THERE HAD BEEN somebody else in the orchard that day, but when Sorrow followed Patience out of the cemetery grove, it was so quiet they might have been the only people in the world.
They skirted the hill in the center of the orchard, staying well above the meadow and the fence line. For that Sorrow was grateful. Patience didn’t always heed their mother’s warnings to stay as far from the Abrams property as they could, and normally Sorrow enjoyed the little thrill of disobedience she got from ducking through the wires past the No Trespassing signs or chasing frogs around to the forbidden side of the pond. But today, looking at the Abrams house across the wind-scalloped field of snow made Sorrow’s insides squirm like a knot of worms.
From this far away the burned corner of the Abrams barn didn’t look like much, only a black bite chomped into the red. The sheriff had said nobody had been hurt; the Abrams didn’t have any animals. All that had been damaged was the hayloft where Cassie Abrams had her playhouse.
“What are you staring at?” Patience asked. She was several steps ahead, already climbing the hill.
“Do you think they’re going to catch who did it?” Sorrow asked.
“Probably,” Patience said with a shrug. “You don’t have to worry about it. It’s nothing to do with us.”
She started walking again. Sorrow sniffled, wiped her nose on her coat sleeve, and went after her. The snow was deep on the north-facing slope. Sorrow followed in her sister’s footsteps, stretching her legs to reach each punched-through hole, until the ground leveled, the trees opened, and a whirl of wind bit at her face. They had reached the black oak.
The clearing around the oak was slick with hardened patches of ice, but the ground above Silence Lovegood’s grave was bare and muddy. Patience picked her way over the ice, choosing each step carefully, but Sorrow ran past her and threw herself into the trunk of the oak. She climbed up onto the fat, knobby roots that curled from the ground like monstrous snakes and hopped her way around the tree, keeping one hand on the trunk for balance.
“Is this where she killed them?” Sorrow asked.
Patience knelt beside Silence Lovegood’s grave to move the white stones back into tidy lines and pick away stray leaves and twigs. “You’ve heard this story a million times.”
“I like it.”
“Because you’re a morbid kid,” Patience said.
Sorrow didn’t know what morbid meant. “Am not.”
“You are too. You already know how it goes.”
“This is where she killed them,” Sorrow declared. “Her very own children, six of them. All but the littlest girl, Grace.”
“She ran away and hid in a fox burrow until she heard the townspeople calling for her,” Patience said.
“You just made that up,” Sorrow said, laughing. “That’s not part of the story.”
But Patience didn’t laugh. “It doesn’t have to be part of the story to be true. Close your eyes. Try to imagine it.”
Patience looked so serious and so earnest that Sorrow did as she said. With her eyes closed she wobbled on the tree root, put a hand out to steady herself.
“She had to hide somewhere,” Patience said. “She was so scared. She ran and ran and ran until she was lost in the forest. She couldn’t hear her mother shouting for her anymore. She found a little burrow and she crawled into it. It was quiet and dark and there were roots and dirt crumbling all around her.”
Sorrow opened one eye to look at Patience. “How did she fit?”
Patience tossed a handful of matted leaf debris at Sorrow’s shoes. “It was cozy,” she said. She looked around, then lowered her voice. “You know, if you dig down deep enough, this dirt is still red and sticky. That’s why nothing grows in this clearing.”
A shiver chased down Sorrow’s spine. “Nothing ever?”
“Nothing except this oak, because it drinks up the blood.”
Sorrow plucked off her glove to touch the tree with her bare hand. She thought it might be warmer than it ought to be. She might feel red sap gulping through the wood. She snatched her hand away.
Silence Lovegood had been left alone when her husband, John Derry, died in 1816, during the coldest summer anybody could remember. It was so cold Enoch Abrams and his brothers Gideon and Zadock convinced the town Silence was using witchcraft to curse the whole valley. Only the Lovegoods, they claimed, had the power to manipulate the seasons with their unnatural command over life and death. The story was one of Sorrow’s favorites. She especially liked to whack at the scarecrow in Grandma’s garden, pretending to be little Grace Lovegood chasing the Abrams men away with a rake, shouting, “Za-dock, Za-dock!” with a thwack on the second syllable, over and over again.
Silence Lovegood had denied she was a witch, but the cold summer, the failed crops, the unseasonal frosts that crackled through the forests in June and July, it all scared the townspeople too much and nothing could change their minds.
“I think it’s stupid,” Sorrow said.
“What is?”
“She didn’t have to kill them. She could have moved away.”
Patience gave her a look that said she was deciding if what she had to say was too grown-up for her little sister. Sorrow hated that look.
“It wasn’t that simple,” Patience said. “As awful as it is, I think she thought she was protecting them.”
“Yeah, but”—Sorrow made another loop around the tree, hopping faster this time—“she wasn’t. That’s stupid. You can’t protect somebody by hurting them. She could have taken them to live somewhere else.” Sorrow tried balancing and jumping to the next root on one leg. It was harder than using both, but she was sure she could do it. “Why didn’t she just go somewhere?”
“Sorrow.”
