only asking. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. But she knew that flat tone, the one that felt more like emptiness than sound. A chill traced down her spine.
“Julie told me,” she said. Her mouth was dry, the words taking up too much space. “She said there’s a picture of you two together.”
“What were you doing talking to Julie?” Verity asked.
“I was just talking to her. That’s not the point. Did you used to—”
“You know you’re not supposed to spend time with those girls.”
“It’s not those girls, it’s only Julie, and come on. I’m not a little kid anymore.” Sorrow tried to make it sound like no big deal, but her voice was unsteady, her hands shaking. She had known how Verity would react, and now it was too late to take it back. She didn’t want to take it back. She wanted an answer. “I can talk to whoever I want and—”
“Not the Abrams girls,” Verity said tightly.
“Why not? What does it even matter?”
“You know why,” Verity said. “Their family has only ever tried to hurt ours.”
“I’m not talking about history. I’m talking about now,” Sorrow said, frustrated. “I’m talking about you and Mrs. Abrams. Is it true?”
“We aren’t friends with the Abramses,” Verity said.
“Patience was.”
If Verity had been still before, she was now carved from stone.
“She was friends with Julie,” Sorrow went on, and now that the words were escaping she couldn’t stop them. “They kept it secret because they knew you and Julie’s parents would freak out. That’s why I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to—she knew Patience, and you won’t talk about her, and I just wanted to, I want to—” There was a hot sting in Sorrow’s eyes, a catch in her throat, and she was breathless, her heart racing. “I just wanted to talk to somebody who remembered her. Who wanted to remember her.”
For a long, long moment Verity said nothing. She sat unmoving with her knitting bundled on her lap, half of her face in shadow. Sorrow watched her, growing more and more tense as the silence stretched. She turned her gaze away. Looked back. Verity wasn’t looking at her. A moth tapped frantically against the window above her head, trying to reach the light inside.
When Verity finally moved, it was such a surprise Sorrow flinched. She snapped the knitting needles together—a soft metal clink—and wrapped the loose yarn around them. She stood so quickly the rocking chair tapped against the wall.
“She was my daughter,” Verity said. Her voice was low, but in that moment it was the loudest sound in the world, drowning out the insects and the wind and the whole of the night. “I remember.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You’ve never wanted to talk about her before,” Verity went on. She reached for the screen door and pulled it open. She didn’t look at Sorrow. “There were times when I wasn’t even sure you remembered her, the way you were on the phone. It was like you became a completely different girl when you moved away, and that one didn’t remember the things I remembered, didn’t want to—you never wanted to—it was like you didn’t even know what I was talking about, like you—”
Verity’s voice caught. Her lips worked a moment, words unspoken. Sorrow watched, frozen, unable to speak, her gut churning with guilt and anxiety and a white-hot flush of shame.
“I remember everything about her,” Verity said. “I could never forget.”
She stepped inside and let the door fall shut behind her.
Sorrow jumped to her feet to follow. “I was eight years old,” she said, wrenching the door open. “I had no idea what was going on because you never told me anything. If I never talked about her it was because I didn’t know I was allowed to!”
“I have never forbidden you from talking about your sister,” Verity said.
“You didn’t have to,” Sorrow spat back. “By the time Patience was gone I was already so well trained you didn’t have to say a word, did you? Our whole fucking lives were about making sure we never said the wrong thing because it would upset you, and that meant we couldn’t say anything because everything upset you.”
“You are not being fair,” Verity said. “You don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“What the fuck is there to understand?” Sorrow was shouting now, her voice made louder by the close walls of the house. “It was my childhood! She was my sister! Did you even know she was friends with Julie? You didn’t know until this fucking second, did you?”
Verity’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t use language like that when you’re speaking to me.”
“I really don’t fucking care what you think of my language right now. You won’t even answer my questions and you never knew the first thing about Patience because you never wanted to hear about how much she wanted to go to school or, or travel, or visit Dad, or have friends. She never wanted to do anything awful or unusual! She just wanted to be normal! What kind of crazy fucked-up heartless mother doesn’t even let her daughters have friends?”
The words fell between them like stones, and in the thunderous silence that followed, Verity was pale and sharp and unbending, older than Sorrow had ever seen. She wanted to take it back. She wanted to shout it again, even louder, loud enough to echo through the orchard and make every branch on every tree tremble with the same ache she felt inside.
“I am not going to listen to you speak to me like this,” Verity said. She turned her back to Sorrow, and there was a moment’s hesitation, a glance toward the stairs, toward the back door.