The wind was from the north.
To the north lay the cider house.
Sorrow was striding across the lawn before she made a decision. There was something wrong in the orchard. She could feel it in her chest with every painful heartbeat, in her lungs with every shallow breath, in her skin and in her bones, the echo of a deep old ache rising from the soil and the roots and the ancient mountains. She had known from the moment she woke up.
When she reached the old dirt road around the field, she broke into a run, hit the edge of the orchard, and flashed from moonlight to shadows. She ran north, tracking the smoke and the wind, and slowed to a walk only when she rounded the hill and the road tilted down toward the meadow between the Lovegood and Abrams farms.
The wind was soft and teasing, tugging at her hair, chilling her sweat-damp skin. The scent of smoke was stronger now. She couldn’t see if there was a tendril rising from the chimney of the Abrams house across the valley. All she could see was the front porch light, a glint on the other side of the moonlit field, so bright that even at this distance it stung her eyes, and in the space between wincing and looking away she had a disorienting memory of looking across this same valley, seeing light shining from several windows of the Abrams house, smelling smoke in the air.
She pressed her fingers into the stitch in her side and sucked in ragged, gasping breaths that tasted of iron, and she started down the hill.
When the cider house came into view, she stopped.
In an orchard awash in silver moonlight, the cider house was a black hole, a gap in the night, but there was a weak, wavering light inside. There was a fire in the cider house.
Sorrow charged down the hill, heedless of the uneven ground. Branches snagged her sweater and grass whipped her bare legs, and her feet pounded so hard she felt every step in her teeth. She stumbled twice, fell the second time, but she was scrambling to her feet before the sting of pain on her palms and knees registered.
She stopped at the edge of the meadow. Warm yellow light danced nimbly over the interior of the ruin, casting the charred black boards with a golden sheen. Smoke rose through the shattered roof—the thick, fragrant kind that came from burning damp wood. Sorrow took a few faltering steps forward. She didn’t know who was in there. She didn’t know how bad it was. She didn’t have any water; she couldn’t put it out herself.
She should go back to the house and call 911. She needed a closer look. She needed to see if somebody was inside. The sweat on her skin grew clammy in the cold. She began to shiver. She had to do something.
She crept through the meadow, and as she drew nearer she saw the light was coming from the hole in the floor. The fire was in the cellar.
Sorrow stepped over the bottom of the broken wall and tested the floorboards. They didn’t bend, didn’t give, so she stepped gingerly inside and slid toward the hole. A board creaked beneath her, loud as a shot, and she stopped. The cellar was about ten feet deep, and there was no ladder. She had no way to get down.
She took several breaths before dropping to her knees. She covered the last few feet to the hole at a crawl.
“Hey.” She stretched her neck out to look in the cellar. She heard the fire crackling softly. Gentle heat caressed her face. “Hello? Is somebody down there?”
The rising smoke stung her eyes; she wiped the tears away and leaned out farther. The fire was small and contained within a ring of charred debris.
“Hey!” Sorrow said, louder. She dipped her head, trying to see all corners of the cellar. “Hey, if you’re down—”
There was somebody right below her. She jerked back in alarm.
Blue jeans, red shirt.
Shoes that didn’t touch the ground.
“Hey, are you—”
She had to be wrong. She needed to be wrong.
She looked over the edge again.
Shoes that didn’t touch the ground, blue jeans, red shirt. A curtain of blond hair obscuring half of a mottled but familiar face.
It was Julie Abrams. There was a rope around her neck, the other end knotted to a beam, and a toppled stack of apple bushels beneath her. The flickering firelight cast a warm flush over her skin, but she wasn’t moving. She wasn’t swinging or twisting. She wasn’t struggling or choking or gasping. She was dead.
22
EIGHT YEARS AGO
THE RAIN BEGAN in the afternoon and continued into the evening, and the lights flickered off after supper. Patience lit lavender candles and set one in every room, filling the house with small circles of light. Sorrow usually liked the house in candlelight, the shy dancing shadows on the walls, but that night she tensed with every lash of rain and gust of wind.
The third or fourth time she jumped and looked out the window in alarm, Patience noticed and laughed. “What’s got you so jittery?”
“Nothing,” Sorrow mumbled. She didn’t dare admit she was afraid the candles would topple and set the whole house on fire, that she couldn’t stop thinking about that burned corner of the Abrams barn and how wrong it had looked, that big chunk of building gone, as though a massive beast had taken a bite and left a black wound behind.
Mom had gone up to bed shortly after dinner, and a little while ago Grandma had set her pen aside and closed her leather journal before going to her own room. It was only Patience and Sorrow now. Patience had been forcefully cheerful all afternoon, ever since they had returned from the orchard, acting like nothing had happened. She hadn’t even glared or pinched Sorrow to remind her not to say anything. Sorrow, true to her word, hadn’t mentioned Julie when Mom asked if they’d had a nice walk.
“It’s only a storm,” Patience said.
“I know,” Sorrow said, but another gust of wind rocked the house and she tensed, every inch of her body aching with worry. She shoved her chair back and stood. “I’m going to bed.”
Patience turned a page in her book. “Take a candle up with you, but make sure you blow it out before you fall asleep.”
“I know,” Sorrow said. “I’m not a baby.”
“Good night, baby,” Patience said.
Sorrow stuck her tongue out and stomped up the stairs. She dutifully brushed her teeth and used the toilet and changed into her pajamas, and when she was alone in her room, with the door closed and the window rattling ominously, she blew out her candle. She had placed the eyeglasses from the cemetery on her dresser with the rest of her collection, propped up on the back of the small wooden tiger. She could see them even now, in the dark, as a pale circle where the one cracked lens reflected the weak light from outside.