“Sorrow,” Verity said again. She was at the back of the car, tugging at Sorrow’s suitcase. “Okay?”
Sorrow took a deep breath. “Yeah.” Another breath. “Fine.” The words came from the top of her lungs, high and shaky.
Verity dragged her suitcase toward the house. Grandma was smiling. She was smaller than Sorrow remembered, fragile as an autumn leaf, but she was smiling.
Sorrow closed the car door. The air was warm and sweet. She could do this. This had been home once. This had been her entire world.
She went to the porch and hugged her grandmother gently, so gently, afraid of holding too tight, and she exhaled.
5
THEY ATE DINNER at the kitchen table, the three of them and an empty fourth chair. Their plates were full of roast chicken, potatoes, early greens from the garden, a meal so familiar the scent of it made Sorrow’s heart ache.
The room around her didn’t have the same effect at all. The kitchen had been completely remodeled: new cabinets, new appliances, new flooring, new paint. The woodstove was in the same place, but it was sitting on an expanse of colorful tiles rather than crooked, soot-stained boards. The kitchen was in what had been the first building on the property, a small, dark log cabin that hoarded warmth like a dragon. Their ancestor Rejoice Lovegood had built it when she was first planting the orchard, but those carefully hand-hewn logs were exposed on only one wall now. The rest had been plastered and painted the color of daffodils.
Verity listed all the changes to the house with unmistakable pride, as though she were introducing Sorrow to a new friend. The house did look good, Sorrow couldn’t deny that, but still she felt a pang of discomfort. She didn’t know where Verity’s remodeling urge had come from; she didn’t remember her mother ever replacing or improving anything in their home. But that had obviously changed, and changed drastically. They had made everything new in Sorrow’s absence. It didn’t feel like her childhood home anymore.
“We’re just about done inside,” Verity said. “What do you think?”
“I like the tile especially.” Sorrow pointed with her fork, feeling a bit ridiculous, but it was all she could think to say. She couldn’t get away with silently nodding forever. “It looks like a flower bed.”
“It was a pain in the butt, but I guess it was worth it.” Verity was smiling when she said it. She had barely stopped smiling since they had arrived. “I had to learn how not to accidentally cement myself to the floor.”
“It barely even looks like the old cabin anymore,” Sorrow said.
It was the wrong thing to say. Verity’s smile faltered, and Grandma’s hand curled into a half-formed gesture.
“But you can still tell it used to be,” she added hurriedly. “This was always my favorite room. Remember how we used to . . .”
They used to pass long winter days when the snow was high and the temperature low here in the kitchen, always the warmest room in the house. Sorrow and Patience would play Pioneers: baking inedible bread in the woodstove, rearranging the cabinets to count supplies, darting outside for firewood, gasping in the cold and hurrying back inside. They had taken turns sitting at the window with a rolling pin, pretending it was a flintlock rifle and calling out warnings when an imaginary Abrams emerged from the snowy orchard. When there was nothing else to do, Patience had been happy to indulge Sorrow in games that were far too young for her. They were good memories, full of laughter and warmth and light.
But Verity was largely absent from them. She had spent most winter days up in her room, with the door closed and the curtains drawn.
Sorrow took a sip of cider, felt the soft burn in her throat. She looked from her mother to her grandmother, back to her mother. It wasn’t Verity’s fault she had colored so many of Sorrow’s good memories dark with her illness. Sorrow knew that. She could march through all of the rational, responsible, mature explanations in her mind, her own thoughts blending with Dr. Silva’s calm voice. But right now, sitting in the kitchen of her childhood home, which looked nothing like she remembered, too afraid to even speak her sister’s name lest it drop into a well of silence, none of it helped.
“I like it,” she said weakly. “It’s cozy. Are you about done? Or is there more to do?”
With a barely concealed look of relief, Verity began to tell Sorrow about the changes they had been making around the property—replacing the roof of the barn, fixing the fences, planning a new chicken coop—her description of every project peppered with praise for the unfailingly helpful Ethan Abrams. Sorrow wanted to ask, but didn’t, how they were able to afford all of the improvements and hiring help to do them. She was certainly no expert in the economics of running a farm, but she knew they had canned food obsessively when she was a kid, mended clothes as though fabric were spun from gold, saved every nail and board for reuse. There had been nights she had gone to sleep with a pit of hunger in her stomach, and days when neighbors had dropped by unannounced with homemade muffins or hot soup. It seemed impossible now, with a bounty of food spread before them and home improvement plans stretching into the future, but growing up as the poorest family in town—or at least the most visibly lacking by modern standards, rich only in history and land and old apple trees—with one of the wealthiest families right next door, that wasn’t something Sorrow had ever forgotten.
Grandma contributed in her own way to Verity’s chatter over dinner, nodding and pointing, scribbling a few words on the notebook she carried for that purpose. Sorrow had once been able to follow her grandmother’s manner of speaking easily, but she had lost the knack. She found it disorienting to keep up, and dismaying for how little she understood.
They talked about the garden, they talked about the fences, they talked about the trees, they cleaned their plates and emptied their glasses. Verity smiled again; Grandma laughed her silent laugh. Sorrow felt her way into a rhythm of asking questions and letting the answers fill her vague recollections with color and light.
They did not talk about Patience.
Verity didn’t say her name, not once, and Sorrow couldn’t bring herself to say it first. Every time the word crept toward the end of her tongue, she caught herself and stopped, frustrated and uncertain. And, every time, she felt guilty for her own reaction. She had been here only a couple of hours. They were getting to know each other again. There would be time enough to talk about Patience later.
After dinner was finished and the dishes washed, Verity said, “You should call your father.”
Sorrow made a face. “I texted him earlier.”