The warning in Patience’s voice made her heart skip. When Sorrow rounded the tree again, Patience was on her feet, and there was somebody else in the clearing.
“Julie,” Patience said.
A teenage girl stood between two ash trees. Julie was the older Abrams daughter. With her blond hair dyed in pink streaks, a puffy purple down coat, and red tights, she was a vibrant rainbow of color in the gray orchard. Julie was the same age as Patience, and until December she had been away at boarding school. Mrs. Abrams had told everybody Julie was taking a break because she had been working so hard. Mom said Julie had been kicked out.
Julie stepped out from between the ash trees. The wind curling through the clearing tugged at her pale hair. “Hey,” she said.
“What are you doing here?” Patience asked.
Sorrow looked at her sister in surprise: she wasn’t used to hearing such a sharp tone from her.
“Nothing,” Julie said. She kicked at a clump of ice. “Walking. I saw you come up here.”
“You’re trespassing. You can’t be here.”
Julie rolled her eyes. “Seriously? You’re going to be like that?”
“I’m not being like anything.” Patience shifted her weight from one foot to the other and passed a small white rock quickly from hand to hand. “You can’t be here. This is private property.”
“Why do you care?” Julie snapped. “Are you gonna call the cops on me?”
“I might,” Patience said. “You know they were already here.”
“Yeah, our place too, looking for the dumbass who tried to burn our barn down. My parents are freaking out like they’re going to find an arsonist lurking in the woods or something. It’s so stupid.”
“You need to leave,” Patience said. She closed her fist around the white rock, and for a second Sorrow thought she was going to throw it at Julie.
Julie’s face went through a complicated change, flashing from surprise to hurt to something harder. “You’re serious.”
“Yes. You have to go.” There was a tremor in Patience’s voice. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I can’t believe you. Do you treat all your friends like this?” Julie asked, then laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. “Oh, right, I forgot. You don’t have any other friends.”
Patience’s face was pale, her lips pinched, and her voice tight when she said, “We’re not friends.”
Sorrow knew at once, with the certainty of a thunderclap, that Patience was lying. Julie was telling the truth. They were friends. They weren’t even supposed to talk to each other. Mom didn’t have many rules for Patience and Sorrow, but that one was absolute: they could not be friends with the Abrams girls. And Patience had broken it.
“That is so dumb.” Julie rubbed at her nose; the tip was pink. “You want to let our stupid families dictate every fucking aspect of your life, you go right ahead.”
“It’s not like that,” Patience said.
“It’s exactly like that. You didn’t care before. Why do you care now?”
“The police came to our house this morning.” Patience was speaking quickly, her voice trembling. “The police came to our house because of your family and your problems. It doesn’t have anything to do with us but now my mom is upset and—”
“Oh my god, so what? Your mom freaks out about everything.”
“Why did the sheriff have to talk to us?” Patience was shaking with anger now, the white stone still clutched in one hand. “Did your parents tell him to? Did they tell him to bother us?”
“They wouldn’t—”
“Why can’t they mind their own fucking business?”
Patience’s words rang through the trees, and in the silence that followed the wind rose, made the branches of the black oak creak and the last clinging dead leaves rustle. Sorrow scarcely dared to breathe. There was a hot dense ache under her ribs, right where the favors in her pockets were pressing into her side. She shivered and wiped at her nose with her mitten. The wool smelled like woodsmoke; the scent made her nauseous.
“You know what?” Julie said after a long, horrible silence. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“You—”
“I don’t care.” Julie took a step back and spread her arms wide, and she said it again, loud enough to echo through the orchard. “I don’t care! I’ll mind my own business. It’s fine! I won’t bother you again. Exactly what you want. You ever get over yourself and change your mind, you know how to find me.”
She stomped into the orchard, slipping once on a lingering patch of snow. Patience watched until the bright purple of her coat disappeared into the trees.
She sniffled softly, scrubbed at her face, and said, “We’re going home.”
She held out her hand. Sorrow didn’t take it.
“Come on. It’s cold.”
Sorrow stared at her sister. “Are you friends with Julie?”
“No. She’s being—I’m not.”
“She said you were.”
“What do you care what she says?”
“Does Mom know?”
Patience stepped forward so quickly Sorrow stumbled backward, her boots skidding on the ice, but Patience caught the front of her coat before she fell.
“Don’t you dare say a word to her about this,” she said. Her voice was low and angry and unlike anything Sorrow had ever heard. She didn’t sound like Patience at all. She sounded like a stranger.
Sorrow’s heart was hammering. “But if you—”
“Don’t you dare,” Patience said, giving Sorrow a shake. “She’s upset enough as it is. You don’t say anything about the fire or the Abramses or anything, okay? Don’t make it worse.”
“I won’t,” Sorrow whispered.
“You have to promise. You’re not going to say anything to upset Mom.”
“I won’t!” Sorrow said again. “I promise, I won’t!”
Patience let her go and turned away. Her face was so pale and so hard it might have been carved from stone. She threw the white rock at the base of the oak. “We’re going home now.”
Sorrow followed without a word.