Sorrow traced her fingertips along the woodgrain of the table. That didn’t sound like Mr. and Mrs. Abrams, vehemently absolving the Lovegoods of having any part in their personal tragedy. Ethan had been right when he’d said that if they had any way to blame the Lovegoods for something, they would do so loudly and repeatedly.
But they didn’t know what Sorrow knew about Julie and Patience and their brief winter friendship. That secret had felt so huge and terrible when she was a child, but now it seemed no more than a small hot ember, pressing on the inside of her chest.
“You know that’s where my sister died,” Sorrow said. She looked up at the sheriff to be sure she was listening.
“I do know about that,” Sheriff Reyes said.
“They were friends. Not for very long, I don’t think. Just a few months. They weren’t supposed to be. Our families . . .” Sorrow shrugged. “It was a secret. I mean, they kept it a secret from our parents, because they would get in trouble.”
“That’s why you sought out Julie when you came back to town?”
“I just wanted to talk to her. I didn’t think—I didn’t mean to upset her. I wasn’t trying to do that. I just wanted to see if she remembered Patience. I didn’t—oh, god.” Sorrow put her hand over her mouth and choked back a sob. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know it would hurt her just to ask.”
“Sorrow.” Sheriff Reyes moved her hand like she was going to reach out, changed her mind and rested it on the table. “I didn’t know Julie, but I do know that something like this doesn’t happen because of just one conversation. Her family and friends tell me she’s been troubled for years.”
Sorrow nodded, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. She didn’t know Julie either. She never had. They’d spoken twice, and all of the enthusiasm for those conversations, every feeling of connection shared between them, every possible future meeting where they might talk again, those had all been in Sorrow’s head.
After the sheriff left, the day passed quietly. Verity returned to the house after Sorrow and Grandma had finished lunch, and she stayed only long enough to claim she wasn’t hungry before vanishing into the barn. Grandma did what she could for the cold-nipped garden, then came in to sew in the living room, and Sorrow sat in the kitchen with her summer reading books. She tried to let the steady chug of the sewing machine soothe her, but every glimpse of motion outside the kitchen window, every change in the light, made her look up, half hoping and half dreading it would be Verity on her way inside. The clouds showed no signs of breaking.
Sorrow went to bed early, still exhausted from the night before. She lay on her bed, curled onto her side beneath an extra blanket, and squeezed her eyes shut. She kept thinking about Julie in the cemetery grove, the sunlight shining on her hair, secrets and questions stretched between them delicate as spider silk, and her smile, always her smile, soft and sad and so very alive.
And thinking about that led, every time, to Julie in the cider house.
Sobs pressed at the back of Sorrow’s throat and hot tears streaked her face. Her heart was racing for no reason she could identify. She pressed her fingers to her wrist to feel her pulse and tried to count the beats, tried to draw in slow, even breaths, but nothing helped.
She was still lying there, choking on sobs she couldn’t stop and rubbing tears from her cheeks, when Verity came upstairs.
Please come in, she thought, staring at the closed door. Please come in.
She wanted Verity to knock softly and open the door when Sorrow answered. She wanted Verity to ask if she was all right. Sit on the edge of the bed. Put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She wanted to not be alone.
But Verity didn’t tap on the door. She walked down the hallway to the end, paused, returned, and did it again. She paced back and forth, back and forth, her soft steady footsteps lulling Sorrow halfway to sleep.
The sound of her steps changed: she was going downstairs.
Sorrow held her breath. Waited, waited—and there it was. The back door opening, the screen snapping shut.
She exhaled and rolled onto her back. She fell asleep still waiting for Verity to return.
25
THE NEXT DAY dawned cool and gray, with a layer of clouds hanging stubbornly over the valley. Grandma was making bread when Sorrow went downstairs. She looked up from her kneading to offer a quick smile, which Sorrow couldn’t quite manage to return. She sat at the table and watched for a minute or two. Grandma’s arms were dusted with flour up to her elbows, and there was a stray speck on her nose. The door was open, and beyond the screen the orchard was muted under the cloudy sky, all the uncountable shades of green murky and dark where before they had practically glowed in the sunlight.
Sorrow had barely slept. She had tossed and turned restlessly for hours until finally drifting off to dream about racing through the orchard on a cold winter night, surrounded by smoky shadows and chased by raging fire, and every time she looked back to see how close the flames were, the trees rustled and shuffled and bent to block her view. She had awoken disoriented and nauseated, and even after shoving her window open and gulping in the chilly night air, she hadn’t been able to settle her stomach or her nerves.
And as soon as the shifting dream images faded, she was thinking about Julie again, and the way the firelight had glowed on her skin, how it had made her look warm and alive. Sorrow had showered twice since the cider house but still every breath smelled of smoke, and even when she was nested in her bed beneath two quilts she felt chilled all over.
“I don’t know what to do,” Sorrow said.
Grandma’s hands stilled. She turned to Sorrow.
Sorrow hadn’t meant to say anything. She looked down at the table, tears filling her eyes, and she swallowed. “I keep thinking about her,” she said, her voice small. “I can’t stop seeing her.”
A hysterical burble of laughter rose in her throat, and she pushed it down, covered her mouth with her hand to keep any sound from escaping. It wasn’t funny. There was not a single thing funny about it, but all she had been doing since she arrived was trying to remember something terrible, thinking about Patience and how she had died, and now all she wanted was for her mind to stop. She didn’t want any of it in her thoughts now. She didn’t want to think about anything.
Grandma pulled out a chair beside Sorrow and reached for her hand. Sorrow let her take it, squeezed her fingers, and held on.
“I remember a lot of casseroles,” she said.
Grandma tilted her head in question.
Sorrow sighed and rubbed her free hand over her face. “I keep thinking I don’t know what to do, and trying to remember what other people did, and that’s what I remember after Patience died. A lot of casseroles.”