She knelt beside her girls, knees cracking, and brushed the frost from Faith’s skin. The flesh was still soft, still pliable. Faith’s eyes were open, her face angled upward, as though she were gazing at the ash tree she had, only yesterday, planted for her sister. She looked older in death, waxy and hollow.
Justice’s knees ached and the sting of frost crept through her old dress and overcoat. She could stay, if her body did not find the strength to rise. The blood could grow sluggish in her veins. Her breath could crystallize. The ground was frozen. They would not be able to bury Faith until spring, and the orchard would mourn. The winter would be long and bitter. How many deaths, how much grief would it take to bring about a winter to last forever? How cold could the orchard become before tears turned to ice, carving tracks down cheeks?
She could stay with her girls.
But in the house her granddaughter, Joyful, would be rising to set a fire in the stove and heat yesterday’s porridge, and she would be singing, singing like the first brave robin to emerge after a snowstorm, singing though her heart was broken, and Justice could not make her eat breakfast alone.
Justice wiped the tears from her cheeks—almost scalding on her fingers—and rose.
Three bushels of apples would last longer with only two mouths to feed.
24
SORROW WOKE GROGGY and disoriented. Her muscles were sore, and when she bent her legs the sheet rubbed over the raw skin on her knees. She felt the same sting on her palms when she touched the scrapes. Her head was pounding, but she remembered running, and falling, and night and cold and—
Her chest squeezed so tightly she couldn’t breathe. She kicked free of her blankets and sat up, dropped her feet to the floor and bent over her knees. The room pitched and swam. She shut her eyes until the dizziness passed.
Julie. She had forgotten.
The cold. The eerie quiet. The smoke in the air, the fire in the cider house.
And Julie, hanging in the cellar, dead.
The last of Sorrow’s sleep-muddled confusion fled, and she remembered everything. She had spent too many minutes frozen in panic and indecision. Shouting Julie’s name. Trying to reach her from above, trying to find a way down into the cellar. There was no ladder, nothing to climb, no way except jumping, and if she did that, she couldn’t get back out. Finally Sorrow had run back to the house as fast as she could, tears streaming down her face and sobs shuddering through her. She had been dialing 911 when Grandma came out of her bedroom—Sorrow had made enough noise to wake her—and it was Grandma who fetched Verity while Sorrow shakily, haltingly, told the dispatcher what she had found.
Julie, who had been alive and smiling only hours before, her hand warm as she passed the photograph to Sorrow, her eyes the color of the sky.
You made her cry, Cassie had said, but Sorrow hadn’t seen it. Not in the café, not in the cemetery. Not once in the brief time they spent together had she looked at Julie and seen misery. She should have seen. She should have known.
Sorrow shoved the window casement open and breathed in the crisp morning air until the sudden surge of nausea subsided. It wasn’t as cold as it had been the night before, but a chill lingered in the air, and during the night, clouds had gathered over the valley. They must have rolled in after she returned to the house. She remembered glinting stars above the dark orchard, clean and bright in the cold. She sucked in another breath—it was just cold enough to sting her throat and send a shiver over her skin—and shut the window again.
Feeling shivery and off balance, as though the earth had tilted while she slept, Sorrow rose and dressed. She had the absurd, embarrassing thought that she was putting on the wrong clothes and she ought to choose more carefully. What were you supposed to wear the day after you found somebody dead? The sheriff had come to the house last night, after Sorrow made the call, but she was likely to return today. Sorrow would have to talk to her again. She would have to talk to Verity. She wanted to go back to bed, pull the curtain over the window and a blanket over her head, keep her door closed and the unseasonal cold shut firmly outside.
Sorrow rubbed her eyes again, took a deep breath, and went downstairs. The kitchen was empty; there was a used bowl and mug in the sink. Through the screen door she saw her grandmother walking the perimeter of the garden. Grandma stopped every few steps to examine the plants, bean stalks, tomatoes, pumpkins, squash. It didn’t look like there was any frost over the garden and lawn, but there was a damp sheen to everything the sun had touched.
Cold at the end of June. Witch weather. Sorrow’s heart ached.
Sorrow should go out to join her. Offer to help, ask if there was anything she could do. But she couldn’t figure out what her first words should be—what were you supposed to say on a morning like this? She couldn’t even decide if she wanted to eat breakfast. Make tea. Do her chores. Call her parents in Florida. Call Dr. Silva. Walk out to the orchard to see if the police were still there. Walk down the driveway and down the road until the air warmed and the clouds cleared. Keep walking and never come back. Do something. Do something.
Anything was better than standing in the kitchen, arguing with herself. She set the kettle to boil, then collected the clothes she’d been wearing last night into a pile with the rest of her laundry. After she had shoved it into the machine and set the cycle running, she returned to the kitchen to find Grandma had come inside.
“I really wish you guys drank coffee,” Sorrow said. “I don’t think tea is going to be enough this morning.”
Grandma’s smile was small, and Sorrow cringed.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m not trying to be—you know—flippant.”
Grandma opened her arms, and Sorrow stepped gratefully into the hug. Grandma smelled earthy and green, and her shoulder where Sorrow rested her cheek was cool with clinging morning mist.
“Is the garden okay?” she asked.
Grandma released Sorrow from the embrace and, after a moment’s thought, nodded.
“I was worried, with how cold it was last night. It was really cold. Did it frost? I thought for sure it was frost, I mean, it felt like it, but I’m not used to the cold anymore, so I was probably over-reacting. I’m glad it didn’t.” She was babbling to fill the silence and didn’t know how to stop. She was relieved when the kettle began to hiss—it never really managed a full whistle—and she could occupy herself making oatmeal and tea. “Where’s Verity?”
Grandma pointed outside.
“I guess it’s kind of late. Is she getting started in the barn? I know she wanted to start cleaning it out.”
Grandma was shaking her head.
“Then where is she?”
Grandma pointed again, this time to the north.
A knot tightened in Sorrow’s stomach. “She went out there? Why?”
Grandma’s only answer was a shake of her head.