Lian set a confused look back into place, blinking in multiples.
Even now that Mrs. Bonner taught her daughters at home, Lian showed no sign of shaking away the act she’d fallen into, the role of the slow sister. In summer, when the Bonners kept all the windows open, Sam had heard their lessons through the screens. Mrs. Bonner never asked Lian to read out loud, which must have seemed like a kind of cruelty, a way to point out that which her second-oldest daughter could barely do. During their discussions of books, Mrs. Bonner moderated Ivy and Peyton’s debate over whether Pip from Great Expectations was a romantic or a sap, while Lian sat staring out the holes in the lace curtains.
“Why are you telling me?” she asked.
“Because you’re smart,” he said. “And you’ll tell anyone who needs to know.”
He took the brick path back to the edge of the Bonners’ yard.
At the corner of his vision came a flicker of movement, like the ribbons of foil dancing on wooden posts in strawberry fields.
Peyton Bonner stood, elbows cupped in her hands, the wind puffing up her curled hair. She pressed her lips tight, a worried look on her face. He knew she was wondering if he’d still be her excuse for Jenna Shelby.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re fine.”
Peyton nodded, her lips still pressed together. She looked younger, the way she had by the water tower, holding that gray pumpkin.
Sam couldn’t remember when she’d stopped carrying it around. He’d never wondered until now. One day it had just been gone from her hands.
“You remember that pumpkin you had when you were three?” he asked.
Her mouth broke into a smile. “Lady Jane Grey?”
His next breath turned into a laugh. “You named it?”
“Her,” she said, prim as a teacher correcting a mispronounced word. “I named her. And yes.”
“What happened to her?” Sam asked. “You took that thing everywhere.”
Peyton sighed, but not without humor. “Lady Jane Grey, like her namesake, was beheaded after a tragically short reign.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“The pumpkin was turning, and my sisters were afraid I was gonna carry it around until it rotted,” she said. “So they convinced me she wanted to be part of a pie.”
Convinced. Three Bonner sisters against one. They’d probably cut the pumpkin open without Peyton’s permission, and had to talk her down from wailing by telling her this was an end worthy of Lady Jane Grey.
“You know, I never meant to scare her,” Peyton said.
Sam shook his head. “What?”
“The night at the water tower.” Peyton’s eyes drifted toward the place on the horizon where the old water tower used to stand, a silhouette against the sky. “I never wanted to scare Miel with the pumpkin. I just thought she might want to hold her. I thought it might make her feel better.”
Peyton’s face was so open, almost apologetic, that Sam felt like they were at the water tower again, Peyton standing with her sisters, Sam slipping his jacket onto Miel. They had all been children then, so he’d never considered just how young Peyton was, the smallest of four sisters. A girl offering to share her favorite thing with a girl she did not know.
It wasn’t Peyton’s fault, how much Miel feared pumpkins. But with the four of them all lined up like that, it was no surprise that Miel had seen Peyton’s first step toward her as a threat.
Maybe if Peyton had just been Peyton, instead of one of four bright-haired girls, she would have seemed more like a friend and less like a force. But they would always be the Bonner sisters, a truth that both guarded and isolated them.
“You don’t have to tell her that,” Peyton said. “But I wanted you to know.”
lake of goodness
Tonight, half the town was putting pumpkins into the water, the way they did every year. They had hollowed out pumpkins they’d bought for the occasion. Dusky orange Estrellas. Deep blue-green Autumn Wings. Gray that was almost violet, and the off-white Luminas. They had emptied their shells of seeds and flesh, and then carved patterns of leaves and lace lattices. When they set candles inside, the cuttings glowed. One by one, they let them float on the water, the wide, slow current reflecting the light.
A little farther down the bank, Miel saw Sam’s mother, watching the same children she persuaded to practice their euphoniums and cellos. Her skirt almost swept the ground as she bent to talk to them, the glimmer of her eyes and her slight smile drawing them as if she were about to tell them a secret.
Sam had to be around here somewhere. He usually helped his mother keep track of the sons and daughters she’d been charged with taking to see the pumpkin lanterns. Miel looked for him, but even when she didn’t see him, she felt the pull of him, the certainty that he was close. That they would touch again before the heat from their hands faded off each other’s bodies.