Cassie snorted. “Yeah, right. They don’t care. All they care about is how embarrassing I am, that’s the only thing they—they’re doing it again, talking about how, oh, it’s so shocking, so much young life lost in such a small town. Calling them the tragic Abrams Valley girls. It’s on the fucking internet. People who don’t give a fuck about them and never did.”
She swallowed back a sob and twisted her face into her shoulder, wiped her eyes on her sleeve. She wasn’t pointing the gun at anything—where had she even gotten a gun? Had her parents noticed it was missing?—but in her hand it was a terrible black shadow, more outline than shape, and Sorrow couldn’t take her eyes off it.
She sank to the ground beside the grave, and they formed a triangle, the three of them, Cassie and Sorrow and Patience’s sturdy tall ash.
“I’m not as brave as Julie was. I’m sitting here, trying to convince myself I can do it. But I’m a fucking coward.” Cassie scrubbed at her face again. “You know, I used to be so jealous of you.”
Sorrow wasn’t expecting that. “Me? Why?”
“You. Her. Both of you.” She gestured toward Patience’s headstone with the gun, and Sorrow flinched. “I thought you had the best life. You didn’t have to go to school. You didn’t have your parents freaking out over everything you did. Nobody telling you that your whole life was decided for you. It seemed so perfect. Your mom let you do anything and everybody loved your grandma and it was . . . everything we didn’t get to do. Everything. My mom was always like, Oh, those Lovegood girls, look at how dirty they are, they don’t even wear shoes, they’re like wild animals, and the whole time I was just thinking how much I wanted to be one of you. I was so jealous. I knew your mom was crazy—sorry, depressed—but still I used to pretend—this is so stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” Sorrow said softly. She had no idea if she was saying the right thing. She only knew that talking was better than letting Cassie’s confession fall into a horrible empty silence. “What did you pretend?”
“I used to pretend I was a Lovegood. A secret Lovegood, like, your long-lost sister or cousin, and my parents had stolen me away for some reason, and someday it would all come out and I would get to go back to the right family and . . . It’s so fucking stupid.”
“It’s not,” Sorrow said again.
“That’s what I used to pretend when I went up to my playhouse,” Cassie went on. “I wanted, like, a real playhouse, or a tree house, but my dad kept promising to build one and never doing it, so I just had that stupid corner of the hayloft. And that day after the fire my parents were all, Were you playing with matches? Did you leave a candle burning? You can tell us, you can tell us, and . . . they didn’t believe me. I was telling the truth, but they just looked at me like they were looking at—like they were looking at some stranger, like I was this problem they had to solve. But I wasn’t lying.”
“I know,” Sorrow said, the words barely louder than a whisper.
Cassie looked up. Her eyes burned in the growing twilight. “You said it wasn’t your sister.”
“It wasn’t,” Sorrow said. “It was me.”
There was a long silence, as though the entire orchard was holding its breath. Cassie didn’t move. She didn’t sniffle. She didn’t wipe her tears. In her stillness she sank into the shadows.
Then she let out a ragged breath, half laugh and half sob. She lifted her hand—the hand with the gun—to wipe at her eyes with her wrist. “Of course you did. Jesus fucking Christ. Of course it was you.” She pressed the curve of her wrist against her eyes, shaking her head with her face hidden. “I should have known. You must have hated me so much.”
Lovegoods hated Abramses. Abramses hated Lovegoods. That was how it had been since Clement Abrams had first come to this valley to find that a woman had already claimed the fertile land he wanted for himself. That was how it had been since Rejoice Lovegood had spilled her own blood and sweat and tears to bind these acres to herself and herself to the land, sharing her burden with the mountains and hollows when there was no one else to help her carry it. Seasons turned, apple blossoms blushed and withered, fruit swelled and dropped, snow fell and melted, and children grew to bear children of their own, to make mistakes of their own, to love and hate and fear on their own, to die by hunger, by violence, by the lure of the wider world. Promises were made, hearts were broken, and people twisted themselves around and around and around, the soft green tendrils of their dreams hardening into woody vines that could not bend but would someday break. Mounds of lush green grass erupted where bodies lay buried. Children spilled blood in a creek. A man drowned in a well. A fire burned out of control.
The lighter was warm. Sorrow’s fingers ached from holding it so tight.
There might be a spark, if she struck it. It might catch still.
Sorrow opened her hand, each finger releasing like vines unwinding, and she looked at the lighter on her open palm.
You must hate me, and I you.
All she had been, in the end, was a thoughtless child with a grudge and a stupid idea.
She didn’t know if this was the right way to help. She wanted to ask. She wanted to accuse. She didn’t know if there was a right way. She was not going to lie.
“I don’t think I hated you,” Sorrow said. Carefully, so carefully, taking small steps in her mind. “I didn’t even know you. I was angry and jealous and I didn’t know how to put a fire out once I got it started.”
Cassie’s smile was a terrible, crumbling thing. She gestured with the gun—a shape in the darkness, a void—and Sorrow curled her fingers into the soft earth. But Cassie wasn’t pointing the gun at her. Her finger wasn’t on the trigger; she didn’t even seem to remember she was holding it. She was motioning toward Patience’s headstone.
“Did you know they were friends?” Cassie said.
“Not until right at the end.”
“I knew all along. I used to follow Julie—” She choked on her sister’s name, held her breath a moment before going on. “I used to follow her. After she came home from school that year, our parents were so pissed at her, but it was the kind of pissed that meant they obsessed over everything she did. Everything was about Julie. Get Julie a therapist, get Julie a tutor, get Julie into a summer program. Everything was about fixing Julie. And around them she acted all . . . contrite, you know, she was so sorry, she wouldn’t mess up again, they could totally trust her. But she was still sneaking out and I thought—I thought she had a boyfriend or, like, a drug dealer. I didn’t think it was just . . . a friend. How fucked up is that? Of all the stupid, pointless secrets to keep. She just had a friend.”