Sorrow had been afraid, before she came back to Vermont, that she would look at her mother and see her sister. They had the same dark hair, the same long nose, the same sharp face. But Verity didn’t look anything like Patience. Sitting at the wheel of her Subaru, carefully signaling to pass a slow-moving truck, she looked only like herself, a middle-aged woman from rural Vermont. If her mood was a mask, Sorrow no longer knew how to see through it.
“It’s going to be weird being in a town that has a population smaller than my high school,” she said.
Verity’s smile was so genuine that Sorrow felt she was balanced on a precipice, toes curling over the edge.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Verity said.
Sorrow looked away. “Me too,” she said.
The farther south they traveled, the more familiar the landscape became: rolling mountains and green forests, small towns surrounded by fields, old farmhouses in various stages of decay, horses and cows grazing in pastures. Later in the summer, after a month or two of riotous growth, the forests would become impenetrable walls of green, the heat suffocating, the air oppressive and hazy. Dust would hang above country roads in clinging yellow clouds, and everybody would yearn with sluggish impatience for the first crackling cool day of fall. But now, on the second Saturday in June, the summer was fresh and new.
The sun slanted bright and blinding over the mountains, and it was late afternoon when they passed the sign at the edge of town. Welcome to Abrams Valley. Bold white letters on a green board. Heart of the Green Mountains.
“Not much has changed,” Verity said softly. “We’ve got the same problems as most small towns, I guess. More people commuting to Boston. They laid off about half the workers at the quarry last year. But mostly things just kind of go on.”
Along Main Street there was a handful of bakeries and restaurants, souvenir shops with T-shirt racks and postcard displays on the sidewalks, outdoor-gear stores with window signs welcoming Appalachian and Long Trail thru-hikers. A scattering of tourists wandered aimlessly. The quilting and knitting store was in the same spot, with the same carved wooden sign over the door offering Yarn & Fabrics.
Sorrow swallowed, took a breath. “Does Ms. Cheek still own that place?”
“She’s mostly retired now, but she still shows up to boss the new manager around a couple times a week,” Verity said.
Ms. Cheek and her employees—all old ladies just like her, gray-haired and grinning—had always greeted Grandma with hugs and kisses on the cheek, opened a bottle of Abrams Valley cider before sitting down to haggle over prices and invent quaint names for Grandma’s colorful quilts.
The library in its old Victorian house hadn’t moved, but it had been repainted a cheery bright blue. In the flat square park at the center of town a banner spanning two trees announced a festival celebrating the 253rd anniversary of the Battle of Ebenezer Smith’s Stockade, the town’s one and only claim to historical semi-fame. Below the banner a smaller sign advertised a twice-weekly farmers’ market.
The grocery store was in the same place, with the same produce bins on the sidewalk, but the original sign had been replaced by a corporate chain.
“I have to stop in for a few things, if you don’t mind.” Verity put on her signal to turn in to the parking lot. “I’ll only be a minute, if you want to wait. Or you can come in?”
“I think I’ll wait out here,” Sorrow said. “My head is still all ugh from the traveling.”
Verity nodded. “Get your first taste of mountain air. It’ll help.”
When she was gone, Sorrow stepped out of the car and leaned against it. She closed her eyes to feel the sunlight on her face, to take in the sounds of the town. All she wanted was a few minutes of quiet to let the thoughts rattling around her mind settle. She had known this valley once. She had known this town and these streets. The people who owned these stores. The shape of these mountains, and the scent of these trees. She should know it still. She had been gone only eight years. That wasn’t long enough to forget.
But forget she had. There were shadows in her memories, like low clouds casting swaths of landscape into darkness, and the biggest of these, the darkest, hid the cold late winter days when Patience had died. Dr. Silva said it was normal, but it didn’t feel normal. It felt like a black hole inside her, sometimes centered in her mind, sometimes in her heart, a well of impossible gravity distorting everything around it, slowly stripping the light and color from all the rest of her childhood memories, even the good ones, so gradually Sorrow hadn’t noticed it happening until it was too late.
A shopping cart rattled and shoes scuffed on asphalt. Sorrow’s eyes snapped open, but it wasn’t Verity who stood before her. It was Mrs. Abrams.
For all that she hadn’t been able to remember the woman’s name twenty minutes ago, Sorrow recognized her immediately, like a puzzle piece snapping into a scene that hadn’t made sense before. Sleek blond hair, tailored clothes, makeup tasteful and perfectly applied, Hannah Abrams was dressed for an uptown lunch, not a trip to the grocery store—but she seemed absolutely comfortable with it, as though she was the one who fit and the rest of the town failed to measure up.
“You’re the Lovegood girl,” Mrs. Abrams said.
Sorrow had heard you’re the Lovegood girl more times than she could count when she was a child, usually right after some stranger had looked over her homemade clothes and ill-fitting shoes and wrinkled a nose in disapproval.
It didn’t sound any better now that she was sixteen, but she pulled up a smile and her best talking-to-adults voice. “Yeah, I’m Sorrow. It’s nice to see you again, Mrs. Abrams.”
Hannah Abrams smiled too, more reflex than intent. “I’m surprised you remember me.”
It was so close to what Sorrow had been thinking about she felt momentarily thrown, and she fumbled for a reply that wasn’t a defensive of course I do. “I, uh, yeah, it’s all starting to feel familiar, now that I’m here. I didn’t realize until just now how much I missed the mountains.”
“It’s beautiful here in the summer,” Hannah said. “I’ve always loved the long sunsets in particular. Are you in town for long?”
“A month,” Sorrow said. Across the parking lot Verity emerged from the store with a reusable grocery bag in each hand. “There’s my mom.”
She didn’t mean it as a warning, only a polite way to extract herself from awkward small talk, but Hannah’s expression changed abruptly. Sorrow hadn’t even realized there was a softness in her face until it was gone. Her eyes narrowed, her lips thinned, and she squared her shoulders as she turned.
“Hannah,” Verity said.
“Verity,” Hannah replied.
“Are you bothering my daughter?”
Sorrow began, “She was only—”
“I was only surprised to see her,” Hannah said. “I didn’t know she was coming to visit.”
“That’s because it’s none of your business,” Verity said.