“Yeah, I know.”
“The first one wasn’t torn down, not really. It was—”
“A terrible winter.” Sorrow rubbed her hands together; she couldn’t tell if the morning was getting warmer. She wished Verity hadn’t chosen a spot in the shade. “I know.”
When the winter of 1919 had come too soon and lasted too long for Abrams Valley—witch weather, Sorrow thought, the words minnowing through her mind—Justice and her granddaughter, Joyful, had taken the cider house apart piece by piece, board by board, preferring to strip the entire building to the ground for firewood than sacrifice a single apple tree. Making a game of that winter had been one of Sorrow’s favorite snowy day activities as a child: melting snow in a pot on the woodstove, piling blankets into a corner to nest, bringing log after log in from the woodpile, turning misery from another century into an afternoon of make-believe.
“What does that have to do with anything?” she asked. “You should have torn it down.”
Verity wasn’t looking at Sorrow. She wasn’t looking at the cider house. Her gaze was turned higher, lost in the sky. “They had nobody to help them that winter. They’d lost so much and they were alone—”
Sorrow stood, and Verity stopped.
She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t listen to Verity tell an old family story as though it were any other morning. She couldn’t sit here on the hillside looking down on the cider house and see anything other than the same reminder Julie had seen every day of her life, every time she looked out her bedroom window, all because Verity clung so desperately, so stubbornly to a past that was likely half-fictional anyway. Every time Sorrow closed her eyes she saw the orchard cast into stark moonlight shades of silver and black. She felt the sting of smoke, the rising heat. She saw the smooth fall of Julie’s golden hair and the unnatural angle of her neck. She couldn’t have all of that crowding her thoughts and Verity’s meandering storytelling too. She needed somebody who would sit beside her when Sheriff Reyes returned, who would reassure her it wasn’t her fault she hadn’t found Julie sooner, who would lie to her and tell her everything would be okay. She needed a mother to comfort her in the present, not a wraith lost in the past.
“I don’t care,” Sorrow said. “I don’t want—god. Why are you even talking about this now? Julie is dead, and it has nothing to do with—with anything that happened a hundred years ago. She’s dead. And all you give a fuck about is where our stupid ancestors got their firewood.”
Sorrow walked away without looking back. She hadn’t come out here to start another argument with Verity. She had planned to be calm, reassuring, to make sure her mother was okay and bring her back to the house, where they could all go through the pitiful motions of pretending it was a normal day. That was what she had intended.
But all of the mechanisms she had for being the calm one, for being the person who absorbed other people’s emotional ups and downs without wavering, without reacting, always cowering in the quiet center no matter what storm raged around her, none of it was working now. All of the things she normally thought and kept to herself, they were flying from her tongue every time she was near Verity, and she didn’t know how to stop.
And every time she blinked she saw Julie’s face, warm with firelight.
Verity still hadn’t come back from the orchard an hour later, when Sheriff Reyes returned.
“Is Ms. Lovegood here?” the sheriff asked. She was a tall woman with brown skin and short-cropped black hair, and she spoke with a big Boston accent that filled the small kitchen. “I have some information.”
“She’s out in the orchard,” Sorrow said. She thought about adding she’s working, decided against it. She wasn’t interested in lying for Verity today.
There was a pause while Sheriff Reyes waited for an explanation; then she asked, “Will she be back?”
“No idea,” Sorrow said. “She didn’t tell me anything. Why? Do you need her for something?”
“No, nothing like that,” the sheriff said. “I only want to fill her in.”
“You can tell me.”
“I would prefer to have this conversation with your mother present.”
“She’s not even my legal guardian or anything,” Sorrow said. Through the kitchen window she could see Grandma in the garden, but Sheriff Reyes didn’t mention her. Sorrow wondered if she was one of those people who dismissed Grandma out of hand, assuming that because she didn’t talk she couldn’t hear either and wouldn’t be any use in a conversation. “Can’t you just tell me? I want to know if . . . I want to know.”
Sorrow didn’t like the assessing look in her brown eyes, but Sheriff Reyes nodded slightly and said, “The coroner is going to designate Julie’s death a suicide. That’s what all the evidence indicates.”
At once Sorrow regretted asking. She didn’t want to know about the evidence. She didn’t want details. They were too many in her mind already. The warmth of the fire on her skin, and the lingering scent of smoke. The thinness of Julie’s hands, and how they had played with her headphones in the café. The way the sun had shone on her hair in the ash grove.
She only wanted to know how they were sure. “Did she leave a note?”
“Not that we’ve found. But that’s not unusual. Most people don’t.” A grimace passed over the sheriff’s face, like a cloud crossing the sun. “This has already gotten out, thanks to a blabbermouth in the office, so I suppose it won’t hurt to tell you. There were recent searches on her phone.”
Sorrow’s stomach clenched. “What kind of searches?”
“Information on how to make a noose.”
“Oh.” She shouldn’t have asked. She didn’t want to know that.
“There is one thing I want to ask you about,” the sheriff said.
Sorrow looked up to meet her eyes, looked down at the table again. The sheriff must have heard about what Cassie had said at the festival. “What is it?”
“I’m wondering if you know why she chose that old building,” the sheriff said. “Most people seem to think she picked it to spite your family, but nothing else I’ve heard about Julie makes her sound spiteful. Her parents insist—pretty strongly, I might add—it was more about convenience than making a statement. That it has nothing to do with your family. I’m inclined to agree with them.” Sheriff Reyes paused, and when Sorrow didn’t answer she went on, “But, as everybody keeps reminding me, I’m a newcomer around here. I’ve only lived here for five years, which might as well be five days in this town. What do you think?”